GN “not run by employees,” Okalik says

Staff at the Baffin Correctional Centre and the Young Offenders Centre no longer have 12-hour work shifts. Instead, these shifts have been cut to eight hours, a move that is supposed to encourage more Inuit to work in the centres.

The Inuit employment numbers at the two centres are “shameful,” Justice Minister Paul Okalik told Iqaluit Centre MLA Hunter Tootoo.

On Monday in the legislature, Tootoo asked Okalik whether he had consulted the employees to see whether they wanted to have shorter shifts.

Okalik said the action was allowed by the collective agreement and that the move was in the public’s interest, as a way of increasing Inuit employment.

Okalik said that the GN was “not run by employees,” and, “as a public government, we are entitled to make decisions on what we feel is in the best interest.”