– Striking college support staff are exposing a Greenbelt-style scandal in Ontario’s PSE –
CUPE Ontario extends its solidarity and support to the OPSEU-SEFPO members who are on strike at Ontario’s colleges.
As college support staff, these workers have a direct impact on students’ experience on campus; their jobs keep college campuses operating.
No union or its members take strike action except as a last resort. But OPSEU-SEFPO members have taken a courageous stand in demanding fair recognition for the value of their work, job security, and protections for stable, reliable services on college campuses.
Their fight comes after years of provincial underfunding for Ontario’s public colleges, made worse over the last seven years by the Ford Conservatives. Other provinces fund up to 60% of their colleges’ operating expenses, while Ontario covers a mere 25%. In the past year, 10,000 college faculty and support staff were laid off and more than 650 programs cut.
This strike also exposes the dangerous ideology of the Ford government and the threat it poses to the future and viability of Ontario’s public colleges.
It’ a scandal best described as Greenbelt 2.0 – one designed to impoverish vital public post-secondary institutions – and the workers’ power that upholds them – while enriching Conservative cronies.
OPSEU-SEFPO has thoroughly documented the many ways that the Ford government has funneled, without oversight, billions of dollars of public money to unaccountable private providers via the Skills Development Fund.
The strike by OPSEU-SEFPO members is a challenge to this shameful state of affairs.
CUPE Ontario stands with the OPSEU-SEFPO members who are defending students’ education, workers’ rights and the future public post-secondary education in the province.
We urge all CUPE members to make a plan to join their OPSEU-SEFPO comrades on the picket line and to learn more about Ford’s plan to dismantle public colleges – and what we can do together to stop them.
