The bargaining of our next contract has already started. Local Demand Setting Surveys are being distributed to members. These surveys are available from your Steward or you can find them in the plastic holders on our Local 270 Bulletin Boards in the Garden City Tower.
Please complete this survey and return your top ten Local Demands to your Steward, or nearest Steward, by May 23rd. Our Local Demand Setting Meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, May 30th, in the 2nd floor Learning Centre, Garden City Tower in St. Catharines, starting at 4:30 pm. We will vote for our top five Local Demands and elect Local 270 Delegates to the June 9th Regional Bargaining meeting.
This will likely be a very difficult round of negotiations. Please consider very carefully what you want, and what you are willing to do to achieve a successful contract.
I’m often asked if we will “Walk” or go on Strike again. The answer is we try to bargaining a contract, not a strike. However, the members ultimately decide if a Strike mandate is needed to help negotiate a settlement. I look forward to talking with you at our Local Demand Setting meeting.
The Ontario and Federal budgets agree on one thing. Public servants, and our pension plans, will be targeted to reduce deficits.
Public servants did not create the deficit. It was Wall Street and Bay Street that got us into this financial mess. However, bankers get massive bail outs from us Taxpayers, and we get the bill!! Sounds fair…right??
Clearly, it’s going to be a very difficult year to bargain a new contract. You’ve already been told to take a pay freeze for at least two years, or it will be legislated. That’s the employer’s attitude before we even start to bargain.
Therefore, we will need to pull together this year to resist this all out assault on public service.
The Oct. 6th Provincial election is fast approaching. Your Local 270 Executive encourages members to vote.
We have the unique opportunity in the Ontario Public Service of electing our ultimate bosses. Therefore, when you vote please consider who is the best candidate / party to work for as an employer.
The Executive of Local 270 met in Sept. and supported my decision to volunteer for the campaign to elect Kim Craitor in Niagara Falls. Brother Kim is a labour friendly candidate. He was President of the Niagara Falls Labour Council, and has helped our Local members over many years. I want to thank my Local Executive for their support.
I’m also supporting the campaign of Jim Bradley in my home riding of St. Catharines, as he has helped our members over many years too.
I feel it’s very important to support our political friends at election time. The anti-labour policies of some candidates are very scary. It’s in our interest to elect labour friendly candidates.
After being, again, somewhat dissatisfied with the web publishing tool I was using for the past year, I have decided to try yet another tool.
This time the site is being managed using the WordPress software. I’ve been using it for my personal blog for several months and found it to be fairly easy to use, flexible and highly visible to Google searches. So we’ll give ti a whirl and see how things turn out. Converting over the old site was fairly painless so we’re off to good start. Feel free to use the email subscription and all new updates will be mailed to your favourite in-box.
Chris J. Paxton
Webmaster OPSEU Local 270
It has been 100 years since OPSEU was first established in 1911 as the Civil Service Association of Ontario (CSAO). In celebration of this centennial anniversary OPSEU had our biggest Convention ever from April 6th to 9th, 2011. Over 2000 OPSEU members came together at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Local 270 members elected to attend this Convention were Dan McKnight, Daniel Saint-Laurent, Joy Leonard, Serge Valcourt, and Brian Toner.
The schedule was packed with great speakers and events. Our Convention agenda also included debates on union policies, campaigns to promote strong public services, and the election of our President & 1st VP / Treasurer VP.
Warren (Smokey) Thomas was elected for a third term as OPSEU President. Eduardo (Eddy) Almeida was elected as OPSEU’s new 1st Vice-President / Treasurer. Eddy is a Board Member from our Region of OPSEU (Region 2).
Best wishes to Smokey & Eddie as they lead us into OPSEU’s next 100 years.
Regards,
Dan McKnight
President
OPSEU Local 270
St. Catharines Weather