NOSM employees hit picket lines as talks break down

At midnight Monday more than 150 Northern Ontario School of Medicine administrative, technical and clerical staff walked off the job.

Picket lines are in place at both Lakehead and Laurentian Universities’ campuses after the union representing employees failed to work out a first collective agreement with their employer. Late last month, members of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union Local 677 voted 97 per cent in favour of strike action if talks broke down. After 34 days at the negotiating table an agreement couldn’t be reached.

Hours of work, overtime, sick leaves, family leaves and wages are some of the issues at he forefront, but the starting point is a collective agreement, said Local 677 president Yuk-Sem Won.

"We don’t have anything enshrined in a document that ensures there’s equality or anything that has a process really written down in a way that it’s an agreement," she said. "So far we only have protocols and policies and we really want it to be equitable and fair."

The union has proposed basic collective agreement language and isn’t asking for a lot of extras, Won added.

"We don’t mind staying status quo like the employer has suggested but they will not put into writing what status quo means,’ she said. "We’ve had a real issue getting them to respect what the proposed language means."

Won said they are willing to continue to negotiate and NOSM has their proposals.

"When they’re ready to give us something that seems to be fair and equitable and that we can talk about, we’re willing and able to go back to negotiations."

NOSM dean Roger Strasser said he is hopeful negotiations will resume quickly and are willing to return to the bargaining table to work towards completing the collective agreement.

"This is a first collective agreement and that means every word in the collective agreement needs to be carefully considered," he said. "It’s very time consuming and it’s very important because of course what’s written in this first collective agreement affects the subsequent agreements so we wanted to make sure we take that time and get it right."

He added he believed the two negotiating teams were working well together in achieving the agreement, but after a conciliator was called into the talks in July, the union soon felt the negotiations weren’t proceeding as they liked.

With the newest group of medical students set to begin orientation next week and classes to start the following week, Strasser said as soon as they learned three weeks ago there could be a labour disruption, the school began preparing for such a scenario.

"Our focus is very much on maintaining the education process of the school and fulfilling our obligations of our students and residents and all of the learners," Strasser said. "That’s what we’ll be doing; ensuring the education programs continue and the students aren’t disadvantaged."

Won said she’s hoping the employer will call them back to the table with some proposals so the situation can be resolved quickly.

"We’ve been here for Northern Ontario since the beginning," she said. "Our staff has worked non-stop for Northern Ontario, for the students, for our physicians, for our communities. We will come back … in the meantime, we have to have a working environment that’s agreeable. How can we serve Northern Ontario if we don’t have working conditions that are acceptable?"