With a strike deadline possibly weeks away, it’s crucial to use every moment between now and then to build broad public support for Ontario’s education workers. If education workers win, we all win, and every other fight with the Ford government will be stronger for it.
CUPE’s Ontario School Board Council of Unions represents 55,000 education workers in Ontario. They are fighting for higher wages and better working conditions. Currently members are in the midst of a strike vote. Spring recently spoke with Laura Walton, the President of OSBCU – CSCSO, about how education workers are organizing to fight for decent wages and a fair contract.
Unions have an opportunity to put the Tories on their back foot and break the back of Bill 124. This can unite workers across sectors, and push back on the broader privatization agenda. The time is now to build the confidence of workers to take on the Tories and fight for higher wages.
Being a socialist organizer means building the confidence, capacity and leadership in those around you to engage in struggle. It means being a militant where you are at.
Faced with high inflation the ruling class is driving us into a recession and fomenting unemployment in order to preserve profits. To justify this they fear monger about workers’ wages leading to a wage-price spiral. This is simply a diversion from the fact that capitalists are out to protect their profits.
Churchill is a symbol for the continued project of imperialism, colonialism and capitalist rule. Underneath the charming and quirky portrayals we are fed in the media lies a politician who supported almost every reactionary cause of his day and whose crimes in service of the empire extended across the globe.
This election has been a wake-up call. If we are going to take on the big business lobby and advance the struggles for a better world, we need to get to work in building the mass movements and campaigns that will make that possible.
On its own, the crypto crash is unlikely to trigger a wider economic meltdown. But the conditions which caused the crash — the pullback of easy money policies by the capitalist class to control inflation — could easily result in a recession. If that happens, a central question of our time of crisis is sure to reemerge: who will foot the bill?
With less than a month to go before the June 2 election Ford is leading in the polls. To change this we need to build strong movements that raise people’s expectations, put workers and racialized communities’ needs front and centre and aim to shift the political terrain to the left.
The pandemic has supersized inequality and inequity in Ontario. In the May Day tradition of fighting for a better world, we should aim to use this May Day to fight for a better Ontario for all, to boost the confidence of all those wanting to fight back against the bosses and the politicians who are fomenting racism and putting profits before people.
We shouldn’t embrace Del Duca’s vague regional living wage promise that in practice will trade off gains of social programs for wages, divide rather than unite workers, and allow employers to exploit a more fractured ESA. We need to keep building the decent work movement, to fight for a $20 minimum wage in every region and stronger employment standards for all.
While there is widespread revulsion of war, support for Ukrainian refugees and opposition to Russian oligarchs, these genuine sentiments are being driven rightward by our ruling class and corporate media.
