Home

Letter to President Chakma

gtaunion@uwo.ca (Conan Masterson) — Fri, 18 May 2012 17:03:53 +0000

Dear President Chakma,

In mid-April, as part of a group of campus-community members concerned with free speech and a safe environment at Western, I registered my name and email to make an appointment with you. I was disappointed that you chose not to meet with me. I was also disappointed at the process used to contact me about your unwillingness to meet. I am a campus leader. I participated in the Free Speech demonstration on behalf of the 2000 university employees I represent and requested that your response be sent to the email associated with my office. Nonetheless, when I received a reply from your Executive Assistant, Mr. Ruddock, it was sent to my student email. This failure to acknowledge my position in the university signals an unwillingness to take seriously the collective concerns of members of the campus community.

I appreciate that you are busy beyond my comprehension. However, I would urge you not to lose touch with the students and employees that you lead by virtue of your position. Further, I urge you not to lose respect for the London community's right to participate in the university, which is mutually beneficial and must be nurtured, not obstructed. Therefore, I urge you to repeal the ban placed on the independent journalists who, as members of the London community, covered a peaceful demonstration that was being held on Western's campus.

There are many reasons to respect free speech. Until you meet with me, I will merely touch on one--safety. When free speech is not respected on campus, we do not feel safe. Universities are sites of learning, engagement, and free thinking where we grow intellectually and socially by being challenged to subject our views to objections and counterpoints of others. This is, in part, what learning constitutes. If university administrators restrict dialogue to the extent that one viewpoint or party is respected, valued, or even allowed to speak, we enter dangerous territory, territory in which it becomes possible that some people's views will be forcibly silenced.

Let me reference a quite controversial figure--Dr. Rushton, a professor in the psychology department. Despite promoting views which many would term racist and hateful, Dr. Rushton's colleagues defend his academic freedom to advance controversial views because these views contribute to public discourse.

And yet, members of the London community are not extended the same. This issue is extremely timely--in Quebec, as I type this, politicians are debating a bill that would place severe restrictions on people's freedom of speech and assembly. Students in Quebec have already suffered police brutality as they struggle for affordable and accessible education. This is what scares me about restricting free speech. These restrictions imply that freedom of speech is not a foundational element of education. When it becomes possible to repress freedom of thought on the grounds of rendering acts that are guaranteeing access to education, the very notion of education is re-framed in a manner that does not acknowledge the participation of students.

Thank you, and I am still happy to meet with you in person,

Katy Fulfer

President

PSAC Local 610

Graduate Student Assistants and Research Assistants

gtaunion@uwo.ca (Conan Masterson) — Fri, 18 May 2012 15:40:25 +0000

To all Graduate Student Assistants and Research Assistants

Dear Members,

Recent negotiations with the university on the unionization vote for Graduate Student Assistants (GSAs) and Research Assistants (RAs) is likely to reach an agreeable resolution. UWO has offered a settlement that allows all RAs and GSAs on contract this summer term (May 1-August 31, 2012) the right to vote in a new round of elections. PSAC supports the proposal for a vote which we anticipate will be held in the last week of June 2012.All registered full-time graduate students who, by the date of the vote, have been given an RA or GSA appointment to be performed between May 1, 2012 and August 31, 2012 will be eligible to vote.

In anticipation of the new vote we are currently trying to reach and identify every graduate student holding a Research Assistantship (RA) and/or Graduate Student Assistantship (GSA) during this summer term 2012. Kindly send us a quick email and let us know if you or your peers have this type of contract for summer term 2012.

We would like to thank all those who already contacted us back in January – your assistance has been very helpful. To get in touch, please email us at gtaunion@gtaunion.com.

For more information, please visit the website athttp://gsarawestern.wordpress.com/.

Warm wishes,

Your RA - GSA Organizing Team

Bulletin for the Week of April 30

gtaunion@uwo.ca (Conan Masterson) — Thu, 03 May 2012 16:05:09 +0000

PSAC Local 610 Bulletin for the Week of April 30th

In this issue:

•MAYDAY!

•Bargaining Update

•In Solidarity with the Quebec Student Strike

May 1^st: International Workers’ Day – Shopping Boycott and Rally at Victoria Park

"It's May! It's May! / The lusty month of May! / That lovely month when ev'ryone goes / Blissfully astray. / It's here, It's here! / That shocking time of year . . . / It's May! It's May!"

