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YEU 10TH TRIENNIAL CONVENTION ϮϬϮϯ Vice President of Communities Tony Thomas
I respectfully present my report for the past two- year mandate as YEU Vice President of Communities. Greetings to all the delegates attending the 2023 Yukon Employees Union Triennial Convention, I hope you enjoy your convention these next few days. As with life, as you get older time seems to go by quickly and this cycle seemed to have whizzed right by only having a 2-year mandate we had to prioritize what the executive team thought was achievable during this term. Of course, there was the post covid apocalypse that we all came through but also all the myriad of issues that was happening with workers that still had to be settled and resolved. There was a lot of abuse by the employer either through not being compensated for work not paying workers acting pay for doing TA (temporary assignment) positions, unsafe work conditions and burn out were amongst the issues we were finding out 1-2 years later. So even though the covid shutdown had passed YEU is still dealing with the ramifications of the past. The next all-encompassing issue was negotiating a new collective agreement with the Yukon Government. It was an exercise of endurance. I have sat on bargaining teams before this role. I have to say the Yukon government were like soulless vampires sucking out the life of our members after our members went through 2 years of covid. It took a near strike for YG to be serious with their wage offer. In YG’s offer, not one of their 3-year offers even reached 2% a year. Can you believe that in today’s economy and rising inflation? Looking around the country this wasn’t uncommon, municipal, provincial/territorial and the federal government were also playing the same game walking to the edge of the cliff before they all came to a 11:59pm agreement to avoid a strike. In the meantime, after workers worked through the pandemic putting their health at risk along with their loved ones, the employer gave us all the middle finger saying, “Fuck you thanks” and offering its workers an extremely insulting offer of 1.8% in year 1 and the subsequent 2 years didn’t even come to 4% in total for the duration of the contract. The next move was to throw a bunch of money at the nurses but not acknowledging other departments that also worked through the pandemic and had to work in nursing stations and go into hospitals. I was extremely pissed off when Steve, Justin, and our negotiator Erna Post and I did a bargaining tour around the territory and 2 separate zoom meetings to hear nurses say that they “don’t care about the electricians, truck drivers or property management workers”. I mean who plows the runway for a medivac, if you have heating issues, electrical issues, you’re calling property management to fix your building or Highways and Public works to keep our roads safe, to say these people don’t matter because they don’t hold a degree left me cold. In the end, we’re all one union and no one member is more or less important than anyone else. Solidarity isn’t just a word, it’s an equalizer. And what did the nurses get in the end? Because they insisted on negotiating outside the bargaining table, they got bonuses, and they are fully taxed and it’s non-pensionable. Did the money solve the crisis like Minister McPhee said it would? Nope! Just look at all the health center closures throughout the Yukon. Next time, work with us to not only get the money, but to also get respect, safe working conditions, an end to working alone and everything else that we can bring to the table when we work together.