Category Archives: cupe national

Trans-Pacific trade deal will hurt Canadian health care–CUPE

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As Canada prepares to sign the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPPA) report confirms the massive deal will severely weaken our public health care system.

The far-reaching TPP covers 12 countries that represent 40 per cent of global trade (Canada, Chile, Mexico, Peru, the United States, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Brunei, Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysia). The deal will likely be signed on February 4, while ratification could take up to two years.

Combined with reports the TPP will cost Canada 58,000 jobs, it’s another reason Canada should not be signing or ratifying the deal.

The CCPA report finds the TPP will:

  • make it more difficult and expensive for Canadian governments to establish new public health programs, including pharmacare,
  • undermine health regulation, and
  • obstruct efforts to renew and expand public health care in the face of new challenges.

US-style patent protections will mean higher drug costs

By caving to US corporate demands for longer pharmaceutical patent protections, Canada has negotiated a deal that will see prescription drug costs increase by $636 million annually once the TPP comes into force. This will be an added financial burden for public health care, employer benefit programs and other private insurers, as well as individuals. If the Canadian health care system has to shoulder increased drug costs, they may have to cut health care services and jobs.

The TPP’s impact on drug costs will be felt most acutely in developing countries, as longer patents block the entry of lower-priced generic drugs. This limits access to life-saving medicines. The international humanitarian medical organization Médecins Sans Frontières has highlighted how competition between generic drug makers dramatically drove down the costs of HIV medications, helping expand treatment to six million people in the developing world.

Foreign investor protections that promote privatization

The TPP gives foreign investors the right to sue governments if they feel a policy decision limits their profits. This system, called investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), bypasses Canadian courts in favour of secretive, pro-investor tribunals that award enormous sums of money at a government’s expense. A recent example is Eli Lilly’s $500-million NAFTA claim against Canada.

These investor rights rules cost Canadian taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. They also lock in privatization and deregulation. For example, when private insurers already provide coverage for prescription drugs, like in Canada, an ISDS claim would make it very expensive if the government to decide to bring this coverage into the public system.

The TPP’s ISDS rules would make it next to impossible to create a public national prescription drug program. It would also make it prohibitively expensive to bring health care support services like laundry, IT or food services back into the public domain, even if the private contract has failed.

Attacking Canada’s pride

Canadians are proud of their health care system. Trade deals like the TPP, CETA and the Trade in Services Agreement are dangerous to our public health care. As the CCPA report concludes, the TPP is the worst of all worlds. It incorporates problems from previous trade agreements, and introduces new threats to Medicare.

Source: Trans-Pacific trade deal will hurt Canadian health care | Canadian Union of Public Employees

Legal brief: How did the court decide the sentence of a manager found guilty of criminal negligence?

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By now, most CUPE activists have heard the news that Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice sentenced Vadim Kazenelson to three and a half years in jail for his criminal negligence that led to the death of four workers, and terrible injuries to another.

Kazenelson is the first person sentenced to serve time in jail since the federal government passed Bill C-45, also known as the Westray bill, in March 2004.

What activists may not know is how the court goes about deciding Kazenelson’s fate in this case.

Let’s review the details:

Kazenelson was the project manager on a balcony restoration project at two high-rise apartment towers in Toronto for Metron Construction Inc. He was in charge of the work, and the safety of the workers.

On Christmas Eve of 2009, Metron was on a tight deadline. A $50,000 bonus was on the line to finish the work that year. Kazenelson was under pressure to finish the work. Kazenelson knew that he was sending six workers to work on a hanging platform with only two lifelines. The platform broke and five workers fell. Four of them died.

Kazenelson was convicted in June 2015 of four counts of criminal negligence causing death and one count of criminal negligence causing bodily harm.

When the time came for sentencing, here’s what the judge had to consider:

Kazenelson’s lawyer tried to argue that because the workers knew the risks, and because they weren’t ordered to work without lifelines, he should get a short sentence. The judge didn’t buy it. In his decision, the judge noted that making a manager ‘less guilty’ because the workers knew the risk, or weren’t overtly ordered to do risky work “would ignore the reality that a worker’s acceptance of dangerous working conditions is not always a truly voluntary choice.”

The judge also understood that it is the responsibility of management to make sure that workers go home safe. Section 217.1 of the Criminal Code (created by Bill C-45) says everyone who undertakes, or has the authority, to direct how a worker does their work is under a legal duty “to take reasonable steps to prevent bodily harm to that person, or any other person, arising from that work.”

This section of the law means that management must take all the steps that a person who knows the risk and how to reduce it would take. Kazenelson had taken the working at heights training offered by the Ontario government, so he knew the risks, and what kind of steps would reduce the risk.

The judge sentenced Kazenelson to three and a half years because he wanted to make clear that people in positions of authority have to take all reasonable steps to make sure that workers go home safe at the end of the day.

While the Criminal Code establishes sentences of up to life in prison from criminal negligence causing death, it is very rare for a first offender like Kazenelson, who is otherwise not of a criminal character, to get such a long sentence. The judge applied the rule that similar offences should get similar sentences, and looked at sentences for similar criminal negligence cases. As a result he decided that a jail sentence of three and a half years was necessary to show sufficient “denunciation and general deterrence” meaning he wanted to send a message to other managers in hope of deterring them from doing the same thing.

