The Ontario government has introduced Bill 135, Convenient Care at Home Act.
The Ontario government has introduced Bill 135, Convenient Care at Home Act. The Bill amends the Connecting Care Act, 2019 to establish the “Service Organization.”
On June 28, 2024 all 14 LIHNs/HCCSS agencies were merged into one Service Organization called OH @Home. The Service Organization is a corporation without share capital that is a subsidiary of Ontario Health and will operate as both a Crown agent and a health service provider.
The objective of this organization will include the provision of home and community care services to patients, the provision of placement management services and the provision of operational supports, including care co-ordination services, to health service providers and Ontario Health Teams.
The merger, however, will likely require the restructuring of bargaining units. The legislation indicates that the Public Sector Labour Relations Transition Act [PSLRTA] will be used for this merger. It is not yet clear what bargaining unit structure the government, or OH @Home favour regarding this restructuring, but the merger may well result in representation votes.
This reform will create uncertainty for HCCSS/OH @Home workers and fails to address the key problems in the home care sector. Unfortunately, the government indicates that they intend to maintain contracting out as the predominant form of home care delivery.
This is only the latest of many reforms of home care since the previous Progressive Conservative government introduced Community Care Access Centres 27 years ago and privatized large sections of home care through compulsory contracting out of home care delivery.
These many reforms failed to resolve the problems created by privatization and the lack of home care capacity that has bedeviled the system for many years. Likewise, this reform also fails to end the main problems of our home care system: privatization, lack of capacity, low wages and bad working conditions.
However, this reform does not directly privatize or cut HCCSS services further. That modest step is a victory given the current government’s orientation. But many problems and threats remain and the uncertainty about where this government will ultimately take home care remains.
CUPE will continue advocating to build a fully public home care system that provides fair wages and working conditions for all home care workers while providing the best home care to the people of Ontario!
What is PSLRTA?
The Public Sector Labour Relations act is the legislation that provides a mechanism to deal with mergers, amalgamations and restructurings in the municipal, school board, hospital sectors and HCCSS-initiated health services.
PSLRTA establishes certain rights for affected workers and sets a framework to determine the appropriate bargaining units in an amalgamated workplace and which union should represent the workers.
When workplaces covered by PSLRTA amalgamate, merge or restructure, the Ontario Labour Relations Board (“OLRB”) will, in consultation with the affected unions and employers, determine what bargaining units are appropriate in the new workplace and the voting process if no one union represents 80% of workers in the post merger bargaining unit and representation votes are to take place.
What happens to my Collective Agreement during a restructuring/merger?
During a restructuring/merger process under PSLRTA, workers covered by a collective agreement continue to be covered by that collective agreement. Rates of pay, benefits and working conditions continue to apply as they did prior to the vote. That’s the law.
When two or more unions represent employees before the representation vote, the collective agreements from these unions form a composite collective agreement after the vote. The composite collective agreement, along with the successful union’s seniority, grievance procedure, job posting, and layoff and recall language remain in effect until a new first collective agreement is negotiated between the employer and the successful union.