Posts published in April 2026

Members of CUPE 47 have delivered an overwhelming strike mandate, with nearly 90% voting in favour of strike action. CUPE 47 represents City of Saskatoon workers at the water and wastewater treatment plants who provide vital services, including water treatment and metering, protecting drinking water, and ensuring wastewater is treated safely to protect the environment – services critical to the daily life of more than one-third of Saskatchewan’s residents.

CUPE 47 has faced a difficult round of bargaining with the City of Saskatoon. Several key issues remain outstanding, including proposals that would roll back language and force concessions on workers. CUPE 47 filed for impasse with the Ministry of Labour Relations and Workplace Safety on March 19, 2026.

“Our members are united and standing together,” said Susan Dobrowney, CUPE 47 president. “At a time when the cost of living continues to rise, the city is asking our members – who protect water quality and public health every day – to accept less. That’s not acceptable.”

CUPE Saskatchewan president Kent Peterson said the strike mandate sends a clear message.

“Reliable water and wastewater services depend on experienced, trained workers,” said Peterson. “This strong mandate shows our members are serious about securing a fair agreement that respects their work and the services they provide.”

Dobrowney emphasized that CUPE 47 remains committed to reaching an agreement.

“We are ready and willing to conclude bargaining,” she said. “Our goal is simple: a fair and equitable agreement that respects our members and supports the safe, reliable delivery of public services.”

Mediation dates are set for May 12 and 13. Currently, CUPE 47 is not in a legal strike position.

The Ford government must fund hospitals at their real costs to protect patient care from deteriorating. 

“The government is choking hospitals of funding and forcing deep staff cuts. Its self-aggrandizing advertising campaign would have covered the deficit at the Ottawa Hospital. The private jet for the premier would cover the deficit of the Elizabeth Bruyere,” said Michael Hurley, president of CUPE’s Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, OCHU-CUPE, which represents 45,000 staff in hospitals and long-term care. “Meanwhile, patients line hallways and wait, anxious in pain, months for surgeries. It is time for the Ford government to flow significant funding to the hospitals and protect patient services.”

The province announced funding of up to 4% for hospitals for 2026-27, but the union points out that hospitals need 6% annual increments just to provide services at their current level.

Most hospitals have significant deficits and this is causing them to eliminate thousands of positions, threatening access and quality, while lengthening wait-times, noted Hurley

“There is money available that could stop the hospital cuts immediately. Hospitals are cutting positions even as rising patient volumes and insufficient staffing levels doom patients to longer waits and staff to impossible workloads” said Sharon Richer, secretary-treasurer of OCHU-CUPE. “To provide better patient care, hospitals should be ramping up recruitment. But the primary consideration here is to reduce fiscal deficits, which have ballooned due to government underfunding.”

In April, two major hospitals announced nearly 700 layoffs cumulatively in the face of budget deficits. The Ottawa Hospital is cutting 400 jobs (predominantly nurses and PSWs) while the London Health Sciences is eliminating 288 nursing positions. These cuts come on the heels of a wave of layoffs in hospitals across the province, including 55 at Bruyere Health.

In surveys conducted by CUPE at hospitals implementing job cuts, staff have expressed concerns about worsening working conditions and the concomitant impact on patient care:

• “The public should know that hospitals are no longer safe. Lack of appropriate staffing makes it difficult to provide the care we desperately want to provide.”
• “The job cuts will cause increase in wait times. Job satisfaction will continue to decline. Patients will suffer the consequences. This continues to make the workplace unsafe and increases risks around violence.”

“The average ER patient in Ontario is currently waiting nearly 19 hours for admission due to a shortfall in staffing and capacity,” Hurley said. “Hospitals fail to admit 71% of these patients on time within the eight-hour target. 2,000 are on hospital stretchers waiting for beds. 200,000 people are waiting for surgeries. You would think that the government would be doing everything possible to retain and recruit staff.”

The union is calling for stable, multi-year funding for hospitals. While the government has failed to increase funding to match costs, the funding process is unpredictable and destabilizing.

CUPE Ontario’s Health Care Workers Coordinating Committee, HCWCC, held a round table discussion with MPPs at Queen’s Park today. The discussions focused on the challenges facing long-term care and retirement home workers in Ontario.

The Covid-19 pandemic shone a light on Ontario’s long-term care and retirement home sector in a way that nothing else was able to before. The clear pitfalls of understaffing, lack of necessary resources, and health and safety concerns which unions have been trying to warn against for years, contributed to the preventable deaths of thousands of Ontario seniors. The interim recommendations from Ontario’s long-term care COVID-19 commission strongly suggest that the conditions of work for staff are closely tied to the conditions of care for residents. In response, the provincial government has made overtures to increase investments in the sector.  

Some of these supports, like the 4 hour per day minimum standard for care, are steps in the right direction being held back by lack of funding and other essential resources. Others, such as the creation of the Health and Supportive Care Providers Oversight Authority, HSCPOA, are going to act as a hinderance to reaching staffing objectives in the sector. Worse still, we see more public funding landing in the hands of private sector providers whose interests are more concerned with turning a profit than providing the level of care our seniors deserve.   

Increases in private delivery in long-term care and retirement homes in Ontario are leading to worsening healthcare outcomes, eroding working conditions, and increases in health and safety related issues in our sector. Government programs directed at addressing some of these issues often miss the mark, and in some cases pose additional barriers to workers in the field. Lawmakers should be working with unions, workers, and other relevant stakeholders when developing programs meant to tackle these issues, and work to expand and invest in public delivery services to ensure the highest level of support for seniors and workers alike. 

The HCWCC will be out in communities throughout the summer collecting signatures for the support our care campaign, aimed at producing worker-led solutions to the challenges in the long-term care and retirement home sector.