Please Click Here to find recent news, events and information from CUPE Ontario.
The challenges were many, but CUPE Ontario, its Committee chairs, dedicated members and allies, kept the pressure on the Ontario government in all sectors during 2007. Along with substantive wins, the groundwork was done to build successful campaigns in 2008.
January
· CUPE Ontario and the Heath Care Workers Coordinating Committee (HCWCC) launch a mass campaign calling for a 3.5 hour standard of care in long-term care facilities as part of Bill 140. Radio advertising, deputations at public hearings, talks with the Health Minister’s office and mass member mobilization pays off. The government agrees to review staffing and care standards, reduce reporting paperwork and recognize its support of the not-for-profit long-term care homes sector.
· CUPE Ontario, the Ontario School Board Coordinating Committee (OSBCC) and Niagara area Educational Assistants (EAs) urge the Ontario government to improve education funding and resources allocated to special education. Calling EA working conditions intolerable,’ President Sid Ryan invites government to work with CUPE to change the funding formula, establish policies on violence and set standards concerning training and safety equipment.
February
· Pink CUPE scarves and flags dominate a mass rally at Queen’s Park as part of the National Day of Action to Reduce Tuition Fees. Along with garnering extensive media coverage, CUPE Ontario placed transit ads in four cities to publicize the day and distributed campus materials calling tuition fees another form of user fees.
· Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU) President Michael Hurley, CUPE Ontario President Sid Ryan and Secretary-Treasurer Fred Hahn and CUPE members meet with the 14 Chief Executive Officers running LHINs. At a special conference, our leadership advises members that LHINs will create a health care market,’ which will become evident after the October election. Members pledge their commitment to keeping health care services public.
· OMERS President Paul Haggis steps down before his contract ends. CUPE Ontario President Sid Ryan had warned Haggis that he needed to work with CUPE and other members in attempting to achieve just governance of the pension plan. In CUPE’s opinion, Haggis and the Board fell out on how to move forward with supplemental planning and the new governance model.
March
· CUPE Ontario, OCHU and the Ontario Health Coalition unleash British MP Frank Dobson, former U.K. Minister of Health under Tony Blair, to challenge those who want to make a market of our health care system. Dobson tours the province and scores major media coverage with Ontario dailies, TVO’s The Agenda, CTV’s Canada AM and CBC Newsworld.
· CUPE Ontario launches radio ads in the GTA area to support both CUPE 218 Durham Public School Board members and CUPE 1483 members at the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board. The ads call for $375 million in custodial and maintenance funding to be restored as part of the funding formula.
· CUPE Ontario and the Region bring busloads of striking CUPE 218 workers from the Durham Public School Board to a mass demonstration at Queen’s Park as the spring budget is announced. The rally is part of the Fair Funding Campaign to fix the flawed funding formula. The workers settle in April.
· CUPE Ontario and OUWCC organize a rally with MP Peggy Nash, MPP Cheri DiNovo, and City Councillor Paula Fletcher to support striking CUPE 3261 workers at University of Toronto Press. They demand that the employer honour the City’s motion supporting a $10 minimum wage. After a four-week strike, the part-time workers win a phased-in wage increase to reach the $10 mark.
· CUPE Ontario and partners win the largest government investment in the Association for Community Living sector in years. Ontario announces $200 million in funding for developmental services, a direct result of a coordinated campaign called, We Count Too. The government is inundated with thousands of postcards, emails, and phone calls from workers, their employers, supported individuals and their families, and meetings with labour leaders.
April
· At the annual OSBCC conference, Education Minister Kathleen Wynne gets an earful from Educational Assistants (EAs). She is told how workloads have been intensified, conditions of work have deteriorated, and hours of work have been cut because of the faulty funding formula. A survey of 4,000 EAs shows that 84% of them have experienced violence on the job.
· CUPE Ontario’s Rainbow Committee launches the first of three anti-racism forums held this year on Employment Equity, Political Participation and Racial Profiling, and the Justice System. Attendance is standing room only for U.S. activist Loretta Ross who tells participants to steer away from divisive strategies that only serve to strengthen those with existing power, wealth and control.
