Ontario education workers speak out against union efforts to intimidate civilians
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Are you an Ontario educator? The Cross-Canada Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee will meet on Sunday, September 11 at 1:00 p.m. We will discuss how to proceed and the contract fights across the country. e-mail cersc.csppb@gmail.com attend.
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This week, more than 250,000 teachers and educational support staff across Ontario were forced to return to classes without an education union contract. Despite overwhelming support among educational assistants, caregivers, early childhood educators, teachers and other support staff for a joint struggle to ensure wage increases above inflation and to end austerity in public education. However, the Education Workers’ Union did not even hold a strike vote to allow the previous contract to expire, insisting on individual negotiations.
These delay tactics, deliberately aimed at demoralizing the rank-and-file workers and softening them up for the sale deal, allowed the far-right Ford administration to continue its offensive. Education Minister Steven Lecce arrogantly declared that he wanted “stability” in schools and threatened to criminalize job hunting with return-to-work laws.
The Ontario Board of Education Union Council (OSBCU), a branch of the Canadian Civil Service Union (CUPE), is currently in negotiations with the Ford government to secure contracts for 55,000 support staff. The union leadership’s main concern is to avoid a strike, indicated by the fact that they have postponed the vote until the end of the month. Voting he will close on October 2nd. This means that the bureaucracy will announce the results almost six weeks after the expiration of the previous contract. As OSBCU Chief Negotiator Laura Walton has repeatedly emphasized, a “yes” vote in a strike vote does not cause immediate action by the OSBCU bureaucracy.
Workers are outraged by the union’s attempts to prevent a joint struggle by education workers and are seeking guidance in the struggle from the newly formed Ontario General Commission for Education Workers (OEWRFC). OEWRFC was founded last month and counts teachers, parents and educational assistants as members. A massive political mobilization of the working class fighting to unite all education workers against the Ford government’s onslaught of wages and conditions and cuts in education spending.
The commission’s development unsettled the bureaucracy, and the OSBCU released a brief statement on Facebook in late August warning workers not to participate in the OEWRFC Facebook discussion group. In response to this flagrant attempt to intimidate workers, a Toronto-based manager commented: We want to provide a platform for workers to freely discuss working conditions, experiences, demands, etc., regardless of their job type, without being spied on by union bureaucrats who collect information about the most militant workers. ”
He continued, “OSBCU’s statement denouncing the Rank & File discussion group was riddled with hypocrisy and lies. It’s what you should expect from a leader.” Union bureaucracy was never transparent. They keep their members confidential on all important negotiation matters. We do not have access to meetings behind the door between government ministers and union bureaucrats. Instead, OSBCU posted a carefully edited video on its YouTube page showing what they supposedly said to the government. ”
Earlier this week, OEWRFC released a statement offering political explanation for its decision to bar Walton and other officials from its online discussion forum.
The Ontario Education Workers General Commission (OEWRFC) has made it a matter of policy to exclude education union bureaucrats from a Facebook discussion group set up by us as a forum for education workers to discuss the far right and the ongoing contract struggle. decided as The Ford administration and the raging COVID-19 pandemic.
To our group from Laura Walton, President of the Union Committee of the Ontario Board of Education in CUPE and lead negotiator on the new contract for 55,000 education aid workers with the Ford government. declined your request to join. Requests from other union officials were similarly denied. This includes Hermes Azam, the union representative of CUPE Local 4400 and a key member of the pseudo-left fightback group.
OEWRFC was formed to organize and mobilize the general education workforce, independent of the trade unions that have for decades hindered and suppressed our struggle. Our Facebook page is a forum for general workers, whether members of our committee or not, to speak freely about the demands they want to fight and how to fight for them.
Trade union bureaucrats are trying to join our committee discussion groups because they fear the development of a general rebellion that will integrate teachers, support staff and a wider section of workers. , hopes to prevent that by identifying who the key militant workers are.
There is no other credible explanation as to why these union officers sought to infiltrate our group. What they do not tolerate is that education workers are forced to work to break down the artificial differences created by CUPE and the teachers’ union. to organize outside their stifling control.
Ford has made it clear that he wants to shove a sub-inflation wage deal and austerity budgets down our throats, including criminalizing any labor action to keep us from going on strike. Walton and CUPE responded by postponing the strike vote until the fall, refusing to make peace with the government and appeal a joint struggle to the 200,000 teachers facing the same fate. The four teacher unions helped divide us, leaving us like sitting ducks to Ford’s attack. They insist on negotiating on an individual basis, making Lecce-esque pledges to maintain “stability” at the school and suggesting no action until next winter.
This is not the first time we have seen this movie. In 2019, Walton and his CUPE blatantly rejected the overwhelming strike order by signing his 11-hour contract with Ford that included the hated Bill 124 wage cap. The teachers’ union followed suit months later. Over the next two-and-a-half years, all education unions blocked our collective action against the pandemic policy of putting profit before life.
Fightback is a loyal servant and cheerleader of the union bureaucracy. In 2019, they hailed the sell-out deal Walton and his CUPE crafted with Ford as an “important victory”.
Fightback is now reaffirming its role as an advocate and defender of the bureaucracy. Despite Walton & Company’s systematic division of support workers from teachers and ploys to forestall strikes, the latest article in Fightback, co-authored by Azam, denounced union leadership. They did not even mention that Lecce was threatening us with a reinstatement law.
The serious struggles over wage hikes to curb inflation, measures to stem the spread of COVID, and investment of tens of billions of dollars in public education require the mobilization of educators and the working class as a whole, and capitalism austerity and join the struggle of the political class against wages. – cutting. All educators who recognize that we need to break free from the shackles imposed by the trade union bureaucracy and that we need to take the struggle into our own hands to join the OEWRFC Encourage
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