Ontario Public Servants Get 9.5% Pay Hike After Court Says Pay Cap Is Unconstitutional

Riders take a subway train on the Toronto Transit Commission station in downtown Toronto, on April 1, 2023. The Canadian Press/Cole Burston

Thousands of public servants in Ontario are getting the highest wage increase in over 10 years after a court ruled a law capping wage increases was unconstitutional.

The Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) says its bargaining team has successfully mediated a 9.5 percent increase over the next three years for 30,000 of its members. The increase includes a 1 percent increase for each year that was previously agreed upon.

“This government may think that their majority means they hold all the power. But this win is proof that when we build worker power and solidarity, workers have the power to fight for what they deserve,” union President JP Hornick said in the news release. “This is just the beginning. We will build on this win and take this energy to the next round of bargaining this year.”

The union told The Epoch Times in an email that negotiations took place twice in 2023 but were unsuccessful.

“When we were unsuccessful and unable to reach an agreement, the parties agreed to an arbitrated process. This final round of mediation occurred over the weekend of January 19, 2024.”

The negotiations began after a court found Bill 124 was unconstitutional. That law, from 2019, restricted salary increases for public employees to 1 percent each year for three years, according to the Canadian Press.

“OPS Unified negotiated a wage reopener clause in their last collective agreement in 2022 to ensure they would have the opportunity to renegotiate wage increase should Bill 124 be overturned,” OPSEU said in the email.

In November 2022, the Superior Court of Justice declared the legislation “unconstitutional.” The court said that it infringes on workers’ rights to collective bargaining and rights to freedom.

The Ontario government has since appealed that decision, saying that the court made “fundamental legal errors.”

The provincial government disagreed that the law interferes with collective rights to free and fair bargaining, and said that the court incorrectly applied the section of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

“He concluded that Bill 124 substantially interfered with the associational rights of employees based on the incorrect conclusion that the inability to achieve particular substantive outcomes is by itself a substantial interference with collective bargaining,” the provincial court document said.

“Accordingly, he failed to consider whether there was substantial interference with employees’ ability to associate to pursue workplace goals effectively, or to their ability to participate in meaningful, good faith consultation and negotiation.”

The documents say that the court misunderstood the law and thought that it interfered with employees’ rights to strike. However, the province says that Bill 124 only limits negotiations on the 1 percent raise but that other monetary and non-monetary negotiations can be held with Ontario unions.

Lawyers for the province say that the Ontario government put the law in place to help reduce the deficit.

OPSEU said the agreement also includes a new dispute resolution process that can be used to deal with “wage disparities” for other job classifications.

“Formalizing this new framework is significant as it creates a new mechanism for OPS Unified members in many job classes to push for the gains that they have long been fighting for,” the union news release said.

The OPSEU is not the first union to see a pay increase after Bill 124 was ruled unconstitutional.

In June 2022, Ontario nurses negotiated 3.75 percent and 2.5 percent increases on top of the 1 percent increase for workers including dietary aides, personal support workers, and registered practical nurses.

The Canadian Press contributed to this report.