CUPE Ontario wishes a happy May Day to our comrades everywhere, and most particularly to CUPE members, whose work, solidarity, and successes are building our movement into an unstoppable force.
In North America, of course, trade unionists celebrate Labour Day in September, but it is only fitting that our union take part this worldwide celebration and honour the strength and achievements of workers past and present.
In marking May Day (officially known as International Workers Day), we celebrate workers’ resistance around the globe and declare ourselves part of a global movement of solidarity with workers everywhere.
We felt this solidarity in the attention that Public Services International drew to the striking members of CUPE 1490 in Black River-Matheson. Solidarity is the reason we call on CUPE members to support the regularization campaign of the Migrant Rights Network, which calls on the federal government to fulfill its promise of permanent resident status for undocumented people in Canada. Solidarity is the reason we urge members to respond to the call of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions to stand with Palestinians on May Day.
There’s no doubt that our labour movement is gaining ground and growing. This May Day, we have 2000 more CUPE comrades at the University of Waterloo, graduate teaching assistants and research assistants who voted more than 90 percent in favour of unionizing. Toronto also now has its first organized Starbucks, the fourth location in Ontario to unionize with the United Steelworkers. We salute too the 4000 newest United Auto Workers (UAW) members at Volkswagen in Tennessee and send our solidarity to the Mercedes workers in Alabama voting later in May on their union certification with UAW.
The spirit of resistance lives in us. Every day we see public sector workers fighting back against austerity, underfunding and privatization. In our own union, thousands of members have waged battles so that workers after them can have and earn more; these labour heroes include the members of CUPE 1490, municipal workers in Black River-Matheson, where a dispute has stretched for more than six months; the academic workers of CUPE 3903 at York University, where workers were on strike for two months; and the library workers of Bradford West-Gwillimbury, members of CUPE 905, who struck for two-and-a-half months to win their first contract.
In fact, one in every two Ontario unionized workers has been on strike since 2019.
Why is that something to celebrate? Because at its core, a strike is a show of strength and resistance. Strikes also prevent complacency among union members and provide that crucial reminder that protecting workers’ rights always means organizing and speaking out, and sometimes means withdrawing our labour.
Strikes are also a reaction to the turbo-charged capitalism we have seen take off over the last four years. Rents have doubled; food prices have tripled and quadrupled. While Canada’s top CEOs make more in one day than the average worker earns in a year, public sector workers are robbed of their wages by austerity budgets and legislation like Bill 124.
It’s no wonder that working people are fighting back.
On May Day, we remind ourselves that they only way to reverse the trends of exploitation and injustice is to organize, because unions are the only effective way to stake out some form of economic fairness in a rotten system.
May Day is a day to recognize and celebrate the collective action we take, the strength of working people around the globe and our determination to build a better world.