As May 1 approaches, I have thrilling memories of watching the musical Camelot as a young whimsical girl, enchanted with the tempestuous love story of King Arthur, Queen Guenevere, and Sir Lancelot (Show-tunes fans unite!).

May 1, 2012 is not your little girl's May Day.

Guenevere's lyrical song praises frivolity and decadence. But since 1886, May Day has had a rich history in labour and social justice movements. In response to the inequitable distribution of wealth and resources across the globe, people will be participating in a general strike for economic justice on May 1. This May Day, the PSAC 610 Executive is encouraging you to think about decadence as well, but not in quite the same way as the Vanessa Redgrave does in Camelot.

We are encouraging a shopping boycott--do not eat out on May 1, do not buy that new swimsuit you've been eyeing, do not treat yourself to that movie you promised you'd watch after you finished marking.

Here are a few reasons why we think a shopping boycott is meaningful--it raises awareness about the role of large corporations in perpetuating economic inequality. It gives us pause about how our products are made and who our purchases benefit.

Here’s a few examples of what you might ponder on:

Caterpillar and the EMD Plant Closure

Target’s Buy-Out of Zellers and Union Busting

Nike’s Use of Sweatshop Labour

The Commodification of Non-Human Animals

And because we haven’t yet thrown every large corporation under the bus, we need this article.

There are many reasons to participate in May Day. View some of them here. We hope you participate in our shopping boycott and that you think about why it’s important--you think about your purchases and their impacts on people’s well-being.

One of the wonderful things about May Day is its diversity--some participants will be anti-capitalists, some will be capital-reformists. Some people will be disciplined for participation. Some people will participate for racial or sexual justice. Some people will be allies of the marginalized. But, we are united in a vision for social and economic justice, for fair wages and benefits, for safe and clean working conditions, for a world in which some people’s gain is made at the expense of the working class, the poor, the marginalized, and the unlucky.

We encourage you also to attend May Day activities in London--our Community Alliance Chair-Elect, Jonathan Giles, will be speaking at the Victoria Park Rally. For more information, please visit this facebook page. And if you don’t have to purchase it, watching Camelot is a pretty nice way to spend an afternoon.

Katy Fulfer, President

Bargaining Update

As you all may know, our current collective agreement (CA) expires next fall and the negotiating committee (NC) has been meeting since November. On June 1st we will serve notice to the administration that we intend to bargain, following which we could be called to the table at anytime. In the meantime, the NC has met with representatives from the PSAC and with our local's negotiator. In a few weeks we expect to informally meet the representatives from the administration.

A few months ago we conducted a survey of the membership and (with an outstanding response) found that there was overwhelming support for an increase of wages, and for reforms to be made to the lump-sum model of protecting wage increases. Historically the administration has used the lump-sum model not only to argue against wage increases, but also to divide our union. For example, TAs in the faculty of engineering lost hundreds of dollars in past rounds of bargaining. The NC takes this problem seriously and no new model will be suggested that cannot benefit each member equally. In addition to protecting wages, the NC along with the survey respondents have made student poverty and issue and would like to push for wage increases that not only keep pace with the cost of living but also with our cost of living as TAs and students. As a whole, the NC agrees with the membership and is working with the PSAC to develop appropriate models to restructure our wages and to protect our wages from minimum funding.

Nothing can be guaranteed before bargaining, everything I just mentioned is contingent. However, I urge the membership to see it as their responsibility to speak up in favour of our collective interests---to work for a living wage, to be free from discrimination, to have reasonable work expectations--- if they want to see these measures adopted by the administration. Loud voices help to ensure that we can get as many of our demands met as possible. Silence ensures the status quo.

Amy Wuest, Negotiation Committee

April 25^th Day of Solidarity With the Quebec Student Strike

Across Ontario on April 25^th, unionized workers mobilized to show their support for the Quebec students who are on strike to resist austerity and the corporatization of our universities. day. Several of our awesome members helped get flyers explaining the situation out in London and across campus, and distributed red squares for those who wanted to show their support. These are also available in the union office at 1313 Somerville House. A Facebook group which posts images from these actions and up-to-date news coverage can be found at http://www.facebook.com/groups/442630259084773/, and here is the text from the flyer, which was circulated in London and at McMaster University that same day.

