Ontario Political Forum

Thousands in Toronto participate in rally to oppose cuts to social programs, September 26, 2011.

Torontonians awoke Sunday morning to the news that a tentative agreement had been reached between the City of Toronto and 6,000 outside workers of Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 416. Details of the proposed settlement have not been released yet but Mark Ferguson, President of Local 416 said the union made numerous concessions. At the same time Mayor Rob Ford and his gang were not able to follow through with their "take it or leave it" hooliganism to unilaterally change the contract to clear the decks for unconstrained privatization. That is an important point, not only for the remaining 24,000 municipal workers still in contract negotiations, but for the entire workers' movement and its allies. The Battle for Toronto is whether Ford and his gang succeed in wrecking public services and privatizing public assets or the workers' movement and its allies prevail and humanize the social environment in Toronto. The workers' movement must ensure the outcome favours the workers and defends the rights of all.

One year ago, the City of Toronto administration headed by multi-millionaire anti-social warrior Rob Ford as mayor had just taken office.

With a monopoly media supported campaign of deception about defending the generic taxpayer he had managed to collect the votes of barely 24 per cent of Toronto residents and with that, claim an "overwhelming mandate" together with his brother and other like-minded city council representatives of private monopoly right, to implement the agenda that has followed. Overflowing with arrogance, this regime was rapidly moving to impose its retrograde version of transit development, initiate its attack on public housing and sanitation, and had announced its general aim of cutting, privatizing or selling off "everything that's not nailed down." It was already clear the thousands of city workers would be the main targets of this agenda that sought to portray their livelihoods as the alleged "gravy" Ford has evoked ad nauseum.

This agenda's aim is to put what has remained public directly in the hands of big private interests and usurp the just claims of the people, and the claims of workers on the product of their labour. This includes especially the destruction of a Canadian standard for their remuneration and security through these and other means to "pay the rich." But this is not just some special Ford brothers' perversity. On the contrary, it is in line with the drive of private monopoly interest across Canada at the various levels of government and internationally. Both the Harper government, before and after its May 2011 majority, and the McGuinty provincial government, re-elected in October 2011, pursue the same sort of objectives. The Ford regime's agenda is very much the Toronto version of the agenda affirmed by the G8 and G20, the IMF and by Harper's recent words in Davos attacking existing standards and benefits as unaffordable and calling for the degradation of services and "entitlements."

But right from those days about a year ago, the people of Toronto took up the fight to halt and reverse the reckless course of the city government. Whether it was in defence of public housing, against privatization of garbage collection, contracting out of custodial work, trampling the rights of transit workers and degrading that service, or in opposition to the cuts to recreational and cultural amenities, the public libraries, homeless shelters, daycare, nutrition programs or public health, thousands of Toronto residents went into action. They packed public, city council and council committee meetings, made official deputations long into the nights, dominated the city's official "service review," and swelled mass rallies in April, September and on January 17. This mobilization has already become a major problem for the Ford regime, obliging it to abandon some retrogressive measures for the moment, contributing to some defeats in council, and division and crisis within the regime and its shrinking council majority. All that is left of the supposed "overwhelming mandate" to cut, sell or privatize public services and assets are empty assertions about unknown voices telling the mayor to "stay the course," talk of a "silent majority" in the infamous tradition of Dick Nixon and naked exercise of power by those in office.

Right from the 2010 election campaign, Ford and company have sought to divide and set the people and workers against each other especially on the basis that since so many must survive with low incomes and lack of benefits and security, then those workers who have a degree of remuneration and guarantees in line with a Canadian standard must be deprived of that as well, this being somehow necessary and beneficial. But in the course of the struggle against this regime's anti-social agenda the reality behind its rhetoric has been increasingly exposed on this and other issues and people's consciousness is growing.

In fact, the just claims of all workers and those who are not rich are under attack, whether by destroying a standard for remuneration, targeting their defence organizations, cutting jobs and putting downward pressure on all workers, eliminating and degrading public services and programs on which people depend, and increasing user fees. The intended beneficiaries are big private and often monopoly business interests, certainly not any workers or the poor. The task facing society is affirmation of the rights of all, including a standard of security and well-being for all as humans and as workers who produce the wealth and provide the services society needs.

