In marking Earth Day 2023, CUPE Ontario offers support and solidarity to the movement of working people who are tackling the climate crisis to ensure a just and equitable future for all.
In the midst of increasing urgency around a rapidly heating world, CUPE Ontario affirms that the fight against climate change is a fight against capitalism, and that building worker power is vital to learning to wield our political power.
The work of CUPE Ontario’s Climate Justice Committee highlights the role that workers play in the call for urgent action to stop climate disaster and the many ways that CUPE members can ensure a safe, stable and liveable planet, with green jobs and clean communities for all.
“Workers know that climate change is real and is happening now, but we also know that working people are not to blame for the climate crisis. Unchecked corporate greed and unresponsive governments are the true culprits,” said Tiffany Balducci, CUPE Ontario Second Vice-President and chair of the Climate Justice Committee. “We need a mass movement of working people to rise up and fight for climate justice to ensure a just and equitable future for all. This includes building worker power to wield our political power.”
CUPE Ontario also unites in solidarity with other movements for change, with the overarching goal of building a world in which people care for each other and for the planet. Part of that goal includes the recognition that the fight for climate justice is equally a fight for racial, gender and economic equity.
“Climate justice is racial justice is gender justice is economic justice,” said CUPE Ontario Secretary-Treasurer Yolanda McClean. “Our struggles are linked. The Canadian status quo is environmentally racist and Canada has a legacy of environmental racism. Climate change impacts everyone, but Indigenous, Black, and racialized communities are impacted far more.”
She noted that the UN Human Rights Council recently recognized the universal right to a clean, healthy, safe, and sustainable environment “but the truth is many equity-deserving and historically oppressed communities in Ontario do not have this.”
CUPE Ontario members know that collective action produces big change and the Climate Justice Committee urges them to use their skills as organizers, leaders and educators for collective action to stabilize the climate. The Committee recommends the following actions for locals, sectors and councils:
- Pass CUPE National’s Climate Emergency Declaration in your local.
- Join the grassroots, member-led CUPE Climate Activist Facebook Group.
- Look for the Climate Justice Action Toolkit that will be launched at CUPE Ontario Convention in May 2023. This toolkit will have resources for all union activists seeking to get involved in saving our planet.
- Listen to the CUPE Cast podcast about climate justice.
- Learn more about Doug Ford’s PC policies, such as the paving of our greenbelt and cancelling green energy projects, and take that information back to your local for action.
- Learn more about the role that corporations and militaries play in the climate crisis.
- Invite a member from the Climate Justice Committee to speak with your local.
CUPE Ontario President Fred Hahn urged locals to take up the recommendations of the Climate Justice Committee, noting that they were vital elements of labour’s challenge to the Ford PCs’ record on the environment:
“The damage that Doug Ford inflicts on our environment is part and parcel of his attacks on other things that Ontarians hold dear, like public services, equity, and democracy. CUPE Ontario’s resistance to legislation like Bill 23 is inextricably bound to our determination to respect and advocate for Indigenous rights, democratic rights, and workers’ rights, all of which are essential to true climate justice. There is no better time to remind ourselves of that fact than Earth Day and no cause that is more intertwined with our union’s values.”