AGAINST AUSTERITY, IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE STUDENT STRIKE, WE WEAR THE RED SQUARE

For over two months more than 200,000 students in Quebec have been on strike. On one level, the strike is in protest of the Quebec government’s proposed tuition increases. These are reaching a crisis level. As it is they are so high that, after graduation, many students find themselves reduced to debt slavery for much of their adult lives.

But this isn’t about a bunch of consumers expressing their displeasure over the cost of their education, as the politicians who are referring to this action as a “boycott” keep trying to imply.

Like all their plans to dismantle the funding structures that ensure our collective well-being, tuition increases are a direct consequence of the Canadian government’s relentless privileging of corporate interests over those of the people who live here. These measures indicate their willingness to impose the cost of corporate wealth on the future of the young. Legislating people back to work for refusing to accept two-tier contracts that pay new hires far less (as we saw happen to the Canadian Union of Postal Workers) is another symptom of this cannibalism.

The Quebec student strike is a mass political action, democratically decided upon by open general assemblies of students united across the province. It is guided by commitment to a common goal – to resist the logic of austerity that our governors are attempting to impose on our communities. It is this logic which prompts university administrators to refer to students as Basic Income Units. This same logic prompted the Minister of State for Science and Technology, Gary Goodyear, to announce his plan to turn Canada’s National Research Council into a “one-stop, 1-800 ‘I have a solution for your business problem’” operation. It is the logic that is used to justify irresponsible resource development through the fast-tracking of environmental reviews; reductions in public services, mass firings of public workers, and the deterioration the working conditions of those who remain employed; cuts to health care; and punishing reductions in relief measures for the poor, the injured, and the aged.

It is this logic which sparks our dissent. Because we recognize that an ‘economy’ – our communities - are not valued only by how much money can be made out of the people who participate in it.

In Ontario, as in Quebec, student unions are in solidarity with other community, labour, and anti-poverty organizations in their resistance to austerity and corporate rule. The red square is a symbol of our collective struggle and our collective goal – a society which does not allow its members’ value to be measured in the terms of the Toronto Stock Exchange. As our acts here show, it is the society that we already have, and we mobilize now to defend it.

No Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreements Without Due Consultation: A Letter to the PMO

infochair@gtaunion.com (Eileen Wernekers) — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 14:24:19 +0000

Dear Prime Minister Harper,

We urge you to cease negotiations with the European Union (EU) on the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA) until you have engaged in due consultation with the Canadian public as regards the content and the implications of this proposed agreement. We demand this at the bequest of our membership, who overwhelmingly passed at our Annual General Meeting on April 17 a motion to remind our provincial and federal governments of their duty to fully inform Canadians about these negotiations. To be clear, we do not view the presentations conducted by Members of Parliament across Canada on April 27 to be consultations. A consultation requires discussion, a back-and-forth between leaders and constituents, and an honest examination of the priorities of the government administration. In the event that this obligation is not fulfilled, we support the City of London's recent move towards exemption from CETA and we urge all other provincial and municipal governments take similar steps.

On April 16, 2012 the City of London’s Finance Committee passed a resolution demanding that CETA negotiators consider the well-being of Canadian municipalities. As education workers in the university sector, we value the relationships universities have within their communities, and we too are sceptical that community interests are being promoted in CETA negotiations. An agreement that would permit multi-national corporations to sue municipalities would irrevocably compromise the autonomy and self-determination of our communities.

In early February, the Electro-Motive Plant in London closed after its owner, Caterpillar, refused to negotiate with the unionized workers represented by the Canadian Auto Workers Union. Instead, Caterpillar demanded that workers take a 50% wage cut despite boasting $4.9 billion in profits for the year of 2011 in January 2012. London lost over 450 highly skilled jobs due to the plant closure, and the negative effects this blow to local industry will have on ancillary jobs across the community are certain to be equally severe. Without the application of investment standards to ensure that the Caterpillar buyout did not simply gut local industry, they were free to use their resources and power to simply walk away. CETA will open up all Canadian municipalities to more Caterpillars— leaving Canadians behind to pay for their profits..

Canadian communities will lose access to a number of Canadian resources and products under CETA. Our water will be sold to foreign multinationals. Our food and medical industries will be opened to foreign markets, which will increase Canadian costs and put pressure on our public, accessible healthcare system. As university workers, we are especially concerned about our intellectual property rights—Canadian innovations and developments will be credited and owned by the corporations funding research.

