To the editor:
I want to thank Thunder Bay news for the consistent coverage of the ongoing Port Arthur Health Centre strike. The majority of your readers who commented on previous stories support the striking workers. If only the employer would also recognize and respect the valuable work of women, so that this strike can end.
For over two months now, the 65 striking workers, members of Unifor Local 229, have been seeking a new employment contract with a fair living wage and secure employment. It’s what any worker wants really, but this employer seems bent on making profits off the back of women workers and devaluing them in the process.
The situation at this workplace is so bad that when the Ontario minimum wage increased to $14 an hour in January, the wages for most workers at Port Arthur Health Centre increased. Meanwhile workers at similar facilities in comparable jobs already earn significantly above the minimum wage for their work.
Over 60 per cent of the Centre’s workers are casually employed and this includes employee who have worked consistent full-time hours for more than 15 years. Despite years of service, most of the workers experience not only low wages, but also no health benefits and no set schedule of working hours from one week to the next.
What is also disturbing is that the financial resources are there to pay a decent wage; the employer is just keen to fill its coffers at the expense of these women and their families. Low wages and a lack of job security are unfortunately all too common in female-dominated sectors.
Businesses like the Port Arthur Health Centre need to change labour practices that drive up women’s economic inequality and poverty and systematically diminish their work. The Port Arthur Health Centre’s approach in negotiations with Unifor serves to reinforce gender-based discrimination in the workplace.
I am asking members of the Thunder Bay community to show their support for women’s work.
Please join Unifor to ask the Port Arthur Health Centre to do the right thing and make a fair offer now that gives these workers the respect they deserve. Stand up for workers, and for women.
Jerry Dias
Unifor National President
