Open Letter

Robert Field, President, OPSSU

Dear Howard Hampton,
Thank you for your recent letter to me as an NDP member, extending an invitation to attend the upcoming 2004 Leader’s Dinner in Hamilton and to donate to the provincial NDP.
As President of the Ontario Public Service Staff Union, representing the front-line staff of OPSEU, I know how much time, money and effort many staff and OPSEU members have expended supporting the NDP in not only the Hamilton East by-election but in all recent general elections as well. So, it has saddened me to see that Party status has not yet returned all our OPSEU NDP Caucus bargaining unit brothers and sisters back to their jobs.
Rather, the Caucus has made every effort to exclude senior bargaining unit members, especially Union activists, from the new human resources (HR) plan. Experienced, senior staff who should have been recalled have seen their jobs posted, and then they have been denied at the interview stage.
The current plan that has thirteen managers/excluded and only nine members in the bargaining unit is a travesty. With eight NDP MPP’s, there should be eight Legislative Assistants plus research, communications and leader’s office. MPP staff positions should be OPSEU bargaining unit positions, not excluded out of convenience!
It is not enough to ratify a collective agreement covering nine staff out of twenty-two. Caucus must respect the seniority list and staff-up appropriately, with bargaining unit members.
The Ontario NDP should be a model progressive employer, sensitive to labour principles and workers’ rights. However, it appears to be far from that, and OPSSU has long experience of its own in that regard.
Until the Caucus proposes an appropriate HR plan to the OPSEU representatives, you will be asking me in vain for donations to the Party. Further, I am recommending to my membership and to the 100,000 members of OPSEU that PAC donations, and perhaps memberships, ought to be withdrawn unless fundamental change is made now in the way the NDP Caucus is organized and run.
In waning solidarity,
Robert Field, President, OPSSU