This week the SAROC steering committee met with the employer over three days. I attended the caucus day on Monday. This is the first time the committee has met since the removal of the past ADM. By all reports the meetings went well.
I spent the Wednesday in Stratford working with the Local President (who is still unclassified after about eight years with no end in sight) to get a proper compressed work week (CWW) schedule for the Kitchen staff. One full time position is forty hours a week; it should not take rocket science to come up with a schedule that will meet the needs of the employer and the members.
The employer has on the “table” a schedule that balances if you break down each shift worked by the minute. So, if a shift is 11.25 hours, you would work 675 minutes per day. That still didn’t add up at the end of the week. By cooking up the math they think they have hidden the real hours needed to work in the kitchen. We presented a twelve hour CWW schedule that balances, is more efficient, and eliminates the three hour shifts the unclassified member is working.
On Friday the employer met with the Job Security Officer and myself regarding the new Toronto South Detention Centre. Nothing new was discussed; this was just a rehashing of the same information that was shared with us on September 22, 2008. The employer did make it clear that the two new facilities would be privately constructed and leased back to the government over thirty years or more, as they have done in the building of the new Public and Private Partnership (PPP) hospitals. These buildings are leased back to the government for a profit.
This will mean a Jail will be maintained and repaired on a day to day basis by a private consortium. It doesn’t take one long to figure out the more repairs made, the less profit made. Fewer repairs equal more money for the big consortium and a lower safety level for the members locked in what will be the biggest Jail in the Country.
It is just another step in the privatization of our public services. If we have learned anything from the past at CNCC with a private company operating a Jail, it is that putting people in jail to make money is wrong. A maximum security setting mixed with a private company interested only in profit for its stock holders, should not be at the cost of our health and safety.
In Solidarity,
Dan Sidsworth
