CUPE Social Services Workers Are Worth Fighting For!

In Ontario, if a child needs autism services, they’re put on a waitlist alongside 61,000 other kids. Meanwhile, 52,000 adults with developmental disabilities are stuck on waitlists for support. Children’s Aid agencies across the province are warehousing kids in motels and office buildings because there aren’t enough placements.

Waitlists. Broken promises. Crumbling social services.

Doug Ford has underfunded our community services to the point of crisis — and it’s pushing workers into poverty.

Social workers, child therapists, addictions counsellors, shelter workers, legal aid staff, and countless other frontline social services workers are some of the lowest paid workers in the public sector. Ford’s Bill 124 capped public sector workers’ wage increases at 1% at a time of skyrocketing inflation, forcing workers to turn to food banks, moonlight in second jobs, and rack up debt.

The legislation was struck down in 2022. Since then, Ford has been busy picking winners and losers, giving some workers the wages that were stolen from them while ignoring others – including community services workers.

Community support workers provide critical frontline services that our kids, families, and communities rely on, dedicating their lives to supporting our communities’ most vulnerable. Stability, dignity, and decent wages for workers will mean better services for all.

We can’t afford this crisis any longer. Ontario’s public services are worth fighting for – demand fair pay for frontline social services workers!

Join the fight now.

Send an email to your MPP demanding that workers in social services receive fair pay now and into the future.

We’ve already drafted an email, so all you have to do is fill out the form and hit send.

Subject: Don’t let Doug Ford erode our public services.

I’m a voting member of your constituency and I’m writing in solidarity with social services workers from CUPE Ontario, working in: developmental services; child welfare; community

agencies, youth justice; universities; children’s treatment centres; hearing services; community healthcare; and mental health and addictions agencies.

Your constituents and the workers delivering these services need funding urgently for these programs – programs which support children, women, families and individuals who need support to live.

For decades, these programs and services have been underfunded by the provincial government. Many of these services are now at a breaking point, with service cuts and layoffs.

Further, while a court ruling determined Ontario’s Bill 124 to be unconstitutional, many of these workers affected by the wage freeze imposed by this bill have not been compensated fairly. In fact, thousands of workers have not received a wage increase or backpay to compensate for lost wages.

Community support workers are some of the lowest paid workers in the public service. Some work multiple jobs to put food on the table. They deserve to be paid a livable wage for the critical services they offer our community. This is what they need from the provincial government:

• A permanent, funded, retroactive wage increase of 6.5% or more to catch up with counterparts who received backpay for the now-repealed Bill 124; and
• Increased funding to prevent further layoffs and cuts to services and to protect our services going forward.

Without immediate funding, community support services face the risk of program closures, and reduction in the quality of services that our community heavily relies on.

I am asking you, as my representative, to be an ally in this fight. The time to act is now.

Sincerely,

<Your Name>