Thousands of community and social service workers in Ontario, unionized under OPSEU, are currently on strike or locked out of their workplaces as they fight the provincial government’s chronic mishandling of their sector.
These workers, over 4,500 of them, are taking action as part of OPSEU’s “Worth Fighting For” campaign. Their main demands are an increase in provincial funding for the social service sector and retroactive pay for wages lost due to Premier Doug Ford’s unconstitutional Bill 124.
Heightened tensions at the picket lines
Some of the workers have been on strike since May 25. Since then, tensions have sharply escalated between workers and their employers.
OPSEU claimed that several employers have chosen to lock out workers rather than collaboratively pressuring the province for adequate funding. Employers at Community Living London and Sistering in Toronto have been using replacement workers, creating tensions with the strikers. Sistering in Toronto uses police officers to escort replacement workers into the workplace each morning and during shift changes. Workers at the Sistering picket line reported that when the police arrived last Friday, they began shouting at and pushing striking workers and community supporters while claiming they were there to ensure everyone’s safety.
Sistering workers were concerned about their employer’s reckless decision to bring the police to the picket lines. Sistering, like many community and social service agencies in Ontario, claims to operate within an anti-oppressive framework, so it is baffling to the workers that their employer can so easily call the police on their own workers who are exercising their legal right to strike.
“We had our service users join us at the picket line on Friday. Most of them are individuals with complex trauma. So it is tragic that they had to experience the incident with the police on Friday,” said a Sistering worker.
Service users and the community are standing with workers on the picket lines because they understand that workers, not policymakers and politicians, are the ones who deliver the care they need. The employers’ decision to not only bring in scab workers but also risk retraumatizing a community already faced with state violence by calling in the police to push around picketers is harming service users, not helping them.
The workers are also concerned that the replacement workers are not properly trained to support service users. Many of the striking workers on the picket line have worked for Sistering for years. In addition to the knowledge and skills developed through their training and work experience, they have cultivated strong relationships with their service users, which are key to performing their roles successfully. Even if the replacement workers undergo full, proper training (no easy feat for such specialized work), they cannot build strong relationships with service users in such a short period of time.
Workers fighting to fund the frontlines
Ontario’s social service sector operates on a decentralized, transfer-payment system. The provincial government, through ministries such as the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services and the Ministry of Health, sets overarching policies and provides the bulk of core funding to non-profit agencies to deliver the services. These agencies rely heavily on provincial funding. For instance, Sistering reported in its 2024-2025 financial statement that 40.2% of its overall revenue came from provincial funding.
Since taking office, Doug Ford has neglected to adequately fund the social service sector. The sector took another blow in 2019 when the provincial government legislated Bill 124, which capped wage increases for public sector workers at one per cent while the cost of living was skyrocketing. Though Bill 124 has since been declared unconstitutional and many public sector workers have received their court-ordered retroactive wage increases of 6.5% or more to make up for what was stolen from them under Bill 124, many community and social service workers at smaller, underfunded agencies are still waiting for the backpay of wages they are legally owed.
The provincial government’s underfunding, coupled with Bill 124, has pushed the sector to the breaking point. Many of the social service agencies in Ontario have struggled to hire or retain workers. Workers who remain face an unmanageable workload, constant burnout, and an increase in violent incidents in the workplace.
The workers on the picket lines are clear that they are not fighting their employers but the provincial government, and they wish their employers understood that. Workers at Sistering said their employer has been trying for years to secure adequate funding from the provincial government, without success, and it is now the workers’ turn to try. “Our employer should have been out here supporting us instead of calling the police on us,” said one of the workers.
These community and social service workers have a real chance to push the provincial government into properly funding the social services on which so many Ontarians depend. Everybody in Ontario should join their fight to preserve the services that we need to keep us, our loved ones, and our communities alive and thriving.
Our main task is to build the broader public support necessary for the workers to win this fight. Each of us needs to organize active solidarity within our communities — whether at workplaces, unions, schools, or in community groups. Invite your co-workers or fellow union members to visit the picket lines with you, or plan a phone zap where your community members can call their MPPs together to pressure them to support the workers’ demands. Together, we can help these workers win.
Find a picket line near you by clicking here and invite your friends, family, and coworkers to join!
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