May
· OHCU and the Ontario Health Coalition win a court order forcing disclosure of documents regarding the Brampton P3 hospital. They show that the McGuinty Liberals knew the deal with a private consortium to build Brampton’s William Osler Health Centre could cost as much as $300 million more than if it was publicly financed and administered.
· CUPE 4384 and CUPE Ontario form a community coalition to fight the Joint Nipissing Hospital laundry closure, which would send 26 jobs down the road to Sudbury. CUPE locals in the North Bay area join the movement to keep jobs local. North Bay CUPE District Council President Henri Giroux leads the charge, and eventually makes this an election issue when he runs as the NDP candidate in the fall election.
· A new Convention Accessibility Committee works to ensure that CUPE Ontario’s 44th annual convention in Windsor is accessible. Convention delegates are unequivocal in supporting an agenda for change that will bring a fresh approach to everything from staff hiring, greater diversity in board leadership to CUPE Ontario’s place within the national union.
June
· In a mass celebration at Queen’s Park, over 90 community social service agencies, labour and community allies send a message to the Ontario government that it needs to reinvest in the sector. Organized by a joint agency-labour steering group of which CUPE Ontario is a key member, the event prompts the Community and Social Services Minister to request a meeting with the group.
· CUPE Ontario and its Pink Triangle Committee send the message during Pride week that the union and its members are unstoppable when it comes to providing vital services to Ontario’s queer and trans communities and fighting to ensure that those services are kept strong and public.
· From Queen’s Park to Thunder Bay, CUPE Ontario leaders and members participate in marches and rallies to stand in solidarity with Aboriginal Peoples on their National Day of Action. The day highlighted the many grievances besetting their communitieseverything from 125-year-old land claims to abject poverty to 100 Ontario communities on permanent boil water orders.
· At a joint jurisdictional committee meeting, chairs from the five sectors and CUPE Ontario decide on key issues for the provincial election campaign. Along with sectoral issues, they identify public services, jobs, poverty, equality and the environment as important issues for CUPE Ontario’s election messaging.
July
· The Ontario Health Coalition and CUPE Ontario organize residents of Uxbridge and Midland to vigorously fight back to protect local hospitals and health services facing closure. The coalition is successful in stopping a merger of Huronia District Hospital with Catholic-run Penetanguishene General Hospital that would have put reproductive services such as abortions, vasectomies and other procedures at risk.
· CUPE Ontario and OSBCC put the province on notice that it will wage advertising campaigns during the election regarding the Liberal failure to fix the funding formula. Its tally of school board budgets show that over 60% of school boards plan to make staff cuts in 2007-2008 as they struggle to arrive at mandated balanced budgets.
August
· The advocacy work of CUPE Ontario, OCHU and Health and Safety staff pays off with the announcement of a new provincial regulation that will protect nurses from life-threatening diseases like SARS and Avian Flu. The government will purchase respirators and mandate use of needle-less systems in Ontario hospitals.
· A record 11 CUPE candidates run in the provincial election as NDP candidates. They include CUPE Ontario President Sid Ryan and his Executive Assistant Antoni Shelton, Henry Bosch (CUPE 1019), Ric Dagenais (CUPE National), John Grima (CUPE 82), Henri Giroux (CUPE 146), Shaila Kirbria (CUPE 1281), Pauline Kulhmann (CUPE 5666), Gail McCabe (CUPE 3903), Nigel Moses (CUPE 3902) and Catherine Robinson (CUPE 2936).
September
· OMECC, along with CUPE Ontario and CUPE National, pledge resources and volunteers to support the campaigns of CUPE candidates in the provincial election. OMECC is also a key partner in the Ontario Electricity Coalition and Fair Deal for Our Cities campaigns running during the election period.
· In the wake of a paltry $309 million funding announcement for schools over two years announced by Premier McGuinty in August, CUPE Ontario and the OSBCC launch a week-long advertising campaign urging the electorate to vote for candidates who will fix the school funding formula now.
· Leaders from CUPE Ontario and the OUWCC join striking CUPE 2424 workers on the picket line at Carleton University. They call on all political parties to stop the underfunding of post-secondary education, saying that striking workers bear the brunt of such underfunding.
