Health-care workers protest for wage increases at Mississauga MPP office

Home and community health-care workers plan to protest at a Mississauga MPP’s office today.

The home and community health-care workers say they are struggling to make ends meet in the cost-of-living crisis, according to a press release from the Canadian Union of Public Employees.

CUPE says the workers include nurses, personal support workers, occupational and physiotherapists, IT and administrative support and other health care workers.

The workers plan to deliver a petition with more than 300 signatures to Progressive Conservative MPP Nina Tangri’s office in Mississauga on Friday at 1 p.m., according to the press release.

Tangri was not in the office when insauga.com called this morning and had not returned a request for comment by press time.

The workers are demanding the Ontario government and Treasury Board come back to the table to negotiate a fair wage increase after Ontario’s Bill 124 capped salary increases for broader public sector workers at one per cent a year, for three years.

Bill 124, the Protecting a Sustainable Public Sector for Future Generations Act, limited the public sector to one-per-cent increases for three years, but the Superior Court of Justice ruled the legislation was unconstitutional February.

The protest is one of eight held across the province by CUPE members working in home and community care as part of the CUPE HCCSS Workers and Families Can’t Wait campaign.

The health-care workers are expected to be at Tangri’s office at 330 Queen St. S. in Streetsville from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. today.