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On March 8, CUPE members across Ontario will mark International Women’s Day.
We have worked for more than 50 years side by side with women’s organizations and other unions to advance women’s equality. The inequality faced by women working in the public sector was a driving force behind our union’s formation, and the struggle for women’s rights is at the heart of CUPE Ontario.
We have achieved many victories – pay equity, an end to two-tiered contracts that paid different wages to men and women doing the same work, paid maternity leave and then paid parental leave, protection against harassment and unsafe work.
Unions work to create fair and equal workplaces, and as a result the income gap between women and men is much smaller in unionized workplaces. By negotiating employment equity and other important equality measures, we continue to reduce the gap.
Despite so much progress made at the bargaining table and through political action, much work remains to be done. Women in Ontario still make 28 percent less than men. More women than men earn minimum wage, and racialized women are much more likely to be in minimum wage jobs. The rate of women who are recent immigrants and working for minimum wage is almost three times the rate for the total Ontario population. According to Statistics Canada, unemployment rates for First Nations, Métis and Inuit women and women with disabilities remain significantly above the national average.
A major barrier to women’s equality continues to be the lack of access to safe, affordable, public and non-profit child care. The situation is going from bad to worse as a result of continued funding problems and child care closures. Ontario is suffering a crisis in the quality of child care. Instead of improvements, the province plans to change the current children to staff ratio to allow more children and fewer staff.
This International Women’s Day, we encourage everyone to get involved in activities to mark the day, but also to send a message to the education minister to protect and enhance the public child care working women need.
We also encourage you attend the 2014 Women’s Conference this autumn, and to talk with others in your workplaces and communities about the important work you and your CUPE Ontario sisters and brothers are doing to advance women’s rights and equality.
Together, through conversations, collective bargaining and political action, we can build a better Ontario for everyone.