The city workers, especially the about 30,000 whose contracts expired on December 31, including the 6,000 outside workers of Local 416 who as of February 3 faced imminent unilateral imposition of utterly unacceptable terms and conditions of work, are engaged in a just struggle that is an integral and crucial part of the people's fight against the city's anti-social agenda. Their effort to defend their job security is an important and obvious obstacle to the regime's privatization, contracting out and elimination of public services and programs. The regime's negotiators are adamant on this point in order to have maximum freedom to put the workers on the street and redirect their former pay to contracts with big private interests and otherwise pay the rich. Hence, the defence of the workers' job security is defence of public services and programs.

As the providers of public services and programs these workers have a just claim to a level of security and well-being in line with a Canadian standard and the work they perform, and this favours the stability and quality of the services as well. Likewise, defence of this standard for terms and conditions of work favours and is part of the struggle for such a standard for all workers. Furthermore, the strength and very existence of the union as the workers' defence organization is at stake here, and victory for the city workers favours continuation and growth of organization for all workers -- the means to also achieve their rights, in the face of the drive inspired by private monopoly interest to reduce workers to bare subsistence and powerlessness. Fight to defend the standard we have; fight to extend that standard to all!

What has developed here is in a real sense the Battle for Toronto. Is this Toronto to be or go on being a city of the rich, the financiers, speculators and domestic and foreign monopolies represented by the Ford regime and the other levels of government where workers and other people are powerless and degraded? Or will the workers' and people's fight continue to advance, to limit, defeat and reverse the Ford regime's agenda as part of Canadians' whole fight against neoliberal retrogression and monopoly right. The latter is the only acceptable outcome. At this time, this means above all uniting with the city workers to defeat the Ford regime.

Stop the Theft of Caterpillar EMD Means of
Production and Livelihoods!

Ontario Political Forum joins with other Canadians in roundly denouncing the U.S. monopoly Caterpillar for announcing the destruction of the Electro-Motive Diesel (EMD) factory in London, Ontario. The workers' movement has taken a clear stand that this U.S. monopoly has no right to destroy EMD and that the Canadian government has the social responsibility to say "No!" and stay Caterpillar's aggressive hand.

This wrecking of a modern and productive plant by a U.S. monopoly is akin to the U.S. military attacking London with bombs and destroying the plant in war. How can it be viewed otherwise than as an act of economic warfare? The recent history of this sordid affair is well-known to all and the government must be held to account to protect Canada and its productive facilities. In 2005, GM sold EMD to U.S. parasites Greenbriar Equity Group and Berkshire Partners who in turn flipped the company to Caterpillar for a reported big score in 2010, which in turn planned to steal the means of production and livelihoods and move them to Indiana. How can the government allow this foreign manipulation of our productive economy? Does it not have the responsibility to protect Canadians and their economy?

Does this mean that any monopoly that has amassed enough money from their global operations can just waltz into Canada and steal the means of production and livelihoods? This cannot be allowed to pass! Is this not what U.S. Steel did to Stelco? Because of Canada's small size relative to the big imperialist powers, Canada's economy, manufacturing and livelihoods have become sitting ducks for destruction by any monopoly that has enough cash. Canadians have said, "Enough!" and hold governments to account to defend Canada or get out of the way and let workers and their allies run the country and defend our economy and way of life.

Manufacturing Yes! Nation-Wrecking No!
Stop the U.S. Theft of EMD Means of Production and Livelihoods!
Hold Governments to Account to Defend Canadians!

Canada-Wide Pickets in Support of EMD Workers

On January 26, CAW organized pickets across the country in support of locked-out EMD workers. From top:
Dartmouth, Montreal, Toronto, Sudbury, Maidstone, St. Catharines, Winnipeg, Edmonton and Vancouver.

Labour Leaders Condemn EMD Closure
and Government Refusal to
Protect Canadians and the Economy

Trade union leaders condemned the callous decision of Caterpillar to close Electro Motive Diesel (EMD) in London, moving the technology and patents to the U.S. and damaging the Canadian economy.

Canadian Auto Worker President Ken Lewenza said: "The Stephen Harper government is entirely in the pocket of the corporate elite and has shown absolute disregard for Canadian workers and their families. I am disgusted at this government and its indifference towards the suffering of workers and the unemployed. The Harper government was elected by Canadians, but only seems able to represent multi-national corporations."

Tim Carrie, President of CAW Local 27 which represents over 5,500 workers in the London area said: "Even though we predicted that the plant could close, it's devastating when it actually happens. This is truly rotten behaviour. Now we're going to do everything that we can for our members."