Our concern about CETA is not an “us-versus-them” mentality. We don’t think CETA is good for the EU either. When Caterpillar closed the EMD plant, they moved their production to plants in the United States—to states where workers are paid less than what Caterpillar offered to EMD workers here. These new employees take home about a third of what EMD workers made when Caterpillar locked them out. Employers like Caterpillar do not respect fair working conditions anywhere, whether in Canada or elsewhere.

If CETA is ratified, the people of Canada will experience a wide array of detrimental effects, and the net benefits of the agreement do not appear to outweigh these. Though we will be deeply impacted by CETA, we are given no chance to know about or voice our opinions of the negotiations. We remind you of our fundamental right to be duly informed of the actions of our representatives, and demand that non-corporate media be given access to the details of the negotiation in order to be able to disseminate accurate information about the intentions of our elected representatives in this matter.. If this does not happen—if in your role as Prime Minister of Canada you and other officers of the Canadian government continue to negotiate behind closed doors - we strongly urge our Mayor, Joe Fontana, our City Councillors, our Premier, Dalton McGuinty, and our provincial members of parliament to opt out of CETA, for as it stands, this would best represent the interests of their constituents.

In solidarity with the Stop CETA movement,

Katy Fulfer

President
PSAC Local 610, Teaching Assistants and Postdoctoral Associates at Western

UNIONS ACROSS ONTARIO STAND IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE QUEBEC STUDENT STRIKE

infochair@gtaunion.com (Eileen Wernekers) — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 15:10:09 +0000

Solidarity with the Quebec Student Strike

The Quebec student strike against an increase in tuition fees and for free education is a crucial
battle against the austerity agenda and for accessible, quality post-secondary education. This
is the longest student strike in Quebec history, with over 170,000 students on strike and over
200,000 demonstrating on March 22. It remains strong in the face of the Charest government’s
refusal to negotiate and university/CEGEP administration efforts to use injunctions and threats
to force students back to school.

We recognize that students in Quebec pay lower fees than in the rest of Canada because of a
long tradition of activist mobilization for quality, accessible education. We stand in solidarity
with the student strikers and the professors, campus workers and community members who
have supported this movement. Students in Quebec are fighting against the commercialization
of education and user pay through tuition increases that create massive barriers to access
and student debt that profits the banks while haunting students for years after graduation. We
believe victory for the student movement in Quebec will signal a new level of mobilization for
proper funding of quality, accessible education and against the austerity agenda. We commit
ourselves to the defense of those arrested. We strongly support the mobilizations to defend
free political expression on campus and to continue the strikes until victory, even in the face of
repression.

Together, we can stop the hike.

Jamie Ross, President. CAW Local 2002

John Reis, President, CUPE Local 4092

Katy Fulfer, President, PSAC Local 610

Chuck Atkinson, President & Directing General Chairperson, IAMAW Transportation, District 140

UNIONS ACROSS ONTARIO STAND IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE QUEBEC STUDENT STRIKE

infochair@gtaunion.com (Eileen Wernekers) — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 15:10:06 +0000

Solidarity with the Quebec Student Strike

Together, we can stop the hike.

Jamie Ross, President. CAW Local 2002

John Reis, President, CUPE Local 4092

Katy Fulfer, President, PSAC Local 610

Chuck Atkinson, President & Directing General Chairperson, IAMAW Transportation, District 140

Commission on Quality Public Services and Tax Fairness Questions the Need for Austerity Measures

infochair@gtaunion.com (Eileen Wernekers) — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 17:18:55 +0000

OPSEU welcomes recommendations of Commission study on public services

TORONTO, April 13, 2012 /CNW/ - The president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union says the findings and recommendations of the Commission on Quality Public Services and Tax Fairness have addressed fundamental public policy and taxation issues in ways that the Drummond Commission and the recent provincial budget failed to do.

"I warmly applaud the results contained in the Interim Report of the Commission on Quality Public Service and Tax Fairness," said OPSEU President Warren (Smokey) Thomas. "In my view, the Commission went about its work dedicated to learn what the people of Ontario expect in the public services on which they rely upon and for which they pay for. The same can't be said about the work of the Drummond Commission or the outcomes of the recent provincial budget."

