OPSEU getting ready to fight
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the popularity of the governing Lib eral party. Premier Dalton McGuinty, in his spring budget, demanded ma jor concessions to balance the books at the expense of public services, and threatened to privatize ServiceOntario (which provides drivers’ licenses, birth certificates, etc., for a fee).
OPSEU members need protection for jobs, pensions, wages, and benefits— not privatization. The OPS is also bar gaining at the same time as the liquor board employees’ division and the community college teachers (CAAT Academic).
McGuinty is expected to use dirty tricks to divide public sector workers. In bargaining with the supervisory workers’ group AMAPCEO, McGuinty tabled rollbacks on job security, in sured health benefits, reductions to sick leave entitlements, and the elimi nation of compensation option credit days, coupled with a four-year freeze on salary, no merit or pay for perfor mance adjustments, and permanent elimination of P4P.
This will likely be the most difficult round of bargaining in the union’s his tory. Increasingly it looks like AMAP CEO may go on strike for the first time.
OPSEU President Smokey Thomas has advised members to prepare for a possible strike by paying down debts, delaying major purchases, and saving up some money. A good way to avoid a strike is to be well prepared for one. Education is key, and so is leadership.
What can be said about the education and preparation of the membership by the union leadership? Since this could be the most important bargaining since the ultra-right-wing Tory Mike Harris days of the mid-90’s, the union will require a higher level of militancy. It requires the building of relation ships with the rest of the labour move ment, particularly to build towards an unlimited general strike to challenge the broad anti-worker agenda under way.
While not officially affiliated with the New Democratic Party, OPSEU is supporting the NDP candidate in the upcoming provincial by-election in Kitchener-Waterloo, 90 minutes west of Toronto. A Liberal victory would give McGuinty a majority of seats in the On tario Legislature.
We can imagine what he would do to public services and working people in general with that majority. OPSEU needs to help forge a working-class united front by affiliating to the New Democratic Party and by driving NDP policy towards a Workers’ Agenda. n