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Support Street Health Workers
Submitted by ocap on Wed, 10/07/2009 - 18:05.
Street Health is an agency in Toronto that provides health, outreach, support and ID services to homeless and under-housed people in the City, primarily in the downtown east end. Many of our members and supporters rely on Street Health and its staff on a regular basis and we view this agency as an essential part of the downtown east community.
OCAP is greatly concerned with union busting activities that have been taking place at Street Health, including delaying bargaining and attempting to decertify the union.
We have sent a letter to the Board of Directors regarding the situation at Street Health and we encourage everyone concerned with homelessness to do the same. Below, you will find our letter as well as a sample letter to use to send to the Street Health Board.
Also, check out The Sunny House videos, particularly episode #21.
Our Letter:
To the Street Health Board of Directors:
Dear Board Members:
I am writing to add OCAP's voice to those who still hope that Street Health can regain the role if once played in this community. You have been known over the years as an organization that combines effective service provision with a courageous and principled challenge to the social injustices that poor and homeless people face. To-day, this fine record is in acute danger of being lost. So serious is the degeneration that Street Health may soon become known in Toronto chiefly for its record as a union buster.
That you have allowed the situation to reach such extremes is sad beyond measure. That you seem oblivious to the damage that this will do to your organization is perplexing. The situation within Street Health has become a scandal in the community. The driving out of staff who favoured a unionized and progressive workplace is well known. The delays in bargaining that have prevented good faith negotiations are thoroughly established. Now, an attempt at decertification is underway that would warm the heart of any crude sweatshop operator. It is so shocking to those of us who have known Street Health that it has an almost dream like quality about it.
Even at this late stage we are calling on your Board to reconsider what you are doing and remember what Street Health is supposed to be about. You are on the verge of destroying something that mattered in this hard-pressed community. Before that happens, please stand back and think carefully.
Ontario Coalition Against Poverty
__________________________________________________
Sample Letter:
To the Attention of the Board of Directors
Street Health
338 Dundas Street East,
Toronto, ON M5A 2A1
I am writing to urge the members of the Street Health Board of Directors insist that management sit down at the negotiating table and in good faith work with employees to iron out their first contract, so that those employees will have the necessary protection in their workplace that these workers deserve. Further, I would urge you to put in place a tangible process to remedy the serious probems which created that poisonous environment which necessitated the unionization in the first place.
The anti-union actions by management of which I've been made aware represent an attack on human rights -- the right of workers to organize themselves as workers. I find these actions are shocking coming as they do from an agency which has historically concerned itself with social justice.
It is unacceptable to me knowing that staff are now left in such an extremely vulnerable position with no grievance process and no protection from termination or harassment. I would guess that it should be clear to all that this instability makes it difficult to focus on providing services to the clients.
Street Health has always been a leader in anti-homelessness work, working as it has around root causes of homelessness. It is therefore entirely inconsistent with its progressive history that it should now be challenging the most basic of worker rights. Allowing for the existence of poor working conditions and lack of union protection is one of the root causes of people end up unemployed and homeless, and thus inhibiting Street Health workers in their demand for that basic
protection can only be seen as all the more shameful.
[Signed, Your Name - state what you do or why this concerns you]
Please send your letters to board members:
tcampbell@ontarioaidsnetwork.on.ca
Sharolee Gabriel (no email -- hard copy by mail)
and copy them to:
The Union: local4308sh@gmail.com
The Executive Director: laura@streethealth.ca
Friends of Street Health (care of Kathy Hardill)
khardill@hotmail.com