CAW Electro-Motive chairperson Bob Scott said that members learned in the morning that the plant would close -- the company gave the union absolutely no advance notice. "Imagine the shock that our members felt at hearing about losing their job, on the radio," Scott said. "It's unbelievable that Caterpillar would string our members along and lock them out in the cold for six weeks, when it had no intention of reopening the plant. This is absolutely sickening behaviour on the part of this corporation."

Dave Coles, President of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP) pledged his union's support to the CAW and its members. "This decision is a slap in the face to Canada which gave Electro-Motive tax breaks to protect jobs. It's an act of corporate aggression against Canada and we should retaliate with an immediate tariff against Caterpillar products imported to Canada. The Ontario and federal governments should take the same action in this situation as former Premier Danny Williams did at AbitibiBowater in Newfoundland -- they should seize the Caterpillar assets in London and ensure that all community and worker obligations are fully met.

"Why do we have governments, if not to protect Canadians against this kind of corporate aggression?" Coles said. "There will be a strong labour response to Caterpillar's aggression against Canada and CEP is prepared to throw its full support behind any actions that the CAW and central labour bodies take to achieve justice for these workers."

Ontario Federation of Labour President Sid Ryan said, "The real question is why they were allowed to do it. What should shock every Canadian is the fact that the Harper government is allowing multi-national corporations to gobble up Canadian manufacturing, strip our innovation and technology and then ship jobs and production to low-wage states."

"As Prime Minister," Ryan said "it is Stephen Harper's role to defend Canadian jobs and our standard of living. He has a responsibility to strengthen the Investment Canada Act to require foreign corporations to demonstrate a 'net Canadian benefit' before being allowed to acquire Canadian companies. Instead, Harper has rewarded greedy corporations with publicly-funded corporate tax cuts that further enhance profits while delivering no jobs or growth to our economy. Harper's message to the world is that Canada is open for business for corporate robber barons."

Ken Neumann, United Steelworkers (USW) National Director for Canada said: "There is no longer any argument -- coordinated corporate attacks on working families are being aided and abetted by the federal Conservatives and the Ontario Liberal government. Stephen Harper's Conservatives and Dalton McGuinty's Liberals are absolutely useless to workers whose livelihoods are threatened by multinational corporations. We see it in London today, just as we witnessed the attacks by U.S. Steel on Hamilton and Nanticoke families and by Brazil-based Vale against thousands of Sudbury and Port Colborne families."

Neumann continued: "The Harper Conservatives, along with Quebec's Liberal government, have also forsaken nearly 800 workers in Alma, Que., who have been locked out of their jobs by foreign resource giant Rio Tinto in a brazen attempt to eliminate decent jobs. With income inequality continuing to worsen in our society, working families need their governments to stand up for them more than ever. Instead, the federal Conservatives and provincial Liberals consent to repeated corporate attacks on our working and living standards."

EMD Petition Tabled in Parliament Prior to
Closure Announcement

MP Irene Mathyssen (London-Fanshawe, NDP) presented a petition in the House of Commons, a day before Caterpillar's closure announcement. She explained that the petition calls on the Government of Canada to investigate the conditions of sale of Electro-Motive to Progress Rail, investigate the bad faith bargaining by Progress Rail, award employment insurance benefits to locked out workers and request that a constructive dismissal package be made available.

Excerpt From Hansard, February 2, 2012

"[...] I have a petition from several of my constituents and members of the community in regard to the lockout of Electro-Motive workers by Progress Rail, Caterpillar.

"The company refuses to negotiate in good faith. It has asked the workers to take a more than 50% cut in their wages and a significant cut to their benefits. It is seeking to undermine their pensions that they have paid into all of their lives.

"The workers are petitioning the Government of Canada to investigate the conditions of sale of Electro-Motive to Progress Rail, investigate the bad faith bargaining by Progress Rail, award employment insurance benefits to locked out workers and request that a constructive dismissal package be made available.

"These workers have devoted their lives to making this a profitable corporation. Profitable it is; $1.14 billion in the last quarter and profits are up 60%. These workers need and demand justice."

Teaching Assistants Set Strike Date for February 24

CUPE Local 3902 January 30 membership meeting rejects tentative agreement.

The University of Toronto administration has created conditions for uncertainty and disruption in the lives of the institution's faculty and students. They have refused to resolve the issues facing 4,200 student instructors, teaching assistants, lab demonstrators and other contracted education workers at the U of T. The collective agreement for students who work as instructors and TAs expired on April 30, 2011.

