The Ontario Education Workers General Commission (OEWRFC) will host a public meeting tonight, Tuesday, October 11, at 7:00 PM ET to discuss how to move forward in the education workers contract battle. Register here to attend this important event and spread the word to your colleagues.
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As 55,000 education aid workers prepare to strike against Ontario’s far-right Progressive Conservative government, Prime Minister Doug Ford has criminalized the strike even before it begins. issued the most direct threat ever. Ford made provocative comments following his overwhelming 96.5 percent vote in favor of strike action by educational assistants, caretakers, librarians, early childhood educators and administrative staff.
“Don’t strike. Don’t force my hand,” Ford said threateningly at a press conference last Thursday in response to a question about whether his government would impose a return-to-work law. Education Minister Steven Lecce has repeatedly suggested that the government ban the strike, which was carried out against Ontario’s education workers by the union-backed Kathleen Wynn liberal government in 2015. This is the last step.
Ford, a billionaire and right-wing thug, expressed in his remarks the fierce hostility of the financial and corporate elites to education workers and the public education system. His government offered a 2 percent annual wage “increase” for support staff earning less than $40,000 and a dismal 1.25 percent for workers earning above. With official inflation surpassing 8% over the summer and prices of basic necessities soaring, Ford has announced an even more devastating real cut on top of the cuts it has received to date for its educational support staff. I am willing to accept a reduction in wages. Years of wage freezes and “wage restraint” programs.
To add insult, Ford and Lecce routinely accuse educators of fighting for their lives and defend public education for “disrupting” student learning.
These cuts from a government that plans to cut billions of dollars from education over the next 10 years and whose dire living profit COVID-19 pandemic has caused the greatest disruption to Ontario’s education system in modern history. The claim is an outrageous provocation.
With the approval of the liberal federal government, Ford and Lecce insisted that all students and staff return to classrooms whenever hospital admissions fell below the breaking point, preventing seven consecutive COVID-19 outbreaks and deaths. made sure of the waves. Their back-to-school campaign turned schools into vehicles for outbreaks and helped spread COVID across the state.
Outbreaks of educators and exodus from the education sector due to harsh working conditions have resulted in staff shortages and student overcrowding. Millions contract this potentially deadly disease in Ontario, and at least he has 14,495 deaths. Tens of thousands more, including educators and students, are facing “disruption” in their daily lives due to the debilitating effects of COVID-19.
Unions support government’s murderous return to work, so they seek to cite the devastating impact of the pandemic on education as a pretext to deprive workers of their democratic right to collective labor action Ford and Lecce I will not, and cannot, oppose the cynical attempts of / Back-to-school campaign and repeal of all COVID mitigation measures at the start of the Fall 2022 semester.
With education unions doing all they can to divide workers and keep them locked up in a corrupt state-controlled system of collective bargaining, Ford feels they can act very aggressively.
All five Ontario education unions are conspiring to leave 55,000 support staff workers alone to stand up to the Ford government and anti-strike laws.
The Trade Union Council of the Ontario Board of Education, an affiliate of the Canadian Civil Servants Union (CUPE), is negotiating support staff workers but deliberately isolates them from their teacher colleagues. 2019 It did the same thing in 2011, ending the strike at 11 o’clock and imposing a sale contract that forced the government to cut real wages, i.e. an annual wage cap of 1% for three years.
Ford and Lecce challenged education officials, but Laura Walton, the OSBCU’s chief negotiator, has repeatedly insisted that a strike be a last resort. She claims the government can avoid it if it shows “good faith”. She and She CUPE, the largest union in the country with about 700,000 members, have apparently refused to be specific about how the union will respond to the anti-strike law. When challenged directly by general workers about this, she called it the “million dollar question.”
Workers in both the public and private sectors (from construction workers in Quebec, dockworkers in the Port of Montreal, CP Railroad workers, to workers at the Canada Post and Ontario universities) have made this film to date. I’ve seen it many times. The union has remained silent about the imminent threat of state intervention. It torpedoes labor action when federal or state governments introduce return-to-work laws, or, in many cases, simply threaten to do so.
After two days of negotiations last Thursday and Friday, Walton’s negotiating team felt compelled to declare negotiations deadlocked and asked the mediators to issue a “no board” report. Under bureaucratic mediation procedures, unions must first wait until a “no board” report is issued before setting a strike date. The date must be at least 17 days after the release of the report and confirmed by the union 5 days in advance. The criminalization of workers’ labor behavior by Ford and his Thatcher cabinet has no such restrictions.
There is good reason to believe that if the union bureaucracy continues to dominate, there will be no strikes at all. Walton refused to use the word “strike” in a statement following the request for a “no board” report. Instead, she declared that she had requested the report to “put pressure on reaching a negotiated settlement.”
The four teachers’ unions play a despicable role. They have refused to abandon serious bargaining demands or call a strike vote, even though the contracts of their 200,000 members expired on the same day as the support workers. claiming to pursue a “unique” negotiating strategy, dividing teachers, they banded together to declare their support for the government’s cynical and barbed demands for “stability” in the classroom, I vow not to take action until winter.
Teachers should be vigilant. If teachers’ unions leave it to the bureaucracy, it will isolate the struggle of education workers, allowing them to sell out and lose as a result. Then tell the teacher that the support staff has “accepted” a significant pay cut and/or has succumbed to the no-strike law, so their hands are tied and nothing more can be accomplished. This was exactly what teachers unions did in 2019-20. After isolating a teacher from support staff, despite the government making it a test case for imposing the 1% salary cap enforced in Bill 124, the teachers’ union called her one-day strike in a series of toothless neighborhoods. I called. In late February 2020, they allowed her to go on strike for a day statewide, sparking widespread enthusiasm among workers. They then took advantage of the pandemic to impose the same pay caps on members that the OSBCU bureaucracy had agreed to.
If education support workers and teachers win, it all depends on ordinary workers taking control of contract disputes themselves. This includes not what government and union bureaucrats purport to be “fair” or “affordable”, but rather a general commission of justice so that educated workers can advance their own demands based on what they need. You have to build a network. These commissions must unite all education workers and deny systematic attempts by unions to foster petty artificial divisions based on professional designation or union affiliation. Must.
Educators who are ready to form a General Committee should discuss with their colleagues the requests submitted by the Ontario General Committee of Educators. These include an immediate 50 percent pay raise for education support staff and a raise above inflation for all other workers, tens of billions of dollars in additional investment in public education, and eliminating her COVID-19 Includes strategies for Workers should convene meetings in schools to form committees, pass resolutions supporting OEWRFC and its demands, and reach out to workers in other sectors of the economy to support the struggle. Auto workers, miners, and other workers in the private sector have a direct interest in fighting for a strong public education system to ensure a fulfilling future for their children. They have no interest in allowing the Ford government to set an example for education workers and impose equally ruthless wage and benefits cuts across the board.
Workers who want to join this struggle should register now and attend the OEWRFC public meeting on October 11th at 7pm to discuss how to move forward.
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