Ontario Construction News staff writer
The union representing Ontario’s striking government engineers has filed a labour complaint against the Ford government, alleging that members who stopped work on Highway 413 and the Bradford Bypass are being barred from returning to their jobs.
“Instead of focussing on bargaining, and delivering on Ontario’s infrastructure priorities, Treasury Board negotiators have chosen to attack our members and their rights,” the Professional Engineers Government of Ontario (PEGO) wrote on X on Saturday. “PEGO experts would rather focus on getting a fair deal and serving Ontarians.”
The Professional Engineers Government of Ontario (PEGO) announced last week that key technical engineers were reassigned from significant infrastructure projects as part of an ongoing contract dispute.
Government officials say workers who walked off the job cannot return until they receive provincial approval or a new collective agreement is signed. An email sent to all union members warns that any work stoppage would lead to similar restrictions.
However, PEGO argues that the restriction on returning to work is a violation of Ontario’s labour laws.
“While the government hasn’t explicitly called it a ‘lockout,’ it certainly feels that way to our members,” said PEGO president Nihar Bhatt. “They’ve been informed that their only path back to work is contingent upon the government’s decision, which we believe contravenes the Labour Relations Act.” The union is filing a complaint with the Ontario Labour Relations Board, asserting that this situation amounts to an unlawful lockout.
A spokesperson for the Treasury Board, which oversees negotiations for the government, characterized the actions as standard protocol told Global News that employees represented by PEGO who have fully withdrawn their services have been “reminded of their employment terms and conditions.
“Like any employee who refuses to work, those from PEGO will not receive pay. This is common practice to ensure operational needs are met,” the spokesperson is quoted as saying.
During a mediation session Oct. 18, Treasury Board representatives presented an unchanged offer that does not address the resourcing challenges within the Ontario Public Service (OPS) to support infrastructure plans.
“The intransigence of Treasury Board negotiators continues to be frustrating and inexplicable to our members,” Bhatt said. “Their latest proposal runs directly counter to the needs of Ontario’s infrastructure development and maintenance agenda.”
The difference between PEGO and the Treasury Board in negotiations represents a small fraction of Ontario’s annual engineering spending of $1 billion and an even smaller fraction of the $20 billion spent on overall infrastructure, Bhatt said in a news release, adding the union is concerned about the challenge Ontario faces in recruiting and retaining expert engineering and surveying staff. Vacancies could impact key priorities, including Highway 413 and the Bradford Bypass—both designated as priority construction projects.
“The latest proposal from Treasury Board negotiators is not getting us any closer to a fair deal,” Bhatt warned. “It ignores the pleas of OPS engineering and surveying managers for adequate resources and the evidence showing that Ontario will continue to lose highly skilled engineers and surveyors to better-paying opportunities with other levels of government or in the private sector.”
I have little sympathy for them. Government unions are an extortion racket. By threatening and executing strikes at critical moments, that exploit the election process, they often extract rents far in excess of what is reasonable.
Hey Norm,
It must be hard to be heard most days with your head so far up your ass.
The government will spend billions contracting out work to save a million in salaries. Without the oversight of the government engineers, including writing the codes which infrastructure is built to, everything would fall apart.
Not to mention protecting water and air, reviewing and approving permits, and generally driving the economy through moving building and resource extraction projects forward.
Good points, but those Unions aren’t angels either. Constantly whining about everything. But, you’re right about contracting out for Billions to save millions.
PEGO has existed since 1994. Not once has it gone on strike or partaken in any job action.
Now it has gotten so bad that government priorities cannot be delivered. The argument literally the government can’t deliver without paying engineers more, so that the many MANY unfilled positions can be filled. They can’t be filled when someone can get $20-30k more elsewhere, even at a municipality.
Trying to deliver what the government itself calls an “ambitious” infrastructure agenda when the union is already down to a skeleton crew is ridiculous. The union came into bargaining looking to find mutual interests, with numbers to prove that investing in the engineers and surveyors actually saves money and returns big dividends in the long-term with better oversight of projects, better quality control, less costly change orders in design and construction, but the Treasury Board is only interested in suppressing wages.