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Workers around the world will mark March 21 as the day to recommit to building a world where all its peoples are free from racial discrimination in all its forms.
This year, racialized workers and communities face additional challenges. The last provincial budget left two million Ontarians on wait lists for public services and living in poverty. Social assistance rates have never been restored to pre-Harris levels and the minimum wage remains well below the level of a living wage.
As governments of all levels pursue austerity, it is increasingly racialized workers who are asked to pay through wage freezes, attacks on benefits, and unemployment as a result of layoffs that disproportionately affect racialized workers, young workers and women.
Racialized workers earn less on average per hour than other workers, even when they perform similar work and have similar or higher education and training. Racialized women suffer a double burden. On average, working women earn only 71% what men make, according to the Equal Pay Coalition. The Coalition points out that the “pay gap increases substantially when intersecting with other forms of discrimination. Racialized women earn 36% less than men and aboriginal women earn 54% less.”
We know that eliminating poverty is a big part of eliminating the cycle of racial injustice. Poverty prevents people from getting a good education and good jobs, and it forces people to live in inadequate and unhealthy buildings and on polluted land. By eliminating poverty, we give people more choices and more power to fight for their rights.
As a union, eliminating racism is at the very core of our beliefs. Through political action and collective bargaining, we are able to move governments and societies in a positive direction.
By negotiating pay equity, we began levelling the playing field for women and racialized workers. CUPE Ontario’s Employment Equity campaign challenges further barriers and encourages the union to bargain for equity language in collective agreements. We continuously raise the issue of equity with politicians at all levels of government.
But our ability to advocate for racial justice is under attack. The Ontario government stripped school board workers of their right to freely negotiate collective agreements – the very right we use to bargain for safe working conditions and equity. They threatened to take that right from every worker in the public sector. We fought off Bill 115, but the fight is far from over.
We face new attacks from Conservative politicians that will undermine our ability as a union to advocate for CUPE members. Our strength comes from our collective voice, and if Conservative politicians succeed in their attempts to silence our voices, then our ability to fight for workers, to eradicate poverty, to bring about racial justice, will be greatly diminished. Do not be fooled. The attacks on the Rand formula and on union political action are attacks on your rights and on the ability of working people to have a strong voice with which to stand up to corporate bosses and anti-worker politicians.
CUPE Ontario will continue fighting for racial justice, and we will continue working on our equity campaign. We are also preparing a new phase in our Collective Bargaining Works for Everyone campaign. In this new phase, our goal is to have one-on-one conversations with every CUPE member about the gains made through bargaining by CUPE and other unions that benefit all Canadians, and about the attacks being made to those rights.
To win the fight to end racial discrimination, we must raise our voices in unison. One important step is to have conversations with our sisters and brothers, our co-workers, our families, our friends, our neighbours. Together we are nearly a quarter-million workers, and together we will overcome racial discrimination.
In Solidarity,
Fred Hahn, President Candace Rennick, Secretary-Treasurer
