Strength in solidarity: CUPE Ontario vs. Ford
Back at the bargaining table
Negotiations between the Ontario government and the Ontario division of
the Canadian Union of Public Employees are back on the table.
On Monday, as CUPE education workers saw significant solidarity from the labour movement both regionally and nationally, Ford announced that he would repeal Bill 28 https://rabble.ca/labour/union-solidarity-ford-to-repeal-bill-28/.
Bill 28 was passed at the end of last week, and imposed a minimal pay increase
on CUPE Ontario’s 55,000 education support workers. Ford invoked the
notwithstanding clause when passing the bill to protect it from being
challenged in the courts.
Many saw Ford’s implementation of Bill 28 as a monstrous overreach.
As trade unionist Archana Rampure wrote this week, Bill 28 represented an existential attack on the right for labour to unionize https://rabble.ca/labour/bill-28-is-an-act-so-unconstitutional-it-comes-with-the-notwithstanding-clause/.
“If Ford’s Bill 28 was allowed to stand in Ontario, we all knew that every
public sector bargaining table in the country would be under threat,”
Rampure wrote. “If Ford was allowed to get away with such an attack on
all workers, then every right-wing Premier in the country would have a
nuclear option at their disposal in every round of collective bargaining
with workers. It couldn’t be allowed to happen. It shouldn’t be allowed
to happen. And as it turns out, it wasn’t allowed to happen.”
