Protest continues, rally held downtown

Over 20 locally-based provincial government employees, represented by the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU), held a rally outside the provincial probation and parole office on Albert Street East over the noon hour Thursday.

"We're protesting the ongoing privatization of public service jobs," said Jeff Arbus, executive board member for OPSEU Region 6 and Local 613 president, speaking to SooToday.

OPSEU has stated Premier Kathleen Wynne's government has cut public service jobs across the province and awarded contracts for services to private sector operators, at much higher cost to provincial taxpayers, to provide services in a wide range of areas, from highway maintenance to information technology services.

"We think the public service delivers a better service than the private sector can at less cost, and that's what we're trying to tell the Wynne government," Arbus said.

"Every job lost in the public sector is a good-paying job lost, and in the North we really feel those lost jobs."

Arbus said examples include local and regional jobs lost in Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry fire fighting (and transferred elsewhere) and jobs cut at Sault Area Hospital.

"We believe the government is taking its orders from Bay Street (by awarding contracts to the private sector) and we say in response to their argument that they have no money (and need to eliminate the provincial deficit, partly through cutting public sector jobs and freezing wages) that their own Auditor General said they wasted $8.2 billion on the P3 model for hospitals in Ontario."

"They can reverse that, they can stop the P3 models, they can raise corporate taxes even just a small amount and they would have all the money they require (to cut the deficit)," Arbus said.

OPSEU's latest collective agreement with the province expired December 31, 2014, and the union has held rallies across the province for months, protesting job cuts, privatization of government services previously performed by OPSEU workers and a continuing wage freeze.

"We could have rallied outside any one of the ministries today but the point is these workers are trying to get a contract and the provincial government is putting every roadblock in front of them that's possible."

Talks currently going on between OPSEU and the province involve emergency services and the role they will play in the event of an OPSEU strike.

In early December, OPSEU's central unit voted 90 percent in favour of a strike action if necessary, in protest of the government's latest collective agreement offer.

(PHOTO: OPSEU employees at a rally held outside a provincial government office on Albert Street East, June 25, 2015. Darren Taylor/SooToday)