McMaster to Union: Other people live in crushing poverty, why shouldn't you?

HAMILTON, Oct 8 /CNW/ - The cleaning and maintenance staff at McMaster University have voted last night 80% to reject the latest offer from management.

The custodians and cleaners are the lowest paid staff at McMaster, earning just $15-$17/hr, and increasingly without benefits or pension. Most are women and many are single mothers. As McMaster's "working poor", some are already forced to resort to food banks to supplement their poverty-level wages and in a bitter twist of irony, will be doing so again this Thanksgiving weekend while their Employer is simultaneously demanding concessions at the bargaining table.

Initially citing the province's "0% + 0" wage freeze initiative for public sector employees, at the outset of negotiations the University demanded the employees "tow the line". The Union countered it is unfair to demand the lowest-paid workers subsidize the scheduled wage increases of every other (and higher paid) employee group during this same period of time. However, in an effort to avert a strike, the Union reluctantly agreed to the two year wage freeze, conditional on the University ensuring all other employee groups including administration do the same when their contracts expire.

The University refused.

McMaster then demanded $2,000,000 in cost savings over the next five years from this employee group, citing a private consultant's report that said such savings could be achieved by better reflecting the Ontario minimum wage paid by contract cleaning companies to its workers. Said SEIU Local 2 Chief Negotiator Ted Mansell, "When you strip away all their 'market forces' rhetoric, in essence McMaster is saying to its already lowest-paid workers 'other people live in crushing poverty, why shouldn't you?'"

Negotiations continued day and night for the past several weeks. The Union even offered to freeze all provisions of their Collective Agreement for the next five years and send the monetary issues to binding arbitration.

The University refused.

Said Union Chief Negotiator Ted Mansell "In the interests of the students and staff, binding arbitration is the most reasonable and sensible solution to averting a completely-preventable strike. By refusing binding arbitration, McMaster is essentially admitting their bargaining position is indefensible and instead, would actually prefer to have a massive workplace disruption forced upon the students. It is completely irresponsible and inexcusable."  

The Employer then switched gears and tabled modest wage increases, conditional however, on the employees paying back more than they receive with very deep concessions regarding WSIB/Sick Leave protections, vacation entitlements, and significant co-pays to their own benefit premiums, among other take aways. No other employee group has been asked to do the same.

"This will not be a strike about McMaster's poorest workers 'demanding more' to improve their current job ghetto - it's about the lowest-paid workers on campus fighting to merely hang on to their poverty-level wages as their $800 million dollar/year, publicly -funded employer continues to afford every other employee group their scheduled wage increases including senior admin. We have even helped this Employer realize enormous cost-savings at the bargaining table through attrition and other mutually-agreed cost-cutting measures, but like a glutton at the trough, they just keep on demanding more and more" said Mansell.

Mansell continued  "This historic struggle at McMaster is driven by the very essence of the corporate greed culture that has alarmingly become the new and disturbing mantra of McMaster President Patrick Deane's administration - the poor get poorer while the rich get richer. McMaster's insistence that its poverty-level workers subsidize the wage increases of every other employee group, including its senior administration, is a national disgrace and an absolute embarrassment to the entire Hamilton community."

The strike deadline is Wednesday October 13, 2010 at 1:00 am.

For further information:

Media Contact:

Ted Mansell. Executive Vice-President, SEIU Local 2 - [phone] or [phone] ext. 204

Christine Miller
416-576-5041 (c)