By Past President Joanie Cameron Pritchett
It hasn’t even been one year since Premier Dalton McGuinty pledged during the October 2011 Ontario election that a Liberal government would “respect the bargaining process” and wouldn’t “tear up collective agreements.”
Yet just two weeks ago, McGuinty introduced Bill 115, the so-called “Putting Students First Act,” which violates collective bargaining rights and threatens the incomes and working conditions of tens of thousands of teachers throughout the province.
It’s one thing that the Ontario Liberal government bargains in bad faith with workers, it’s another to shut down the entire collective bargaining process itself, a cornerstone of a free and democratic society.
Of course, the new bill has absolutely nothing to do with “putting students first.” It’s the complete opposite, and forces teachers and other educational workers to pay for the financial crisis they didn’t cause. McGuinty and Minister of Education, Laurel Broten, have been exceptionally dishonest about the real effects the legislation will have on workers and the public education system in Ontario.
[blockquote align=”right”]As we know from history, if the government can do this to teachers, it can do it to any worker and union throughout the province, whether a private or public sector union.
[/blockquote] It’s not like we haven’t seen this before. Going back a full two decades since NDP Premier Bob Rae introduced his “Social Contract,” teachers’ unions and other public sector workers have been made out to be enemies of the state, through the late 1990s and Mike Harris’ “Common Sense Revolution,” and now to the current attacks on workers by the McGuinty Liberals.The Conservatives, of course, have backed him up on the Bill 100%, and have called specifically for an across-the-board wage freeze for all government workers – except, of course, for Liberal and Conservative members of the legislature, who voted themselves an enormous 25% pay raise in 2007 (only the NDP voted against the bill).
And this is at a time when the Liberal government continues to give away billions of dollars in tax breaks to corporations and banks. In fact, when looking at the combined federal-provincial corporate tax rate in Ontario, it has been almost cut in half over the past twenty year period. All of this, of course, was supposedly to “create jobs,” but no one with an even basic understanding of macroeconomics believes this.
Teachers’ unions are putting forth the fight of their lives against this legislation. The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario has vowed to fight Bill 115 and take it all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary. The good news is that many legal experts agree that considering how unconstitutional the bill really is, it may stand little chance in the courts and could be overturned.
As we know from history, if the government can do this to teachers, it can do it to any worker and union throughout the province, whether a private or public sector union.
Now is the time that unions must come together like never before in solidarity to fight this legislation, because as the old labour union phrase reminds us: an injury to one is an injury to all.
