This Labour Day, we gather in parks, on city streets and in our communities to honour the generations of workers who fought for every labour right we hold today. It’s also the day to recommit ourselves to taking on the forces that want to deny us our power as workers and to resolve to fight back with our courage, determination and solidarity.
CUPE Ontario’s theme for this year’s Labour Day is “Rise, Resist, Reclaim” – the call to action that we introduced at our 2025 convention and one that is relevant to the challenges we face now. It is an appeal to every worker who refuses to accept exploitation, injustice, and the erosion of our hard‑won rights.
This year, we add to our Labour Day 2025 celebrations by recalling of some great CUPE victories of this year, along with the members who made them happen, including
- The decisive, industry-changing win by the flight attendants of CUPE’s Air Canada Component. Their defiance of a back-to-work order from the federal government was a tremendous victory for working people and won them better wages and an end to unpaid hours.
- The weeks-long strike by members of CUPE 1750/Ontario Compensation Employees Union, who stood fast against the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board’s demand for concessions and against the chronic understaffing and high workloads that hurt services to sick and injured workers.
- The members of CUPE 2073, workers at Canadian Hearing Services, who stood up for services for Deaf, deaf-blind and hard-of-hearing Ontarians. They struck for better wages and more secure staffing to better serve their communities.
- Personal care workers of CUPE 5525, in their first round of contract negotiations, who chose to strike against Villa Colombo Homes for the Aged rather than accept a contract that would have cut their benefits and left them earning poverty-level wages.
- The members of CUPE 1656 in the Region of Waterloo, who stood up to a duplicitous employer that reneged on its wage offer and held it to account for years of below-market wages that had left the region struggling to recruit and retain workers.
Only the power of workers acting in solidarity could have beaten the forces arrayed against them – and it did. But when we win, our victories always take place against a political and economic landscape designed to frustrate our demands for equity and fairness for workers.
Doug Ford’s snake-oil salesman routine is meant to fool Ontarians into believing that he and his fellow Conservatives are “protecting Ontario jobs.” We know, however, that instead of investing in the public services that actually make life better for Ontarians, Ford’s Conservatives are more interested in spending billions of dollars on US consultants; on contracts for companies that use artificial intelligence to determine eligibility for social assistance; and on plans for small modular nuclear reactors from the US tech sector.
As millions of poor and working-class people in Ontario struggle, Ford’s Conservatives are all too generous with subsidies to private corporations – from Hydro subsidies that mostly benefit big to gifting $62 million to Shoppers Drug Mart for “meds checks.”
Meanwhile, public services go begging and even bodies like the Association of Municipalities of Ontario have compared the province’s municipal funding to the Hunger Games.
Our power as working people lies in our ability to rise to these challenges and to fight for what makes life fairer, more equitable, and more just for the entire working class. Each CUPE Ontario campaign, each rally, each local’s picket line is a stand against the widening gap between the rich and the rest of us, and against governments that side with employers instead of the people who make our communities work.
As we celebrate and honour the solidarity, struggle, and hope that fuel our struggle, on this Labour Day let us rise together, resist together, and reclaim the future we deserve.
