THUNDER BAY -- A trailer outside of the Thunder Bay Correctional Centre was packed with as many officers as could fit to hear the terms of an eleventh-hour labour deal no one expected would come through.
The strike slated for the day's end had been averted and they will never be in that position again.
After more than a year without a contract, the union representing 160 local corrections workers amid 6,000 across the province was preparing to order its members off the job. Ontario Public Service Employees Union Local 708 president Shawn Bradshaw was as surprised as anyone to wake up Saturday morning to news that business would immediately return to normal.
"Everybody seems sort of excited," Bradshaw said.
"We woke up this morning, planning to walk our workers out at midnight tonight and all of a sudden, there's a deal on the table and we don't even get to vote on it. We're just going to arbitration and it's done."
OPSEU members won't vote on the deal because the province has committed to recognize corrections work among essential services. Workers gave up their right to strike and their collective bargaining will be treated similarly to police officers, automatically reverted to arbitration rather than negotiation.
Aside from making corrections officers essential service workers, the deal OPSEU signed with Ontario is similar to the one 67 per cent of union members rejected on Dec. 10.
Workers will endure a third straight year of frozen wages for 2015 and be paid a lump sum equivalent to 1.4 per cent of annual salaries for 2016.
Within 60 days, OPSEU and the province will appear before an arbitrator, who will decide salary increases for 2017 and 2018. Bradshaw expects that process will result in at least a 1.4 per cent increase annually.
"I'm hoping we're going to see our wages basically bumped up because we're one of the lower paying correctional services in Canada and we see the highest rates of violence against our officers," Bradshaw said.
"They'd given us a salary progression freeze so staff weren't moving up within their classification for pay... We felt it was completely unreasonable when we're competing for retention against other services like the OPP where, after three years you're making almost $100,000.
"In corrections, after three years, you're making about $50,000."