Source: Legal brief: How did the court decide the sentence of a manager found guilty of criminal negligence? | Canadian Union of Public Employees

Liberals shouldn’t sign Harper’s TPP deal

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The massive Trans-Pacific Partnership puts corporations, not Canadians, first and the federal Liberal government should not sign it.

Representatives of the 12 countries involved in the TPP are gathering in New Zealand Feb. 4 to sign the far-reaching treaty.

The deal was reached in the dying days of the Harper Conservative government and during a federal election. The full text was only made public in November. The new government is still analyzing the 6,000-page text and has yet to carry out an economic impact assessment. So why the rush to sign?

“You or I would never sign a contract without reading the fine print,” said CUPE National President Mark Hancock. “But that’s exactly what the Liberals are about to do. It’s a serious mistake that will have consequences for decades to come.”

What we already know about the TPP is bad news.

The TPP gives new rights to the world’s richest corporations, while workers and the environment lose ground. The deal supports privatization, will drive down wages, and increases the cost of health care and education. A recent study shows Canada will lose at least 58,000 jobs in the first decade under the TPP.

Independent analysis confirms the TPP is not about helping Canadian exports – 97 per cent of our exports to TPP countries are already duty-free.

The TPP extends the length of patents on prescription drugs – a move that could cost our health care system up to $630 million a year, and is a major roadblock to a universal national prescription drug program. The TPP’s longer and stricter copyright protections could mean higher costs for schools, universities and libraries.

The TPP’s investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system will let foreign corporations sue governments if a law or regulation interferes with their investments – and profits. Under these NAFTA-style rules, Canada is already the most-sued developed country.

“Governments, not corporations, should set our country’s laws and policies. The TPP stands in the way of immediate and bold action on climate change,” said CUPE National Secretary-Treasurer Charles Fleury.

The Harper government tried to buy its way around some of the deal’s consequences, promising billions in compensation for auto parts makers, as well as dairy, egg and chicken farmers. And the full social and economic costs of the TPP are only now being tallied.

“The TPP is a corporate rights deal. It rewrites laws and regulations in the interests of big business, at the expense of citizens and the environment,” said Hancock. “Canada should not sign this dangerous deal.”

Source: Liberals shouldn’t sign Harper’s TPP deal

National Survey on Balancing Work, Family and Caregiving | Canadian Union of Public Employees

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To all CUPE members,

Are you a caregiver to an aging family member? Do you know any other CUPE members who provide care for a relative while holding down a job?

Caregiving is especially taxing when you are also engaged in paid employment. It becomes a balancing act that often results in higher levels of work-life conflict, as well as emotional and physical strain.

CUPE advocates for a healthy workplace and evidence based policies. These pieces all come together in the National Survey on Balancing Work, Family and Caregiving currently being undertaken on behalf of the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA) by Dr. Linda Duxbury, Professor at the Sprott School of Business at Carleton, University in Ottawa.

Dr. Duxbury is a Canadian expert in the field of work-life balance and we are pleased to be able to assist her with this research effort.

This is your opportunity to contribute to research that aims to increase awareness at both public policy and employer level of the challenges faced by employed caregivers.

We would encourage you to participate and share this survey with CUPE members in your local.

You can read more about the research project here.

As a person who is employed and with family caregiver responsibilities, your participation will help to provide much needed evidence on this developing topic. In addition, the researchers have agreed to share the key findings from our members with CUPE. Your individual response will be kept in strict confidence. Only summary results will be published.

For more information please contact Margot Young at myoung@cupe.ca.

Source: National Survey on Balancing Work, Family and Caregiving | Canadian Union of Public Employees

37-day strike in view for 8,000 City of Montreal workers

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The 8,000 white-collar workers of the City of Montreal will be on a rotating strike for 36 days from January 25 to February 29. The various services, offices and boroughs of the city will be affected in turn. This wave will culminate in a general strike day on March 1, the deadline for the payment of municipal taxes. In addition, the white collars will not do any overtime work during this period. However, they will provide all essential services prescribed by law.

With this strike, they are protesting the Coderre administration’s determination to open the floodgates to subcontracting and privatization. They want to raise awareness that this indefensible offensive against internal expertise persists although they have been without a collective agreement for more than four years.

“The work of the Charbonneau Commission and their final report has demonstrated repeatedly that the fight against collusion is impossible without a strong, healthy public service. Instead, the white collars find themselves in the midst of an all-out war with the Coderre administration. The administration wants to eliminate any checks on subcontracting and to reduce the total compensation of white-collar workers by 12 to 14%. We will therefore defend Montreal’s internal expertise with all our might, as long as the Coderre administration refuses to listen to reason,” said Alain Fugère, president of the Island of Montréal white-collar union (CUPE 429).

“The precise words of Recommendation 25 of the Charbonneau Comission are: Internal expertise is an effective bulwark against collusion. Mayor Coderre was elected on the promise that he would strengthen that internal expertise. We want him to explain to Montrealers why he has changed his mind,” added the union president.

Specifically, the City wants to contract out all the work performed by a permanent employee in each of the following sectors: logistics of the purchase and distribution of clothing; information technology; printing; sports and recreation; post offices; parking officers; all or part of the activities already under contract (libraries and public works); and finally, all work carried out by auxiliary workers.

The detailed calendar of the rotating strike is available at http://bit.ly/1Oy6Yq7

With more than 110,000 members in Quebec, CUPE represents about 70% of the province’s municipal employees, who account for 31,000 of the union’s members.

Source: 37-day strike in view for 8,000 City of Montreal workers | Canadian Union of Public Employees