Over six challenging days of bargaining from late January through early April, your Welltower Independent Living employers rejected most of your union's substantial non-monetary proposals. They're fighting us on nearly everything – even refusing to agree to things that are already required by law.

Your bargaining committee is extremely frustrated and disappointed at your employers' uncooperative, adversarial approach.

Discussions so far have focussed on non-monetary proposals (basically anything that doesn't involve money). We have agreed on some minor proposals on collective agreement formatting, word definitions, the arbitration process, maternity leave, occupational health and safety, and the harassment and bullying complaint process, among others. However, the employers have so far refused to agree on almost all non-monetary proposals that are more major or more significant to employees.

Here are some of the proposals our union proposed which your employers have rejected:

• Creating better work-life balance, with more certainty and employee say over scheduling ‑ including seniority-based shift picks when there's a significant schedule change, making work on consecutive days a contract term for full-time employees (currently a practice the Employers could change), allowing for up to one week of vacation carryover, and ending the vacation selection process before the start of the vacation year;
• Protecting employees' work from being done by excluded managers or volunteers;
• Providing better, fairer access to work opportunities by emailing out job postings, considering seniority in initial job selection scoring (currently only a tiebreaker), offering advance overtime to all eligible employees based on seniority (as opposed to only those on shift), and creating as many full-time positions as possible (currently only in The Dorchester agreement);
• Strengthening employees' rights around disciplinary documents on file, steward representation, and workload concerns;
• Protecting new employees with a proper test for rejection on probation; and
• Standing up for casual employees by providing casual seniority lists, and refining the casual call-out process, including language in case an electronic web/app call-out system is reintroduced.

While less significant proposals, your employers have also rejected display of a 'union shop' card at the worksites and refused language to provide information to the Union before bargaining that the Labour Relations Code caselaw says it must. You'll recall that we had to file an unfair labour practices complaint and go to mediation to get employee contact information, job descriptions, and work schedules. It all adds up to a frustrating – and frankly disrespectful – approach from your employers.

And we haven't even started discussing wages, benefits, or other monetary issues yet.

We expect to exchange monetary proposals with the employers on Monday, April 29^th and respond to one another's proposals on Tuesday, April 30^th. We will provide another update after April 30^th.

Given the employers' stance so far, we are anticipating a fight to win the equitable wages and fair increases that you've demanded and that you deserve. Your bargaining committee met with union campaigns, communications, and organizing staff this week to keep planning a campaign for a fair contract. You can expect to hear more about our contract campaign in the coming weeks.

Please speak with a worksite member of your bargaining committee if you have any questions or concerns.

In solidarity,

Lily Idler, Bargaining Committee Member (The Dorchester)
Heather McKay, Bargaining Committee Member (The Dorchester)
Chrisely Enriquez, Bargaining Committee Member (Parkwood Manor)
Dana Hussey, Bargaining Committee Member (Parkwood Manor)
Holley Gabara, Bargaining Committee Member (Sunwood)
Cherie Wright, Bargaining Committee Member (Sunwood)
Ryan Stewart, Staff Representative, Negotiations Department

Download PDF of bulletin here

UWU/MoveUP