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Open Letter To CUPE Ontario Members
Dear Sisters and Brothers,
On Saturday, I’ll be appearing on Global TV’s Focus Ontario (6:30 pm) in a discussion about the new provincial budget. This is just one part of the work we’re doing to respond to this budget.
Last night, we convened an historic conference call of the CUPE Ontario Executive Board, the Ontario Regional Director and Assistant Regional Directors, the Sector coordinators, CUPE National researchers and CUPE legal staff to ensure our entire organization was working together on the challenges this provincial budget poses for our members.
By any objective analysis, the Ontario Liberal government’s recent budget was unfair.
It was unfair that it attempted to demonize public sector workers and their wages while providing billions of dollars of tax cuts to corporations.
It was unfair that it failed to provide adequate funding for health care that will result in continued job loss and cuts to services our families desperately need.
It was unfair that it cut a program that allowed Ontarians on Social Assistance to buy food necessary to deal with specific medical conditions, cutting the $200 a month they needed and replacing it with a paltry $6 a month overall increase.
Wage Freeze
Given the massive media attention, there have been a lot of questions about the wage freeze and what they mean for our members.
Here are the basic facts:
- Workers with Collective Agreements are not covered by this legislation. This means CUPE members are NOT covered by this law.
- Collective Agreements that are in place today with wage increases for this year, next and so on, will be funded by the government. No Local should agree to open up their current Collective Agreements under any circumstances. If you have any questions regarding this, please contact your CUPE National Representative.
- Locals going into bargaining will bargain as they always have, going to the table and negotiating the best Collective Agreement possible for our members.
There is no question that the next round of bargaining will be difficult and we will need to be coordinated as never before. Though the government stopped short of legislation, it has indicated in its budget that it won’t fund future, negotiated wage increases. For many of us, this is not new and we’ve bargained improvements for our members even when our employers have cried there was no money.
What we do have to do is ensure that we are talking early, and often, to our communities about the valuable public services we provide.
We will not allow anyone to try and brand our members as greedy simply because we want to make a living wage a living wage that we spend in our local communities, raising our children, looking after our parents and contributing to our local economies.
We need to build support for public services and hold the provincial government accountable for real and fair economic solutions for Ontario.
We know that building coalitions with members of our communities, harnessing the resources of all parts of our union and working together can affect real and positive change. We saw that in this provincial budget with the announcement of $63.5 million annual funding for child care to replace dollars cut by the Federal Harper government.
This added and needed funding was the direct result of CUPE Ontario, working with CUPE Locals and CUPE National, and community coalition partners to secure the funding needed for this valuable, public service.
We need to take the lessons from this victory and the many we’ve had before and apply them to the challenges raised by this unfair budget.
This is only one of the first of many communications you will be receiving on this matter. All of our sectoral committees are working together to keep you informed and CUPE Ontario and CUPE National are working together to ensure our members receive the assistance they need. Only by working together can we best weather the challenges before us.
There will be much more discussion about this issue at the CUPE Ontario Convention in May. I hope to have the chance to see you there and hope you’ll tune into Focus Ontario on Saturday night.
In Solidarity,
Fred Hahn, President
CUPE Ontario
