This Labour Day, at the end of our “hot labour summer,” we celebrate the growing worker power that is flexing its muscle and making real changes in ways we haven’t seen in a generation.
In truth, this has been a hot labour year. In the last 12 months, CUPE Ontario members and other trade unions have taken on governments, corporations, and billionaires – those who would try to remove our rights and exploit our labour while denying us fairness, decent wages, job security, and a share in the prosperity we help create.
This past year, CUPE Ontario members have been at the forefront of workers fighting to claim a better deal for themselves, their families and their communities. Their courage and militancy have been fundamental to this revitalization of the labour movement, and there’s no better time than Labour Day to pay tribute to their role in this renewal.
We saw the shift start last fall: unprecedented mobilization, organization, and job action by CUPE education workers. Led by CUPE’s Ontario School Board Council of Unions, education workers defied Bill 28, one of the most draconian, anti-worker laws in our history, passed through the use of the constitution’s “nothwithstanding clause” and by a bully government that held an absolute majority. The legislation imposed a concession-riddled collective agreement on school board workers, took away their right to strike, and threatened them and their union with massive fines if they took job action. But rather than being intimidated, workers fought back: in the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assertion that “one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws,” they broke the law to change the law. In the process, they helped galvanize Canada’s entire labour movement and make the prospect of a general strike a reality. Every single school board local in Ontario, banding together through their bargaining council, deserves our ongoing recognition and thanks.
Ever since, we’ve seen this courage and audacity resonate in our own union and in others. We pay special tribute to the workers who concluded successful strike action this year, including members of CUPE 2276, developmental service workers at Community Living Port Colborne-Wainfleet; CUPE 2257 members at Family and Children’s Services of Lanark, Leeds and Grenville; members of CUPE 233, custodial and maintenance workers at Toronto Metropolitan University; academic workers, members of CUPE 3906 at McMaster and CUPE 4600, both groups fighting for respect, academic integrity and wages that reflect their skill.
This Labour Day, we also salute CUPE members in Ontario and workers from other unions – comrades who have put everything on the line in their fight for a better deal for themselves and those that come after them:
- library workers of Bradford West Gwillimbury, members of CUPE 905, who have been on strike for more than two months in support of their demands for respect and fair, flat-rate wage increase
- municipal workers in Cochrane, members of CUPE 71, who rejected a deal that failed to meet the rising cost of living and are calling on their employer to match the pattern for wage increases that has been set by other northern municipalities
- members of USW 7135, workers at National Steel Car, who ended their six-week strike with significant gains
- grocery story workers at Metro, members of Unifor 414 who, after a monthlong strike, just ratified a deal with historic wage improvements that set a new standard for grocery store workers
- Unifor 240 and 1959 members at Windsor Salt who ended an historic 192-day long strike winning significant wage increases
- IBEW 636, on the line for months for a fair deal that ends contracting out of their work and builds safer jobs at Hydro Ottawa
- Canadian Media Guild members at TVO – journalists, producers, and education workers, striking for the first time in their history for better pay and an end to casualization of their work
- ACTRA members who continue their boycott of the union-busting brands that have locked out ACTRA performers for more than a year
CUPE Ontario members who don’t have the right to strike – those in long-term care, hospitals, and elsewhere – have also campaigned, organized, bargained, lobbied and worked in coalition with other unions over the past year. These workers are tackling the people and issues that prevent them from effective delivery of the vital services we all rely on, and their fight is no less real and no less effective for being waged without recourse to strike action.
These courageous Ontario workers join their comrades in other provinces, south of the boarder in the US, and around the globe. They are all building worker power through historic levels of strike action, organizing of new unions, and fighting back against a destructive cost of living crisis.
This Labour Day, let us also remember this: everything we enjoy in our collective agreements was fought for by people who came before us – trade unionists who defended us from the worst ravages of capitalism. Now it is our turn to fight. Workers have moral obligation to fight for themselves, their futures and their communities. Of course, we can and will use court challenges and other legal means to protect our rights, but our best and most reliable route to justice and a fair deal for workers will always be to fight for what’s right and to use the power of a strike to win justice.
Workers’ struggles must inspire us, and remind us of our own power to make change. It provides the momentum to transform our “labour heat” into real and substantive wins that make life better for our members, our neighbours – for everyone. And wherever workers are engaged in those struggles, CUPE Ontario will be there with them. Because their fight is our fight. Because when we stand together and fight together, we win together!
Happy Labour Day, comrades!
Fred & Yolanda