Thomas was commenting on today's release of the findings and recommendation of the public services commission, which visited a dozen cities around the province and collected testimony and evidence from more than 1,000 providers and users of public services, experts on progressive tax reform, public policy planners and ordinary citizens who told the commission they value public services they receive in their day-to-day lives.

The 96-page interim report, written by commission chair Judy Wasylycia-Leis, a former federal Member of Parliament, contains 16 recommendations on ways that Ontario can maintain quality public services - despite per capita spending that ranks it third last among Canadian jurisdictions - by implementing measures to increase funding through moderate tax reform.

Thomas said he was especially attracted to recommendations that call for restoring the corporate tax rate to 14 per cent, a move that would generate $2.5 billion in revenue, and a second recommendation contained in the interim report that a further $1.8 billion could be raised by reversing the elimination of corporate capital tax.

"Ontario does not have a spending problem," said Thomas, "Ontario has a revenue problem that could be easily addressed. Don Drummond was told not to look at that side of the ledger and the recent provincial budget demonstrated that the McGuinty government prefers to ignore ways by which we might increase revenues. The sad result of this indifference is that the people of Ontario are the ones who really suffer as they watch their public services decline."

Thomas paid tribute to the hundreds of OPSEU members who attended the public hearings and town hall meetings conducted by the commission on its tour of Ontario. Many of those members made presentations to the commission, while hundreds of others attended as a demonstration of their support for the maintenance of quality public services.

"OPSEU members did their union proud by supporting the work of the commission and, in many cases, stepping forward with their own stories from the frontlines. I salute their efforts."

A Message from One of Our Members

infochair@gtaunion.com (Eileen Wernekers) — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 20:56:08 +0000

Dear union brothers and sisters,

One of our scheduled speakers at our Annual General Meeting, Mike Roy, has been banned from our campus for a year for video-recording a peaceful protest on University property. I am writing to request your help to ensure his safe passage to our meeting, but also to highlight the general climate at our university regarding freedom of expression that we face as a union who is entering into a bargaining year with our employer.

You can read more about the events that took place by clicking this link: https://www.facebook.com/FreeSpeechGetsActivistBannedFor1YearAtUniversity/info

Banning people from our campus for being associated with the freedom of expression is an affront to the idea that universities are a site for critical thought. Please consider visiting our union office to sign the petition to have Mike Roy's ban from our campus removed, so that he can continue to contribute to our community and speak at our general meeting. Many professors, community members, and union sisters and brothers have signed this petition already, and we need as many signatures as possible in order to make that happen.

In Solidarity,

Jonathan Giles

Solidarity Greeting to Air Canada Workers

infochair@gtaunion.com (Eileen Wernekers) — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 02:37:50 +0000

Dear Air Canada workers at the Toronto-Pearson Airport,

We want to join with you in congratulating Minister of Labour Lisa Raitt on what a great job she’s doing for Canadian workers.

Recently, our Local marched through Western University’s campus to raise awareness about CETA, the trade agreement Canada is secretly negotiating with the European Union. During our march an Occupy activist, Anthony, gave a weighty to charge: this moment is make it or break it for trade unions. We need more direct action.

Actions taken by Air Canada employees at the Toronto-Pearson Airport and in Montreal, Quebec City, and Vancouver meet Anthony’s challenge. When Parliament passed Bill C-33 earlier in March, they threw our rights to organize in the garbage. Your legal right to strike was shoved aside without any reasonable justification at all. The employer’s ability to lock you out was banned.

We can thank the Minister of Labour and the Canadian federal legislature for destroying one of the primary means by which employees may legally stand up to employers. The few audacious baggage handlers who greeted Raitt as she walked through Pearson, slow-clapping and commenting on what a great job she’s been doing, inspired workers and activists all over Canada to stand up against an anti-worker government.

The administration in Ottawa constantly justifies its attack on workers as one that is made necessary by the “tough business climate.” What they seem to fail to see is the simple fact that being anti-worker is being anti-Canadian. But we see it.

The approximately 150 ground workers at Pearson, members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW) who walked off the job in a thirteen-hour wildcat strike, see it. Airport workers from the Canadian Auto Workers and Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) members who joined their picket lines see it. The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, Canadian Union of Postal Workers, CUPE 3902 and International Workers of the World activists who occupied Minister Raitt’s office Friday afternoon see it. We urge Canadian travelers to see it, too, and to join us in expressing our solidarity.

