Workers who support the Deaf, Deafblind and hard-of-hearing in Cochrane, Iroquois Falls, Matheson and Timmins are back on the job after an 11-week strike. The small team returned to work on July 14, following a new collective agreement that was ratified on July 9.
Bobbie-Jean Dacosta, an employment consultant and spokesperson for the group, said the four staff members who had been on strike are relieved and happy with the outcome. “Our members were satisfied and accepted the deal that the employer offered,” she said. For the community, that meant services could quickly resume: the deafblind support workers were straight back to helping seniors with grocery runs and medical appointments, Dacosta added. “Everybody is happy to be back at work.”
Locally, CHS staff include two deafblind intervenors and a hearing care counsellor. Intervenors do the hands-on work that allows people to live independently – everything from taking clients to appointments or grocery shopping to reading mail and answering emails. Hearing care counsellors help people adjust to hearing loss, explaining technology and services and sometimes visiting clients at home.
Money and pensions were at the heart of the dispute, as they often are. The union, CUPE Local 2073, had argued that wages had slipped 16 per cent behind inflation. Initially the union sought a two-year deal with raises of 2 per cent in year one and 3 per cent in year two. The final agreement runs three years, with raises of 2 per cent, 2.5 per cent, and 2 per cent across the term – better than what they first asked for. “As soon as the employer came to us with a three-year deal, it worked out really well,” Dacosta said. She also noted improvements to pension, benefits, mileage rates and meal allowances compared with the original one-year offer.
Pension gains were modest but meaningful: the union secured a 1 per cent increase in year one and 0.5 per cent in year three, with no change in the middle year. The new contract runs through March 31, 2028.
The backdrop to some of these tensions has been the closure of CHS offices across the province over recent years. When Julia Dumanian became CHS president in 2015, several local offices were shut; during the strike, Dacosta said those spaces had served as important drop-in hubs for seniors to learn about assistive devices and connect with staff. Losing those offices meant employees were often working from cars or home – and the union pushed for better compensation for those travel and expense realities. The new deal includes higher meal allowances for extra workdays and improved mileage rates, Dacosta said, and CHS is now working to secure meeting spaces with community partners so clients can meet staff in private, accessible locations.
Timmins itself has a small Deaf community but a relatively large hard-of-hearing population – partly because children born deaf in northeastern Ontario attend schools for the Deaf in southern Ontario and often stay connected to those regions after graduation. Another major factor is occupational hearing loss: many people in the area have worked in mining and construction, and decades ago workplace protections were not as strong as they are today. “Sometimes people work into their senior years,” Dacosta noted. “They may be doing what they can now to protect their hearing, but that wasn’t always the case earlier in their careers.”
Dacosta urged workers in noisy industries to follow health and safety rules and protect the hearing they still have. For the CHS staff and the clients they serve, the end of the strike means a return to the routines and supports that make daily life easier for many – and a reminder that small, local services can matter a great deal.