By A.D. Frat
Windsor-Essex and Chatham-Kent workers at Clear Medical Imaging have agreed to return to work after a near two-month strike.
Though the strike ended without an agreement, it showed the workers’ resilience to achieve their first collective agreement. Clear Medical Imaging, on the other hand, showed similarities with other executives at the lengths they’ll go to prevent bargaining in good faith, prolonging negotiations by offering inadequate terms.
Workers “soundly rejected” an offer from the company, with the union stating that on all the key issues of wages, benefits, working conditions and job security, Clear Medical Imaging came up short. These are the same issues which unions fought for in Canada’s public health system and which private healthcare workers are now standing up for.
Clear Medical Imaging is a clear case of a public service being privatized for no benefit to the public or worker, but for the benefit of private interests. In every case, neoliberal austerity measures resulting in privatization creates organizations that are more expensive, have worse working conditions, lower wages for workers, greater risks of patient data breaches and lower service quality due to separate organizational integrations.
The continued assault on Ontario healthcare is a core goal of the Ford government and other neoliberal politicians. It is a core goal of capitalists to undermine our healthcare system at every chance they can get. Our capitalist-aligned politicians are learning from our neighbours down south: defund the government service to the point of breaking it, use corporate media to loudly proclaim the ineffectiveness of government organizations to deliver services, create public acceptance for austerity measures, rinse and repeat.
The slow boil method that has been used by both Liberal and Progressive Conservative governments alike is what has brought us to this situation we are in now. We are paying up to triple for private healthcare, sapping more funding away from our public institutions all while healthcare workers in the private industry are getting lower than market wage packages and more workloads.
Clear Medical Imaging are in line with other owners and executives putting up stiff resistance to workers’ demands. 2024 was a year of strikebreaking and elongated strikes. Worker rights are continuously on the chopping block: this was seen with postal workers, rail workers and port workers to name a few. The tone is clear in Ottawa and Bay street to workers: shut up and keep working.
But workers refuse when we have bills to pay and loved ones depending on us. These delays in bargaining are a tried-and-true strategy of business to kick the can down the road. But how far can it go? Postal workers have been dictated to continue negotiations in May after their month-long strike was broken by Trudeau’s labour minister, and workers at Clear Medical Imaging will be going to arbitration in March to accomplish their first collective agreement with a private medical provider whose actions stalled negotiations.
Canada is becoming an increasingly difficult environment for workers, only time will tell to see how they respond.
[Photo: Unifor]
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