Bill 195: An act of betrayal for front-line workers

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, the Ontario government declared a state of emergency under the Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act (EMCPA). This allowed them to pass many emergency orders, most of which allowed employers to ignore sections of our collective bargaining rights. With Bill 195, the Ontario government is effectively granting itself the power to continue to override legal collective agreements after ending the state of emergency. CUPE’s Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU) has launched a campaign to fight the bill that will include a legal challenge to the bill, which extends attacks on collective agreement provisions despite there no longer being a state of emergency.