Two years after Ontario repealed wage-cap law, 23,000 OPSEU workers still waiting for back pay

More than two years ago, Ontario repealed Bill 124, a law capping wages for public-service workers that had been widely criticized and subjected to legal challenges since Queen’s Park enacted it in 2019.

But even as swaths of the public sector have been awarded retroactive pay to the tune of billions of dollars, others are still fighting for compensation.

Around 23,000 members of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union have yet to receive back pay, according to estimates from OPSEU. Most are front-line social services workers in such areas as child protection, developmental services, and addictions and mental health. These jobs tend to be filled by women, many of whom have waited years for thousands of dollars in back pay.

The compensation issue is at the heart of a labour stoppage of roughly 4,000 community service workers, who have been locked out or on strike since May. Their back pay demands are in line with other public-sector workers. In the interim, many key services, including support for children and adults with disabilities, have been reduced.

But front-line service workers say they have little choice but to fight for pay that they’re entitled to.

Ontario’s Bill 124 still affecting public sector, years after law was repealed

“People do this because they care, but they should still be fairly compensated because the work is skilled work,” said Alex Dunsmuir, a developmental services worker at the Norfolk Association for Community Living and the president of OPSEU Local 204.

The Ontario government enacted Bill 124 to cap pay increases for public-sector workers at 1 per cent annually, citing the province’s fiscal challenges. Labour groups derided the legislation on grounds that it impeded their ability to bargain.

Early in 2024, the Ontario Court of Appeal upheld a Superior Court ruling that the act was unconstitutional. The province then repealed the act in its entirety.

Large bargaining units – such as those for nurses and teachers – benefited from centralized bargaining and wage reopener clauses that allowed them to negotiate and secure back pay on a quicker timeline.

But community support workers rely on decentralized bargaining units that negotiate with their workplaces on an individual basis.

The province has left it up to the respective workplaces that community and social services workers bargain with to provide back pay, but these organizations claim they have not received adequate funding to do so.

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Ontario’s 2025 budget projected over the next three years that spending for the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services would decrease at an average of 0.5 per cent annually. A report from the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario said that if the MCCSS spending plan is followed, it will be the smallest three-year change in more than 30 years. To maintain the ministry’s services with the current standard of quality and accessibility, spending would need to increase by 4.2 per cent annually for the next three years, the FAO estimates.

In an e-mail to The Globe and Mail, the ministry stated that the government “has made historic investments in the development services sector, including nearly $4-billion this year, an increase of $1.6-billion since we took office. In this year’s budget alone, we announced $407-million over three years to address operational needs at agencies that deliver ministry-funded services, which builds on the $310-million investment that organizations received through Budget 2024.”

But front-line service workers tell a different story. They are, for one, among the lowest-paid in the public sector.

The government of Ontario lists the median salary for social services workers at $55,100 a year. The left-leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives found that between 2018 and 2025, Ontario ranked third lowest out of all provinces on wage increases for social assistance workers.

A 6.5-per-cent pay increase for a social and community services worker – the goal of current bargaining efforts, and in line with increases across the public sector – earning a median salary would amount to roughly $3,600 a year.

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Beyond salaries, underfunding is having wider effects, according to front-line services workers. Ms. Dunsmuir supports people with disabilities and helps integrate them into their communities. Her workplace has been understaffed because of underfunding, she says, which has limited her staff’s ability to help those seeking their services. Many former staff members who have quit have cited the intense physical and emotional stress they experienced at work.

“There’s no relief,” she said. “There’s no more staff coming.”

Because of labour action, multiple community and social service centres across Ontario have had to temporarily halt programs that assist children and adults with disabilities.

The delays in back pay are falling hard on women, who tend to be overrepresented in these roles. OPSEU reports that women make up 78 per cent of social and community workers, 87 per cent of social workers and 82 per cent of direct support professionals in developmental services.

Ms. Dunsmuir said the public perception of these strikes reflects how society undervalues care work, which is typically done by women. She’s seen comments on social media urging the workers to get back on the job because of whom they support, rather than respecting their right to bargain for back pay.

“This sector is definitely dominated by women,” said Patricia Crooks, a community support worker at Sistering, a 24/7 drop-in centre in Toronto that provides low-barrier practical and emotional support for women and gender-diverse people. “We feel like we’re being punished just for being women.”

Despite chronic staffing shortages and employee burnout, Ms. Dunsmuir said she still loves her job. She believes that even a one-time pay raise would make a difference for her and her colleagues, many of whom work multiple jobs. But she said the province needs to increase its funding in the long term for workplaces like hers to function sustainably.

The job, she said, still has “real joys.” With increased provincial funding, “those joys could offset the struggles and the hardships.”