Questions Answered

On AUPE's Facebook page, someone asked a few questions.  AUPE has not answered - at least not publicly.

We will attempt to do so here.

Not sure who this "informed" insider was, but I doubt it was anyone from Artspace itself - and there have been plenty of people claiming to have "inside" information about Artspace that they clearly don't.

Question 1 is one that confuses quite a few people, as co-ops don't fit into the categories most are familiar with.  It has been addressed on the page, Artspace, SAIL and AUPE.  The ability for a co-op to have a subsidiary like SAIL required some changes on the political front.  I believe those changes are provincial, only.

Question 2 and 3 is a topic that has been deliberately obfuscated by AUPE.  They make all sorts of claims about SAIL's funding and financials, and SAIL can't respond because this stuff is supposed to be kept confidential; that hasn't stopped AUPE's "avocat" from yelling out all sorts of accusations on the street for hours, though.

SAIL has had contracts with AHS for 24 years.  These get re-negotiated every now and then.  Since AHS provides the funding, they have full access to SAIL's financials and go over them with a fine tooth comb.  SAIL would not get the funding, otherwise.

When the strike started, SAIL and AHS were in the middle of this.  The funding was going to change, as AHS had re-assessed members for care hours, plus there was a significant drop in the number of user members.  Until SAIL knew how much funding they would actually get, it would be useless to complete a new wage contract with the employees until the actual funding amount was known.  Yet, AUPE demanded exactly that.  SAIL was completely open about their finances to AUPE, under the naive belief that AUPE would be reasonable and see the obvious.  Instead, AUPE has accused SAIL of everything from refusing to provide financial information to fraud.  Simply put, AUPE has shown no real interest in SAIL's finances, as they seem to have another agenda.  Then AUPE has the nerve to accuse SAIL of bargaining in bad faith!

Now, it's true that SAIL's finances were not audited for 7 of the 24 years of operation; the previous board was told they didn't need to.  That doesn't mean the books weren't kept.  As mentioned above, AHS has to know everything about where the money is going and why, and they have been satisfied.

There is now a new, 2 year agreement with AHS.

Question 4; I'm pretty sure the mediator's recommendation was supposed to be confidential.  In fact, as far as we know, all the negotiations are supposed to be confidential.  Which should make these comments left online and here on the blog particularly troublesome for AUPE.  As for the recommendation itself, the picketing care staff trapped a woman for an hour and a half on a public street, during which they read it out to her, in between verbally harassing her, so if that's supposed to be confidential, the picketers have broken that confidence.

The mediator, however, did not look at SAIL's finances when making his recommendation.  They were dismissed as irrelevant.  Nor did he look at comparative labour, such as other home care workers.  Instead, he looked at collective agreements of union members working at large care facilities and hospitals; places that have no real similarities to SAIL.

Why would a mediator dismiss SAIL's financial records and recommend something that would bankrupt SAIL?

We have no idea.