WINDSOR—Unifor Local 195 members working at the Best Western Plus in Windsor are on the picket line today in a push for fair wages and to fight back against concessionary demands from their employer.

“Unifor members at Best Western Plus deserve wages that reflect the value they bring to the hospitality sector and respect for the hard work they do every day,” said Unifor National President Lana Payne. “Instead of seeking to improve working conditions, the employer has demanded concessions. Our members won’t stand for it.”

Local 195 members walked off the job at 12:01 a.m. June 1. Unifor has called on the employer to return to the table with a serious offer that addresses wages and withdraws concessions.

“Hotel workers should not be asked to accept less while the hospitality industry continues to recover and grow,” said Unifor Ontario Regional Director Samia Hashi. “This strike is about protecting decent work and dignity for every worker who makes this hotel run.”

Unifor Local 195 represents nearly 40 workers in guest services, housekeeping, and maintenance at the hotel.

Unifor Ontario Regional Director Samia Hashi has been appointed to the board of the Ontario Health Coalition, strengthening the union’s role in the fight to defend and expand public health care in the province.

Hashi’s appointment comes at a critical time for Ontario’s health care system, as the Ford government continues its push to privatize services like surgeries and diagnostics. Public hospitals are stretched beyond capacity, staffing shortages are worsening, and patients are paying the price—sometimes literally—as for-profit clinics expand.

“To save public health care, we need unions, community organizations, health workers, and everyday people fighting side by side. That’s what this moment demands,” said Unifor Ontario Regional Director Samia Hashi.

The Ontario Health Coalition is the province’s leading public health care advocacy group, with a long history of grassroots mobilization to protect and improve the public system. Its mandate includes resisting privatization, demanding adequate funding, and ensuring that health care remains universal, accessible, and not-for-profit.

In 2023, Unifor’s Ontario Regional Council launched a province-wide campaign titled Save Ontario Health Care, which mobilized thousands of members and allies in communities across Ontario. The campaign exposed how privatization has drained resources from public hospitals, increased wait times, and created dangerous inequities in access to care.

The campaign included town halls, workplace actions, and political advocacy—engaging members not only as workers in the health system, but as patients, caregivers, and voters.

Unifor has recently kicked off a National Health Care and Social Services Tour, where Hashi is among the Unifor leaders, including Health Care Director Kellee Janzen, and Assistant to the National Officers Kelly-Anne Orr, who are hitting the road to meet directly with frontline workers in hospitals, long-term care homes, and social service agencies.

The tour has been met with urgency and passion from Unifor members who are witnessing the collapse of critical services firsthand. Many are seeing patients turned away, staff pushed past the brink of burnout, and corporate staffing agencies profiting off a system in crisis.

“Health care should never be a source of profit,” said Hashi. “Every dollar siphoned into private pockets is a dollar not spent on care.”

The coalition includes more than 400 member organizations representing seniors, workers, patients, and community leaders. Together, they are demanding immediate action from all levels of government to end privatization and reinvest in a robust public system of care.

For more information on the Ontario Health Coalition, visit: www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca.

TORONTO/WINDSOR—Unifor members who work at Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) rallied in Windsor and Toronto to call for urgent insolvency reform and accountability from HBC executives who continue to deny workers’ severance as liquidation nears completion.

The rallies, led by Unifor Locals 40 and 240 which represent nearly 600 HBC workers, brought attention to the devastating impact of HBC’s collapse on its workforce and the broader implications for thousands of Canadian workers caught in corporate bankruptcies.

“Unifor is calling on HBC to honour its legal responsibilities to workers and urges federal legislators to overhaul Canada’s insolvency laws to put workers first,” Unifor Ontario Regional Director Samia Hashi told HBC members at the Toronto rally. “It’s an absolute disgrace that executives are walking away with $3 million dollars in bonuses while our members—some with decades of service—are being denied the severance and benefits they’ve negotiated, earned, and rightfully deserve.”

Many Unifor members are owed tens of thousands of dollars in severance, benefits, and unpaid wages. Some workers with 20 or 30 years of service are now facing unemployment with no compensation as they await the full termination of the workforce so they can apply for the Wage Earner Protection Program (WEPP), which caps at approximately $8,844.

“The WEPP cap leaves workers with significant financial loss while HBC executives and secured creditors like banks and landlords walk away with payouts,” said Unifor Local 40 President Dwayne Gunness. “It’s an injustice to all Canadian workers who are caught in the middle when companies fail and collapse—the laws must be changed to make workers priority one.”

HBC moved to cut workers’ commissions during the liquidation process but reversed course after the union filed a grievance that claimed that the move violated legally binding collective agreements.

While holding HBC accountable, Unifor is also calling on the federal government to address the systemic gaps in Canada’s bankruptcy and insolvency laws. Under current legislation, workers are treated as “unsecured creditors” and often placed at the bottom of the compensation hierarchy—behind banks, landlords, and other investors.

Unifor is urging Parliament to implement the following reforms: raise the cap on the Wage Earner Protection Program (WEPP), broaden eligibility and improve access to WEPP for all affected workers, strengthen super-priority status for workers’ claims in bankruptcy proceedings, hold corporate directors personally liable for unpaid compensation, and to establish trust-held or federally guaranteed funds to ensure workers are fully compensated in the event of corporate failure.

“This is about setting a precedent for how workers are treated in corporate failures moving forward—what HBC is doing to its workforce should be outlawed, and we’ll continue fighting to ensure that workers are paid every penny they’re owed,” says Unifor Local 240 President Jodi Nesbitt.