The Ford government's law capping wage increases for many public sector workers has been struck down by Ontario's top court, likely sending the issue to the Supreme Court. A judge ruled that a 2019 law broke bargaining rights protected by the Charter.
Oded Abraham was among the nurses who gathered on the sidewalk out front of McMaster Children’s Centre in Hamilton to protest Bill 124 on June 17, 2020.
Bill 124 was passed in November 2019, early in Premier Doug Ford's Progressive Conservative government's first mandate. It set a one per cent annual wage increase limit on 780,000 public sector workers for three-year periods, covering collective bargaining agreements struck after June 5, 2019, according to Koehnen's decision.
"It is well-established that Charter rights are to be interpreted generously and purposively. The constitutional right to collective bargaining therefore goes beyond merely the right to associate in the sense of having a right to meet together," Koehnen wrote in his decision on Bill 124. "For example, it prevents unions from trading off salary demands against non-monetary benefits, prevents the collective bargaining process from addressing staff shortages, interferes with the usefulness of the right to strike, interferes with the independence of interest arbitration, and interferes with the power balance between employer and employees," Koehnen said.
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