The Ontario Labour Relations Board has issued CUPE Local 79 a No Board Report, setting the clock toward a possible strike or lockout as early as Saturday, March 8, 2025. This move comes as the City of Toronto continues to refuse to negotiate a fair deal with its frontline workers.
“For years, our members—some of the lowest-paid workers keeping this city running—have been falling further and further behind while Toronto’s top bureaucrats and executives keep getting richer,” said Nas Yadollahi, President of CUPE Local 79. “This is a fight against a wealthy class that hands itself double-digit raises while telling the rest of us to ‘tighten our belts’. Enough is enough.”
Under former Mayor John Tory, City workers endured six years of wage increases averaging just 1.13% annually, despite inflation surging by more than 18% since the start of the pandemic. Meanwhile, Toronto’s highest-paid bureaucrats have seen massive pay hikes:
- The City’s Chief Financial Officer received a 24% salary increase (2019-2023), bringing their pay to $366,384.
- Deputy City Manager Tracey Cook saw her pay rise 7.8% annually during that time—more than frontline workers received in six years—reaching $369,907 in 2023.
- City Manager Paul Johnson saw his salary jump 28% in a single year (2022-2023) to $417,216, making him Ontario’s highest-paid municipal Chief Administrative Officer.
- Outgoing TTC CEO Rick Leary took home $562,326 in 2023, a 55% increase since 2019, while transit service declined.
- Jennifer Dockery, General Manager of Senior Services and Long-Term Care, saw her salary skyrocket by 112% between 2021 and 2023—while long-term care homes faced devastating staffing shortages.
- Paul Raftis, then-Deputy City Manager, Community and Social Services, saw his salary jump 34% in his second year, reaching $348,971.
- In 2024 alone, the City quietly increased the wage scales for its top-paid executives by up to 13.6%—with the maximum salary for the top wage rate, where the City Manager lies, rising by $59,295, equivalent to the entire average salary of a Local 79 member.
But even with increasingly padded Executive pay cheques, mismanagement of City services deepened, with frontline vacancies soaring and the recruitment and retention crisis continuing to deepen, leaving critical services on the brink of collapse:
- Paramedic dispatcher vacancies have surged by 55%, prompting the Auditor General to flag a 35% increase in emergency call wait times—putting lives at risk.
- Vacancies in Senior Services and Long-Term Care have skyrocketed by 686% to nearly 500 unfilled positions—forcing already exhausted frontline workers to protest severe understaffing.
- Since 2019, frontline vacancies have increased by 65%, leaving approximately 1,400 critical positions unfilled, especially in the caring professions.
- It would cost the City just $270K a year to eliminate minimum wage jobs. Clearly this issue is not about money.
In a historic strike mandate, 90% of Local 79 members voted in to give their bargaining committee the ability to call a strike.
Mayor Olivia Chow was elected to change the course of a mismanaged city that leaves working-class people behind. And while she has taken steps in the right direction — like creating school nutrition programs — right now, she’s letting highly paid bureaucrats disrespect the very workers who deliver Toronto’s services.
“We’ve been understaffed, underpaid, and undervalued for years,” said Yadollahi. “We’re at a breaking point. Our services are at a breaking point. No one wants to be in this position, but we know that residents deserve better, and we’re willing to put ourselves on the picket line to demand fairness and respect.”
CUPE Local 79 represents 30,000 workers at the City of Toronto, delivering a wide range of services, including: public health, planning, City Hall operations, employment & social services, cleaning, court services, ambulance dispatch, child care, 311, recreation programming, shelters, water & food inspection, and long-term care.