· CUPE Ontario launches its election campaign at Labour Day events throughout Ontario, calling on voters to Put People First.’ Its campaign bus, with giant caricatures of McGuinty and Tory, begins a 7,684 km tour visiting 20 cities and garnering feature media coverage estimated at $340,000 in value.
· HCWCC and CUPE Ontario again call on the Liberals to implement 3.5 hours of care standard in long-term care facilities. They release a study showing that 86% of front line workers work short-handed anywhere from once to 20 times a month when caring for elderly and frail residents.
October
· The CUPE Ontario election bus pulls into Sudbury to draw attention to a bottled water forum sponsored by CUPE 4705 and the Polaris Institute. CUPE Ontario sends out a province-wide message calling on voters to elect a government that will protect water as a public good and a fundamental human right.
· The Ontario government announces it will develop a poverty reduction strategy with targets on the eve of a massive Vote Out Poverty event, for which CUPE Ontario has provided sponsorship funding and human resources to organize the event.
· CUPE Ontario and the OSBCC release a study showing that Ontario schools have 6,000 fewer Educational Assistants (EAs) than they need because of the faulty funding formula. In 2006-2007 alone, the formula resulted in an estimated $189 million funding shortfall for EAs.
· The Ontario Health Coalition releases a report called, First Do No Harm: the Evidence from Ontario’s Experience with For-Profit Diagnostic and Hospital Clinics. It contains evidence of higher costs, worsening staff shortages and closures of local health services caused by for-profit clinics of the exact model proposed by Conservative leader John Tory.
· Ontario delegates walk off the floor of National convention to protest the defeat of a resolution that would have re-opened the national strike fund to campaigns supporting strikes of a political nature.
· The Liberal government promises to look into where money meant for personal support workers (PSWs) actually ended up, thanks to lobbying by CUPE 4308, CUPE PSWs and CUPE Ontario. A year earlier, the government gave money amounting to $1.49 per hour to improve wages and working conditions of PSWs in home care, but many employers did not use the money to benefit workers directly.
November
· On child care appreciation day, advocates, including CUPE Ontario, call on the Ontario government to meet legislated pay equity obligations for low-paid child care professionals to boost salaries. The Ontario government owes $78 million from 2006-2007 and will owe a further $467.9 million from 2008-2011 to over 100,000 women working in predominantly female workplaces such as child care centres that use the proxy comparison method for pay equity.
· On the eve of the Ontario government’s Throne Speech, CUPE Ontario says the province can help meet its goals for lowering poverty by fully restoring labour rights and the right to organize.
· At the OFL’s 50th anniversary convention, a lingering division between the public and private sector unions that began during the Bob Rae years emphatically comes to an end. They stand strong on the principle of the workers’ right to strike, refuting the direction of the recent Magna-CAW deal. OFL members then endorse an economic strategy to fight for jobs, recognizing that manufacturing jobs contribute to the tax base of communities that funds public services.
· Five CUPE members including Andrew Brett (VP Youth), Edgar Godoy (VP Visible Minority), Teresa Colangelo (VP Workers with Disabilities) and Donna Wiebe (Labour Council Rep) are elected to the OFL in addition to Sid Ryan, Candace Rennick (VP Affirmative Action) and Irene Harris (re-elected as OFL Secretary-Treasurer).
December
· Over 750 delegates from Ontario local unions attend an emergency leadership meeting. They vote on five resolutions that together form an agenda for negotiations with CUPE National about significant changes in CUPE Ontario’s relationship with it. The resolutions cover: access to the strike fund by every member; taking measurable action on equality; ensuring CUPE implements national policy directed by convention; getting our fair share of resources; and moving to consensus on decision-making.
· CUPE Ontario’s Injured Workers committee, in partnership with the Ontario Network of Injured Workers Groups, call on the Ontario government to reverse the effects of a law that has caused injured workers to lose 20 per cent in compensation earnings over the last decade. At rallies in Toronto, St. Catharines and Windsor, they call on the government to make full restitution of the losses incurred by injured workers since the Harris government introduced Bill 99 in 1997.
COPE491/EW
