Ontario will repeal a wage-cap law on public sector workers that the Court of Appeal found unconstitutional Monday.
The law from Premier Doug Ford’s government — known as Bill 124 — capped salary increases for public sector workers at one per cent a year for three years.
A lower court struck it down as unconstitutional and the Appeal Court, in a 2-1 decision, largely upheld that decision, writing that the infringement couldn’t be justified.
“Because of the Act, organized public sector workers, many of whom are women, racialized and/or low-income earners, have lost the ability to negotiate for better compensation or even better work conditions that do not have a monetary value,” the court wrote in its majority opinion.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
“Because of the Act, organized public sector workers, many of whom are women, racialized and/or low-income earners, have lost the ability to negotiate for better compensation or even better work conditions that do not have a monetary value,” the court wrote in its majority opinion.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice C. William Hourigan wrote that the evidence showed very real economic reasons for imposing wage restraint, and that the government did so instead of cutting services or jobs.
The union representing the province’s public elementary teachers said the government never should have appealed the decision in the first place, as it “wasted” taxpayer dollars and undermined their recent contract negotiations.
“Let the court’s ruling be a lesson for the Ford government to never circumvent bargaining or trample on workers’ democratic rights again,” the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario wrote.
Several hospitals have told a legislative committee conducting pre-budget hearings that the Bill 124 reopener arbitration rulings are straining their budgets, though the government has committed to reimbursing them.
“Bill 124 settlements are driving hospitals into extraordinary cash flow difficulties, threatening our financial viability and forcing delay of critical capital purchases,” Sherri McCullough, board chair of Kingston Health Sciences Centre, told the committee last month.
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