01)
PV Ontario Bureau
Close to 30,000
municipal workers, organized into three CUPE Locals, are facing Toronto Mayor
Rob Ford and a right-wing majority on City Council, with Canada-wide
implications for years to come.
The Ford administration
have made it clear that their main aim is to privatize, contract out, and
eliminate city services, and to break the back of the union whose members
deliver these services.
As CUPE Local
416 President Mark Ferguson said in late December, "This round of
negotiations will be a watershed for city services right across the county. If
we lose this battle in
Paul Moist,
National President of CUPE, has called the negotiations in Toronto "our
PATCO moment" ‑ a reference to the air traffic controllers in the US
who were all fired by President Ronald Reagan in his first act after being
elected. Moist has called on CUPE locals across
The three
unions representing outside workers (Local 416), inside workers (Local 79), and
library workers (Local 4948) have tried to negotiate with the city through the
fall. But they have been stymied by city negotiators who refused to bargain
seriously, or to provide any figures on the city's financial position, other
than public announcements of catastrophic financial crisis.
Instead, the
city has laid charges against Local 79 of bad faith bargaining, in a pre‑emptive
move to secure public support. Local 79 had asked the city to open the
books on its financial situation, citing the $139 million year‑end
surplus which public organizations are demanding should be plowed back into
services, not Ford's "rainy day" fund.
The unions,
and many organizations, have also questioned the grossly inflated $779 million
budget shortfall projected for 2012 as a creation of the Ford administration.
About $500 million is the gap caused by chronic under‑funding, and is
usually covered with funding provided by the province (which would rather cough
up for
The unions
have indicated they are not intending to strike, but expect the city to lock
them out as early as mid-January. The city has made no secret of the fact it
hopes a winter lockout will demoralize picketers and hurt the union. As well,
the just‑released budget includes layoffs and the elimination of 2,338
jobs ‑ another nail in the coffin of public services, and another attempt
to split and demoralize city workers and their unions.
Under the
rubric of ending so‑called "jobs for life" provisions in the
current collective agreement, the Ford administration is aiming to strip job
security provisions which workers fought hard to secure in previous agreements,
and which are a significant obstacle to Ford' slash and burn agenda. The city
is also demanding cuts and take‑aways to almost
every part of the existing collective agreement.
Linking the
attack on municipal workers' jobs with the attack on public services is a
challenge the union has already taken up, with a fall PR campaign of posters
and ads called "Taking Care of
Without
recall legislation, there is no simple way to unload the Mayor and his brother,
Deputy Mayor Doug Ford. They and other right-wing Councillors
were elected on a platform of cutting unpopular taxes levied by the previous
administration (under the City of
The
"gravy", it's now becoming evident, was not the $14,000 tab for an
end‑of‑term goodbye dinner paid for by the public when outgoing Councillor Kyle Rae used up his expense account treating
friends and supporters. It's the public sector workers who deliver an extensive
range of public services in Toronto every day, including libraries, child care,
transit, social services, parks and recreation, garbage collection and
disposal, public health, public housing, school food and nutrition programs,
programs for at‑risk youth and seniors, HIV‑AIDS services, homeless
shelters and transitional housing, settlement services, and much more.
Last July, a
mass public movement against the cuts was born after Ford brought in KPMG to
prepare a list of services not mandated by provincial legislation to be cut in
the 2012 budget. Over 300 individuals and organizations signed up to make
presentations against the cuts, but only one day was set for the hearings which
went through the night before adjourning at 7 am.
Stop the Cuts
was formed, and demonstrations and public education and organization began
across the city. The Labour Council became very
visible as labour once again moved into the fray. One
In early
December, two days were set aside for public presentations to the Budget Committee,
and once again almost 300 presenters signed up. Speaker after speaker laid out
the horrendous impacts, begging or demanding that the proposed cuts be stopped.
Doug Ford wrote a cheque for $1,000 to one of the
school food programs in his ward. The message wasn't missed: in future,
charitable works will replace social programs in
Progressive councillors tried to draw out presenters with questions
about the services they were losing, but were cut short repeatedly by Budget
Chair Mike Del Grande who said "You're wasting time!"
Communist
Party (
Many others
said similar things, but none were heeded by the Budget Committee. The Stop the
Cuts Committee, supported by the Labour Council, One
Toronto, and other organizations have organized a mass demonstration against
the budget for January 17, 5:30 pm, at City Hall. Council is expected to vote
on the budget on Jan. 17, 18, or 19. This will be a critical moment for the
city and for unionized city workers.
The Communist
Party is calling on all its members and supporters to come out on Jan. 17, to
join workers on their picket lines, and to support them in every way possible,
including through phone calls and letters to City Councillors
and the Mayor, letters to the Editor, calls to phone‑in radio and TV talk
shows, and messages of support and solidarity.
This struggle
will have repercussions across
(The above
article is from the January 1-31, 2012, issue of People's