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OPSEU Using bright signs for new, local message campaign

This neon sign has greeted motorists in front of the Ministry of Transportation building on McKeown Ave. this week. Photo by Dennis Chippa. There has been a bright neon sign greeting drivers on McKeown Avenue this week.

This neon sign has greeted motorists in front of the Ministry of Transportation building on McKeown Ave. this week. Photo by Dennis Chippa.

There has been a bright neon sign greeting drivers on McKeown Avenue this week.

It’s been set up in front of the MTO building, and its message is clear.

Local OPSEU executive board member Mike Bisaillon says the message is a reminder of the cost of privatizing public services.

“What you’re getting is this idea that somehow the province is gonna save money with privatization. And it may keep the money off the books on a temporary basis. But the reality is it costs our province much more to privatize services.”

The signage is not a fluke.                        

It’s part of a new plan to make local residents more aware of the local impact of  negotiations between the province and OPSEU.

The two sides are currently negotiating essential service agreements. Bisaillon says most of the Ontario Public Service negotiations are going fairly well, but aren’t going well in the Corrections sector.

Bisaillon says the negotiations didn’t start well in the first place.

“The analogy I like to draw is if you have a used car and you’d like to sell it for ten thousand dollars and someone comes up to you and says ‘I’ll offer you two hundred for it’ that’s not a reasonable starting point. That’s what the province has started with. They’ve put a deal on the table they know we cannot accept. They want to gut stuff that’s been in there for thirty years in our agreements and we’re not gonna give it up.”

Bisaillon says there are three thousand OPSEU members in North Bay, and another 800 Ontario Public Service workers. That’s a significant impact economically, especially if they go.

“If we lose a large portion of those jobs, North Bay will really suffer and that’s a message that has got to get out there.”

One major concern for Bisaillon is the two hundred Information Technology workers at the Corrections building on Second Avenue.

Those jobs, he says, are directly at risk of being outsourced overseas.

"Once these jobs are outsourced, they don’t just leave our community, they don’t just leave our province, they leave the country. While as a union we’re going to fight to get back every job we lose the reality is that once a job is outsourced overseas, it is very difficult to get it back.”

Bisaillon says as many of those IT jobs are tied in to other areas of public service around the city, it's not too much of a stretch to see a trickle down effect of more job loss tied in to the IT jobs going.

That's why he says  timing is important, which is why OPSEU decided it was time to send a little more direct message.