They are represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 3902. Their elected bargaining committee has been meeting with the university since July 2011 to negotiate a new collective agreement to fix graduate funding, protect research fellowships, improve tutorials and labs, and support senior students.

The employer continued to stall at the bargaining table forcing their union to hold a strike vote in November. The membership voted 91 per cent in favour of a strike should the administration not address their key problems.

The U of T administration has been wreaking havoc in the learning conditions of students and the working conditions of education workers.

Support for Upper Year Students

The following points from Local 3902 explain the outstanding issues facing the negotiations in terms of the support for required for upper year students to complete their studies:

- Average number of years it takes to finish a PhD at U of T: 6

- Funding-package guarantee (salary) for graduate students in years 5 or 6: $0.00

- Upon entering the university many were told that they would get a Guaranteed Doctoral Completion Grant to sustain them after the four to five years of guaranteed funding. In April of 2010, the Administration eliminated that Grant. This grant had been in place for 10 years.

- Tuition and fees paid by domestic graduate students at U of T: $8,041 (increasing at 4%) per year

- Tuition and fees paid by international students at U of T: $17,922.36 (increasing at 5%) per year

For the international students who make up 25% of the membership, it's impossible to accept work off campus or even to take on loans and without work or funding, these students face deportation.
By comparison, tuition and fees paid by graduate students at McGill University: $3,792.77

The Need to Decrease Tutorial Sizes

Local 3902 also points the difficult working conditions facing instructors and the need to decrease tutorial sizes:

- Percentage today: 23%

Local 3902 states, "Good teaching becomes impossible with tutorials this big." Teaching assistants are often forced to work as virtual slave labour, working extra hours without pay, in order to offer even the most minimal support to their students.

Graduate Research Funding

Graduate students are accepted to U of T to do original research, Local 3902 points out. But research grants (fellowships) that once funded graduate research are being taken away by the U of T administration. The union provides the following facts as context for the living conditions of graduate students:

Low-income cut-off (poverty line) for a family of one in Toronto (2010): $18,930

Funding-package guarantee (salary) of graduate-student workers in years 1-4: $15,000 plus fees

Average salary of top 50 U of T Administrators: $304,077.33 (+ $5,574.67 fringe benefits)

According to U of T's website on faculty-research and academic reputation, the university "actively contribute[s] to a prosperous, innovative society, from research discovery to market-ready product: U of T ranks fourth overall for commercialization among North American public universities, third in the world in published academic research -- U of T researchers are among the world's most productive, and give students the extraordinary opportunity to learn from leading minds."

Local 3902 is calling on the university provide the necessary support for graduate students in terms of their wages and working conditions, whether research or teaching, and also improve learning conditions of students by lowering class sizes.

On December 5, the university, with the arrogance of those who deem themselves entitled, walked away from the bargaining table and filed for conciliation.

The union reported that they disagreed with the university's assessment. From its perspective, there was still a great deal to be accomplished at the bargaining table, and it saw no reason it could not work productively, with or without a third-party mediator.

Talks continued with a conciliator in January. The union called a January 30 membership meeting to discuss presenting a tentative agreement for a ratification vote. Upon hearing that their outstanding issues had not effectively been addressed by the employer's last offer, the members decided by a 96 per cent majority not to send the agreement to a ratification vote. Not one of the nearly 300 members present spoke in favour of the administration's last offer, while members lined up by the dozens to speak against it.

The members also unanimously passed a motion of confidence in the bargaining team, urging them to go back to the bargaining table and negotiate a better contract with the employer.

As students and as education workers, Local 3902 Unit 1 vows to continue meeting with the administration.

"We have been trying to negotiate a fair contract for seven months," said James Nugent, the bargaining team's chief spokesperson. "We've been fighting for better learning conditions for our students and better working conditions for our members. Last night, our members sent us back to the bargaining table to keep fighting for those things, and that's what we intend to do."

Support for U of T Education Workers

Students Support their TAs

Click here for video produced by the Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG)-Toronto in support of the University of Toronto Teaching Assistants.

Faculty Support

The University of Toronto Faculty Association, on January 30, issued a letter to Provost Cheryl Misak in support of a fair contract for CUPE 3902 members. The letter suggests that CUPE members "are raising important and legitimate issues in negotiations…that point to widely shared concerns about the quality of teaching at the U of T and about the manner in which our graduate students should be treated as both students and employees."
The faculty made it very clear that they will not do the work of the education workers in the event of a strike. The faculty letter says that faculty "do not have to and should not take on additional work."

The Battle for Toronto