On Friday, due to the direct action taken by IAMAW workers, flights were delayed. People were inconvenienced. But what everyone needs to know is what caused this: The fact that Air Canada attempted to discipline their employees for expressing their opinion through direct action. Three were suspended, sparking the wildcat that was responded to by reinstating these workers without penalty. But this action has a broader context and we want more than just what was won on Friday. Workers at Air Canada are being legislated back to work as a matter of course, and their right to collectively decide what they agree to in their workplace is being stripped from them - while Air Canada’s CEO earned over four million dollars in 2010 and while workers fail to see wages increase.

When the government legislates our rights into the trash, all we have left are protests of the body--marching, urging, clapping, singing, stomping--even “heckling.” And so, when the government cuts vital public services to Canadians, trade unionists will raise our voices. When health care gets cut, we will march. When our jobs are on the line because the government has allowed multinational corporations to override and usurp the priorities of Canadians, we will fight back. These issues are all part of the same package--fairness and justice for workers -- fairness and justice for the Canadian public. We will not let the government continue to act without accountability and without responsibility.

Air Canada workers, there is no one we’d rather fly with than you.

In solidarity,

Katy Fulfer and Eileen Wennekers, PSAC Local 610
Teaching Assistants and Postdocs at Western University

PS--We’ve been so inspired by you, that we’ve occupied Minister’s Raitt’s voicemail with our own messages of “Great job.” (See it on youtube!) You can reach her office at (613) 996-7046 in Ottawa or (905) 693-0166 in Halton, Ontario.

Giles Whitaker's Article from this Week's Bulletin

gtaunion@uwo.ca (Conan Masterson) — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 14:48:27 +0000

Doin’ Work, Getting’ Paid

One of our members, Giles Whitaker, has written an article for this week’s bulletin about his experiences pursuing a claim regarding unpaid overtime:

I am currently in my first year of a Master of Fine Arts Degree, and I am one of the Stewards for Visual Arts. I recently won an Employment Standards case against my former employer, and thought I would share this interesting story with you.

I worked for Digital Extremes, a video game developer in London, from August 2010 to August 2011 as a Quality Assurance Tester. My job was to play the game being developed, and document any bugs – things that weren't working properly in the game. I was paid a fixed salary based on 40 hours per week at $13.46 per hour. During “crunch” times, when the team working on the game was working towards a deadline, I often had to work very long hours – up to 100 hours per week - but I was never paid for any of the overtime I worked. It took me a while to discover that under Ontario law, a fixed salary only covers 44 hours per week, but when I finally spoke to the company about this they claimed that an “Information Technology Professional” exemption applied to my position, so they weren't required to pay me overtime or obey the normal working hour restrictions with respect to my position.

My position did not seem to involve the high degree of expertise and training which normally characterizes an Information Technology Professional, according to the definition in the Employment Standards Act. This exemption was created to apply to computer programmers who typically earn quite high salaries – unlike the low wages of QA testers. After I had finished my contract I put in an Employment Standards Claim to the Ontario Ministry of Labour – claiming for unpaid overtime.

In December, the Ministry ruled that I was not an IT Professional, and that I should have been paid for the overtime I worked. The company was ordered to pay me the overtime pay they owed me, and they voluntarily complied and did so. This parallels a class action suit that was taken against Electronic Arts in the US in 2004 in which animators, modellers, texture artists, lighters, background effects artists, and environmental artists successfully challenged a similar designation as IT Professionals. The employees were awarded $15 million in damages and are now paid at an hourly rate.

As far as I know, my case is a landmark ruling in Ontario. It means that other QA testers that are being denied overtime pay and working hour protections should be able to use this as a precedent to claim the overtime pay they are owed. I also believe that if all the other non-programmer staff (e.g. level designers, 3D artists, lighting designers, and so on) at video game companies in Ontario who are also being denied overtime pay for the same reason, were to challenge the IT Professional designation, they would also be successful, though this remains to be tested.

This case really highlighted the importance of unions for me, and how powerless people are when they are working on short-term, individual contracts. It also drew my attention to how poor enforcement of these rulings is in Ontario. While the Ministry did make sure I was compensated, they took no action to ensure that all the other QA Testers in this company were no longer working under conditions which this ruling had determined to be illegal. At this point in time, I do not know whether Digital Extremes has made changes to the contracts of QA Testers in order to make sure they are complying with the law.