01) BILL 115 ISN'T GONE - BUT ONTARIO GOVERNMENT MIGHT BE
By Liz Rowley, leader of the Communist Party (Ontario)
Ontario Education Minister Laurel Broten says that the government will repeal its vicious anti-labour Bill 115 on January 23 ‑ just 2 days before the Liberal leadership convention and a massive OFL‑Common Front demonstration. But this "is a meaningless gesture and shallow response to the chaos it has created in schools", says the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario (ETFO).
"The premier and education minister are deluding themselves if they think the repeal of Bill 115 will promote goodwill and stability in the education sector and restore their popularity," said ETFO President Sam Hammond. "They used the bill and are now trying to make it disappear in the most crass of political acts. It's a sleight of hand that ETFO members and most Ontarians will see through."
Passed in early September with the support of the Tories, Bill 115 strips elected School Boards and unions in the education sector of their rights to free collective bargaining and the right to strike. The intent was to take $1.6 billion in wages and benefits out of collective agreements, to pay down the $14 billion provincial deficit, while also off‑setting the costs to implement provincially mandated full day kindergarten.
The unions have launched a Charter challenge, arguing that Bill 115 infringes on workers' rights to freedom of association. The challenge continues, despite the government's efforts to make the Bill "disappear".
The government also introduced a second Bill to extend the suspension of free collective bargaining and the right to strike right across the public sector. That Bill died when the Liberal minority government prorogued Parliament after the Tories refused to support it, demanding an election instead.
The NDP opposed both Bills, and voted against Bill 115, arguing that the same concessions could be achieved voluntarily.
Only the Communist Party opposes the Bills because they attack free collective bargaining, and force working people to shoulder the costs of an economic and political crisis caused by neo‑liberal policies and unlimited corporate greed.
"It's the banks and the biggest corporations that caused the 2008 crisis, aided and abetted by Liberal and Conservative governments that helped them do it and then bailed them out afterwards. Workers didn't cause the crisis, and they shouldn't pay for it," says the CPC (Ontario).
On Jan. 3, the Minister of Education invoked Bill 115 and imposed 385 contracts on teachers, educational workers and school boards across the province. Despite months of threats and vilification, only 65 of 450 collective agreements had been accepted in gun‑to‑the‑head negotiations. Protests escalated, with both elementary and secondary teachers planning a Day of Protest and work stoppage in mid-January. The government took the unions to court, claiming the protests were an illegal strike under Bill 115, since contracts had been imposed and the right to strike eliminated. The court ruled for the government and the work‑day protests were cancelled. But demonstrations continued, along with the decision not to carry out unpaid, voluntary extra‑curricular activities.
Bill 115 is strongly opposed by the general public, which sees the Liberal actions as unnecessary and undemocratic threats to fundamental labour rights which are currently the law in Ontario.
Provincial Tory leader Tim Hudak has been campaigning for months to eliminate the Rand Formula, which is the basis for the closed shop (the union shop) across Canada. Eliminating the closed shop would reprise the open shop of the 1940s, when unions had little power and no rights, and workers were fired for joining or even supporting the union. This is the "choice" that Hudak says workers (read: corporations) need in the 21st century.
The Rand Formula, Hudak says, is an "old, out of date, law". In fact, the Rand Formula was achieved by the whole working class after victories in the historic 1945 Ford strike in Windsor, and the 1946 Steel strike in Hamilton.
That's what the Tories and their corporate bosses want to undo in Canada, and that's what workers in Ontario are smelling in Hudak's campaign, Bill 115, and successor legislation affecting the broader public sector. This is "right to work" legislation, which the Canadian working class defeated in 1945‑46.
If the Liberals and Tories ‑ working alone, or together as proposed by outgoing Premier Dalton McGuinty ‑ are able to make the attack on labour and democratic rights stick, Ontario will be on its way to the right‑to‑work jurisdictions in Michigan, Indiana, and 22 other U.S. states. Teachers, educational workers, and their unions are on the front line of this attack.
The Liberal Convention and the Common Front
The candidates for the Liberal leadership are all, save Gerard Kennedy, on the same page. Most were part of the Cabinet that imposed Bill 115 and the proposed successor legislation. Kennedy, who is not expected to win, has not been clear about his differences over the Bill.
Kennedy's absence from the Legislature may give him a way to dissociate from an extremely unpopular government. The two frontrunners ‑ Pupatello and Wynn ‑ are both campaigning to win public support for those disgraced anti-labour policies, fronted by a new leader.
It's too early to say whether the new Premier will try to save the government by aligning with the Tories (who want an election, not a coalition), or with the NDP (who support austerity, but not by legislation ‑ today at any rate).
Either way, it's a slippery slope in which the corporations win, and working people lose. Already the Liberals are moving towards further privatization of public assets and resources, more user fees, and deeper cuts; while the Tories campaign to gut social assistance, cut the minimum wage, eliminate the closed shop, and privatize nuclear power plants.
In early December the Common Front of labour and its community and social allies, met in a one day conference. Participants reviewed the Common Front's first year of existence, and planned for the Jan. 26 Liberal Convention protest. They also discussed subsequent actions for a people's agenda of good jobs, higher wages and incomes, affordable housing, quality education and healthcare, strong social programs, strong civil, democratic, labour and social rights, Aboriginal rights, and environmental protections.
Those present understood they would have to fight. It was clear from those involved in the anti‑poverty movement and the occupation of the offices of the Social Services Minister, that a broad and united movement taking mass action was essential to win. What was largely missing, however, were representatives from labour, though members of the OFL Executive were prominent and supportive throughout the proceedings.
Escalating province‑wide action needed
If ever the labour movement needed friends and allies, it is now. This is the time for the Common Front and the bulk of the trade union movement to come together to roll back and defeat this anti-people agenda. Surrounded by right‑wing governments at every level, and a corporate offensive that aims to eliminate the trade union movement itself, there's no other way.
Labour must throw its weight behind the Common Front and start mapping out a forward agenda of mass escalating struggle that will gain the support of all those threatened by austerity and corporate greed.
Occupy, the Quebec student movement, and Idle No More all show the way forward.
(The above article is from the February 1-14, 2013, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)