As the lockout of 147 workers continues, the executive director of the Canadian Mental Health Association Cochrane-Temiskaming wants them to see the latest contract offer.
Paul Jalbert is calling on the OPSEU bargaining unit to make that happen.
“The members out on the picket line haven’t voted on that offer,” he notes, “which includes a five-and-a-half-percent salary increase, wage increase over two years, that would be retroactive to April 1st of 2023. So that’s a three-percent increase in the first year, two-and-a-half-percent increase in the second.”
Jalbert says that raise would more than cover increased employee contributions to certain benefits, some of which are optional to individual workers.
This is also the first collective agreement since CMHA absorbed South Cochrane Addiction Services and Minto Counselling last year. Jalbert says some of those workers are benefiting from pay scale harmonization.
“So three percent and two-and-a-half percent is for everybody. But there are some other individuals that benefit greatly from this, ranging as high as over a 20% wage increase for some individuals.”
There’s a lot more detail in the audio of our interview with Paul Jalbert posted below.
