TORONTO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Jewish Family & Child Service of Greater Toronto (JF&CS) is calling on the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 265 to settle after JF&CS’s last offer. The bargaining teams’ most recent oral offers to the wage grid put the sides as little as just one per cent apart.
“On Oct. 27, a CUPE media release created unnecessary tension and did so at a time that many members of our community are coping with pain, fear, trauma and deep, unrelenting grief as a result of the terrorist attacks committed against Israel,” said JF&CS President Sharon List. “The CUPE release claimed we were just offering pennies and were indifferent to the needs of our employees. It falsely claimed employees were being threatened with a lockout. We regret that CUPE National and CUPE Ontario would issue a media release claiming the two bargaining teams are so far apart and raising the spectre of a lock-out threat. Now, more than ever, the children, families and the dedicated staff who care for them cannot afford for bargaining to become divisive.”
List said JF&CS’s last offer to raise the entire wage grid is higher than the increase that ended a strike at Family and Children’s Services of Lanark, Leeds and Grenville. That agreement was also bargained by CUPE (Local 2577).
JF&CS is 40 per cent a Children’s Aid Society, which is funded by the province. But 60 per cent of the organization’s work is in family service, which receives limited government funding. Historically, many social workers at JF&CS start by doing children’s aid work and over time they choose to move to the substantially different work in family service. Despite the differential in funding and in work, according to a report for 2022 by the Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies, MSW social workers at JF&CS had the third highest salary of 33 child welfare agencies in Ontario.
“We care deeply about our staff, and value the incredibly important work they do. We are eager to get a deal because we want our staff to have a raise. Our staff’s last wage increase was April 1, 2021 — and we are very eager to sign a new, fair collective agreement so they get the raise they deserve,” said List.
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