Interest arbitration is underway
Throughout the month of October, your negotiating team has been hard at work in interest arbitration with the employer and arbitrator Mia Norrie in order to achieve a first agreement for members at Emerald Hills and at Wescott.
Despite being one of the largest, most profitable companies in Canada’s seniors’ care industry, Chartwell has spent the past several years stalling the bargaining process by cancelling meetings, refusing to provide basic disclosures, offering only insulting wages to their employees, and rejecting proposals that compare to existing agreements at other unionized long-term care facilities.
As this process has drawn out, as the working conditions for staff have continued to deteriorate, and as the Chartwell executives have inflated their salaries and bonuses, this insult has only amplified. Members need agreements that compensate them fairly, acknowledge the risks inherent in their work during the pandemic, and protect their health and safety as well as the dignity of their work which is as essential to society as it is taken for granted by the employer.
In interest arbitration we are seeking to create an agreement that is equal to one that would have been achieved had our members had the ability to use the powerful action of a strike.
Members have conveyed first-hand to the arbitrator the immense hardships that members continue to endure in these post-pandemic years, as you continue to receive unfair compensation to work in a hazardous and chaotic environment for an employer who appears callously unconcerned for employee wellbeing.
This interest arbitration is an important and consequential process that will, once it is complete, yield binding first agreements. On October 31, arbitration continued with more witnesses and closing arguments. After we file our rebuttal briefs, the arbitrator will write her decisions and we hope to sign agreements by the end of the year.
Through this process, the fight continues for fair treatment and compensation that appropriately values members’ hard work, and at the end (which is in sight!) we will have first agreements in place.
AUPE NEGOTIATING TEAM
WESCOTT
Jingle Sicat
unitedtogether2022@yahoo.com
Auramae Pascual
a.aupe.member@outlook.com
Charesse Barredo
cw.aupe@yahoo.com
EMERALD HILLS
Teresa Shesky
780-240-6183 or sa2197@hotmail.com
Evi Cahyomaindana
evi_cahyo411@yahoo.ca
Kayleigh McCaskill
780-691-5808 or kayleighmccaskill95@hotmail.com
AUPE RESOURCE STAFF
Bill Rigutto Union Counsel
b.rigutto@aupe.org
David Malka D&A Organizer
d.malka@aupe.org
Merryn Edwards Negotiator
780-952-1951 or m.edwards@aupe.org
Kate Robinson Negotiator
k.robinson@aupe.org
Guy Quenneville Membership Services Officer
780-237-8253 or g.quenneville@aupe.org
Michelle Szalynski Organizer
403-634-8262 or m.szalynski@aupe.org
Communications
co@aupe.org