Written by Socialist Alternative members in Ontario.
“As a mom, I don’t like this deal. As a worker, I don’t like this deal.” With these words Laura Walton, the leader of CUPE Ontario’s 55,000 education workers, recommended voting yes to the offer from the Doug Ford government. Why should union members vote for a bad deal for them and their students?
A Big Step Forward …
Over the weekend of November 5 and 6, Ontario’s unions, with support from other parts of Canada, came together to say they would call a general strike in defence of CUPE’s right to strike. This was a united response to the Ontario government’s legislation imposing a lousy contract and banning the strike with the threat of huge fines. The legislation included the “notwithstanding clause” that blocked the union from legally challenging the law.
On Friday, November 4, CUPE started its strike and there were three days of rallies of solidarity in every part of Ontario. The impressive union solidarity and massive public support forced the government to back down. On Monday, November 7, the government said it would withdraw the legislation. This was a powerful demonstration of the power of organized workers. CUPE had the government on the ropes.
The unions’ response is the best answer to back-to-work legislation that usually union leaders simply give in to. Workers everywhere will have seen they do have power. When workers stand together in solidarity and action the government’s threat are empty.
… and then Back
With the withdrawal of the legislation, CUPE announced it would suspend its strike to go back to negotiations. At the time, Socialist Alternative wrote “the momentum developed over the last week has been interrupted and it may be difficult to regain it.” Unfortunately, this has proven to be the case.
At the resumed negotiations, at first the government made no significant improvement to the earlier imposed contract. CUPE threatened to go back on strike on November 21 and then suddenly on November 20 it folded, saying it would put the government’s offer to a vote of the members.
The new deal the union is recommending is for four years and has a $1 an hour raise, which is around 3.6 percent each year. This is a small improvement on the legislated contract, with a dollar rather than a percent increase, which benefits low-paid workers the most, and up from the imposed 1.5 to 2.5 percent increase. However, with inflation at over 6 percent this is a cut in real living standards. The government has not agreed to any improvements to the education conditions for students.
CUPE’s members had voted 96.5 percent in favour of strike action with a key demand of an increase of $3.25 an hour. The union had overwhelming public support. The union could have built on this to force a better deal for the workers and students. We wrote on November 7, “If Ford makes a below inflation offer, CUPE should build on the good will of the broader labour movement and society, with a mobilization for sympathy strikes leading to a 24-hour general strike.” This would have been far better than recommending a deal that, according to the union’s leader, “sucks.”
Ontario Unions
This deal is not only bad news for CUPE members. The Ontario government will use it as a benchmark for the negotiations with teachers, nurses, health workers and all the other provincial public employees. Four more years of cuts to living standards after three years of an imposed one percent a year under Bill 124. Ontario’s public sector did not learn from BC’s unions and negotiate separately and, like in BC, will not win a Cost-of-Living Adjustment, vital at a time of soaring inflation.
Scandalously, the unity of Ontario unions was short lived. By Thursday, November 17, building trades union leaders shared a platform with Ontario’s Labour Minister and Finance Minister, who only days earlier had attacked basic union rights. The Toronto Star on November 21reported that “Even some public-sector unions … were privately telling CUPE to accept. There were concerns in the labour movement that CUPE might overplay its hand after forcing Premier Doug Ford to capitulate earlier this month.”
Vote No, Build Solidarity
The action of the unions in coming together shows the power of unions and that back-to-work legislation, which is too commonly used to attack unions, can be defeated when workers stand together.
The retreat from that solidarity in the last two weeks shows the other side of the unions, a leadership unwilling to use the power of the working class to win better pay and conditions for workers and the people they serve.
Infighting and jealousy among the union tops is an old story. It undermines the movement, but it can be overcome. The CUPE strike has given us a glimpse of the power of rank-and-file workers from different unions coming together. That can and will override any pettiness from conservative-minded leaders.
