SUDBURY – United Steelworkers (USW) Local 6500 in Sudbury is calling for Ontario’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board to engage in the good-faith negotiations needed to bring an end to a month-long labour dispute with its 3,600 employees and to restore services desperately needed by injured workers and surviving spouses of workers killed on the job.
“So many vulnerable workers and families are being affected as this dispute drags on, but the cases that hit me the hardest are the widows who lost their husbands to occupational disease,” said Sean Staddon, a WSIB worker representative with the 2,900-member USW Local 6500.
“There are too many widows who have to fight, who have to pursue WSIB claims for benefits they are owed, and these claims take a long time to adjudicate,” Staddon said. “And now their access to justice is being prolonged even further. It affects their living standards and their well-being. They’re looking for some sense of closure, of justice, but that’s being denied.”
The WSIB workers, members of the Ontario Compensation Employees Union, also known as Local 1750 of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), have been on strike since May 22. The labour dispute is delaying care for injured workers, increasing a serious claims backlog, and has completely stalled the appeals process for workers and surviving family members seeking benefits, the USW notes.
Given that the WSIB has awarded a whopping $4 billion in surplus funds to employers in the last three years, it’s reasonable for the agency’s employees to expect a meaningful resolution to their serious, longstanding concerns, said Ray Hammond, USW Local 6500 President.
“While giving billions to corporations that are already making huge profits, the WSIB failed to ensure its workers’ wages kept pace with inflation, and failed to adequately address critical issues such as workloads, stress and mental health challenges. It should not be surprising that WSIB workers are on picket lines for the first time in the agency’s history,” Hammond said.
“The failure of the WSIB to offer CUPE Local 1750 a fair contract negatively affects the injured members of our union who deserve to have their claims and appeals processed in a timely manner. It also affects injured workers and families across the province,” he added.
“It’s high time for the WSIB to negotiate a fair contract with its employees and to improve services to injures workers and their families.”
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