Windsor’s Clear Medical Imaging workers to vote on ‘final offer’

Article content

After more than a month on the picket lines, Clear Medical Imaging workers cast votes Wednesday and Thursday on management’s “final offer” that the employer hopes will end the health sector strike.

Article content

The company’s request to hold a final-offer contract vote was submitted to the Ontario Ministry of Labour last week, with Clear Medical Imaging CEO Mike Reinkober stating it wanted employees to be given the opportunity to vote directly on management’s latest offer.

Article content

“It’s frustrating,” Unifor Local 2458 president Ken Durocher told the Star. “It should have never come to this.

“We have 66 units and this has never been brought to the point where we are bringing a contract to the membership that we don’t recommend. We’ve never been forced to take a contract back without the committee’s approval.”

The union local represents 130 Clear Medical Imaging employees, who work as X-ray and ultrasound technologists as well clerical and administrative staff, across the company’s 11 locations in Windsor-Essex and Chatham-Kent. 

Durocher said the union met with its members last Thursday to review the company’s final offer, which, he noted, “doesn’t address some key issues.”

Wages, benefits, overtime, and the union’s opposition to the employer’s plan to outsource services, continue to be major sticking points in the labour dispute.

“We want everybody to be treated equally,” Durocher said. “If certain groups are getting raises, we believe everybody should be entitled to the same type of raise that the company is willing to give to certain types of classifications.”

Article content

If the membership rejects the final offer, Durocher said the union plans to counter with a new proposal.

“This is what privatizing our health care system has come to,” Durocher said. “We’re arguing over money to try to pay employees instead of trying to take care of patients.

“Hopefully, we can get back to the table and get a collective agreement done for the whole bargaining unit.”

Workers have been on the picket line since Oct. 25. Negotiations between the union’s bargaining unit and company representatives had resumed on Nov. 21 after breaking off Nov. 8.

“They’re all in it together,” Durocher said. “We’re hoping that stays strong through the vote — I believe it will — but we’ll see after the vote what direction we have to take with the employer.”

Voting for the membership will begin at 2 p.m. Wednesday and remain open until 2 p.m. Thursday.

The results of the vote will be announced shortly after the voting period closes, said Durocher.

[email protected]

Share this article in your social network