The president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) joined striking healthcare workers on the picket line in Owen Sound this week.
OPSEU President J.P. Hornick was in the city Thursday and joined members of the union’s local 276 chapter — nurses, pharmacists, dietitians and other medical professionals at the Owen Sound Family Health Team who have been on strike since May — as they waved signs on the Giche-name-wiikwedong Bridge along 10th Street.
“These workers are frustrated because they are understaffed, they are overworked,” says Hornick. “They had their wages capped under Bill 124 for three years but they never got those returned. So they had three years of wages stolen from them that have never been returned even though everybody else in the public service got it back.”
Passed in 2019, Bill 124 was a wage restraint law that capped compensation increases for broader public sector workers at 1 per cent a year for three years. It was repealed in 2024 after being ruled unconstitutional, triggering more than $6 billion in retroactive payments.
Hornick says the province is able to find money for plenty of other projects like the FIFA World Cup, a private plane, and a feasibility study for a tunnel under Highway 401, but won’t find funds to support health and social services workers.
“We know that we see a lot of community support on the (picket) line, we know that this strike is actually growing – this could be up to 15,000 workers before it’s done,” says Hornick. “So we know that it’s time to build that pressure and we are doing it.”
The Owen Sound strikers are joined by nearly two dozen other community organizations on strike as part of OPSEU’s “Worth Fighting For” campaign, which argues that chronic underfunding by the Ford government has let vulnerable patients slip through the cracks and left agencies stretched too thin.
Hornick says a major reason for bringing smaller agencies together across the province is to ensure no agency is passed over for much-needed funding.