OPSEU workers unbowed after weeks on strike

Over 4000 Community Services workers throughout Ontario, represented by OPSEU-SEFPO, are entering week seven of a strike, as part of the “Worth Fighting For” campaign.

Workers in developmental services, shelters, group homes, child welfare and addiction recovery services, and many others, are campaigning to re-coup money stolen across the Ontario public sector under Bill 124. Introduced by the Ford Tories in 2019, this bill stripped the public sector union right to bargain wages and benefits by limiting increases to 1% per year. OPSEU is demanding an immediate 6.5% increase.

The courts declared Bill 124 unconstitutional in late 2022 for violating basic union rights. But for workers in community services, where low-pay and precarity are the rule, the damage had already been done.

From its beginning over a year ago, Worth Fighting For has been an activist campaign, mobilizing union members at regular gatherings and labour and community events. Workers have publicized their issues and advocated for the people and families they support day in and day out.

There are five picket lines in Toronto. Other OPSEU locals, public and private sector unions and the Toronto and York Region Labour Council have shown solidarity at pickets. Local musicians and other artists have joined weekly picket line parties at Sistering, a 24/7 drop in shelter. Strikers at Surrey Place, who provide autism services, joined the Ontario Health Coalition’s mass healthcare protest on May 28.

In the Kawarthas region of Central Ontario OPSEU 358 Developmental Services (DS) workers in Peterborough, Lindsay and Halliburton have been picketing both the workplace (Community Living Trent Highlands - CLTH) and the offices of Tory MPPs Dave Smith and Laurie Scott.

Community members, OPSEU education workers, teachers, CUPE healthcare, Long Term Care, and DS workers, and ATU 1320 transit workers (Peterborough Transit) have supported the picket lines. The two Tory MPPs have remained silent, ignoring the strikers and their supporters – all of whom are also their constituents.

Instead of settling the strike, the employer, CLTH, has used public money to hire scabs and extra security, putting them up in a hotel. In response, OPSEU 358 has set up ‘hard pickets’ to disrupt scabs from entering the workplace. CLTH has not budged, bringing back the same offer members turned down 6 weeks ago – a slight to workers and their clients.

OPSEU has kept the momentum up in week seven of the strike. Banners were dropped across the province on Monday, July 6, including in Peterborough and Lindsay. On June 7, picketers showed up at the office of Interim Treasury Board president Peter Bethenfalvy in Pickering, and on June 8, buses brought strikers in from across the province for a rally and march in downtown Toronto.

On Thursday, July 9, OPSEU and representatives from the Ontario Federation of Labour planned to meet Treasury Board representatives. If a just settlement is still not reached, the strike will enter a ‘Phase 2’, including ‘visits’ to Tory MPPs during their lengthy vacations.

During this campaign, OPSEU community service locals have adopted the ‘Common Front’ strategy, used in Quebec for decades. By syncing contract durations and end dates well in advance, they have brought the power of large numbers of workers to bear on employers and the province. A year of campaigning has made the strike immeasurably stronger.

But what is really needed is broader labour movement solidarity on a much larger scale. OPSEU is only one union that organizes community service workers, who are also members of CUPE (in the main), and also of private sector unions such as Unifor, UFCW, USW, Teamsters and LIUNA. At CUPE Ontario’s last convention, activists pushed hard from the floor, calling for Common Front bargaining in every sector, as we face intransigent employers and governments. OPSEU’s Worth Fighting For campaigning strike would have been much stronger if CUPE, and other sectoral unions had coordinated agreement end dates in tandem with OPSEU.

Contracts expire for Ontario’s 255,000 education workers on August 31. Seeing the power of the Common Front strategy, Elementary and secondary teachers (EFTO, OECTA, OSSTF AEFO) and education workers (OPSEU and CUPE) have vowed to bargain together to fight Ford’s relentless education cuts.

Unionized workers organizing collectively can win in sector after sector, and rebuild our strength. The solidarity seen so far on OPSEU picket lines shows the appetite for this – unfortunately not shared at the top echelons of the labour movement.

Building maximum solidarity with workers whenever there is a fight back can change this. From OPSEU workers, to education sector workers, to healthcare workers, to airline workers – solidarity on the ground can move our labour leaders to act – let’s build it.