CUPE 998 is actively collaborating with our National Office on the No Contracting Out campaign. Building on the success of the “Keep Manitoba Hydro Public” campaign and the Manitoba government’s commitment to keeping Manitoba Hydro public, as announced in the 2023 Speech from the Throne, we achieved a significant victory for CUPE 998 and all its members.
However, we now need to strengthen our efforts to oppose contracting out of our work and begin the process of getting that work back in house.
We continue to witness contractors taking over jobs throughout the corporation, and it’s time for us to take a firmer stand. This issue is not unique to Manitoba Hydro; many Crown corporations are grappling with similar challenges.
A report by the Manitoba Research Alliance (MRA) on workers’ perspectives regarding the privatization and contracting out of Manitoba Infrastructure, published in 2021, remains highly relevant today. For several years, the Progressive Conservative government has aggressively reduced the number of government workers while shifting contracts and responsibilities to the private sector.
The report highlights the previous PC government’s push toward privatizing and outsourcing key aspects of Manitoba’s infrastructure and transportation services. It reflects the voices of public sector workers responsible for crucial tasks such as highway and bridge maintenance, snow clearing, capital project planning and execution, road safety and enforcement, trucking regulation, fleet management, water structure operations, ferries, and winter roads.
Key findings from the report, based on workers’ experiences, include that under the PCs:
– Understaffing is compromising public safety and leading to worker burnout.
– A reduction in the quality of service and infrastructure assets is anticipated.
– Taxpayers can expect higher costs with less value for money.
– Workers are being sidelined, and their expertise is ignored in decision-making.
It is time for the new Manitoba government to listen to the evidence that the previous government failed to hear. The report concludes that dismantling internal capacity, developed over decades, will be both costly and difficult to reverse. The time to act to prevent this costly mistake is now.