THUNDER BAY – OPSEU workers rallied together with other local labour organizations outside Thunder Bay-Atikokan MPP Kevin Holland’s office on Wednesday to send a collective message to the Ford Government: they may be black and blue, but they are certainly not broken.
“The Ford Government and Kevin Holland all say that they’re working for workers, but they seem to pick and choose which workers they’re actually working for. We’re out here representing 200,000 members of OPSEU/SEFPO, 150,000 who are in active bargaining in some form or another with this government effectively. Whether it’s through an arms-length employer or individual social service agencies, what we see is a government that’s committed to privatizing public services, and we see this in everything from children’s aid to the public colleges,” OPSEU President J.P. Hornick told Newswatch.
Hornick was on the frontline, mentioning the pride they felt seeing unity between private and public sector workers and every union that was present fighting for the full support of frontline services.
Union representatives from the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation, Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association, Canadian Union of Public Employees, United Food and Commercial Workers Union, and Public Service Alliance of Canada stood together shouting, “Workers united will never be defeated!”
“When you look at the support across labour, they know that our fight is their fight and their fight is ours. We’re in this together, and they will not divide us,” Hornick said.
At the forefront of the rally, members with OPSEU Local 731 marched from Confederation College to Holland’s office on Day 5 of the college’s support staff strike.
OPSEU said they’re still waiting for the College Employer Council to come to the bargaining table.
Hornick said they’re all fighting for the future of public education while strengthening and adequately funding public services with full government support for all Ontario workers.
“We need funding for the sector to make sure that we don’t have another 10,000 layoffs in the community colleges. We’ve already seen 650 programs close. That means that students up here in Thunder Bay have less and less opportunity for accessible, affordable public education,” Hornick said.
OPSEU Local 732 Faculty President for Confederation College, Rebecca Ward, said students deserve much more than a privatized education system.
“So, the faculty are standing here today in full support of this action which is essentially trying to insist that the College’s address the issues before them around job security, if there’s no jobs left for support staff there’s nothing left for our students and we care deeply about our students we are standing shoulder to shoulder as unionized activists to insist that colleges address this crisis,” Ward said.
She said that the Ford government is “defunding” public education by privatizing the skills development fund.
“I’ve tried to have a conversation with administration about this, about our ability to stand together so they stop running like a business and stop accumulating wealth and get back to the idea of this being a publicly funded system that is there for the young people of this community,” Ward said.
“We are the economic drivers. These people are pushing out the workers of tomorrow, and our college knows that. I’m kind of surprised they’re not out here on some level with us, to be honest.”
She said the “students are not having their needs met.”
“There are all of these ancillary services that keep students engaged and successful. Registration, mental health support, student success advisors, maintenance, and then there’s direct in the classroom kinds of support where our support staff are with us in classrooms. They’re doing facilitation of labs, they’re doing technologist work with us as nurses, as aviation flight faculty, and because they’re not with us, we can’t get the job done,” Ward said.
Thunder Bay- Superior North MPP Lise Vaugeois stood among the support workers. She said the under-funding of Ontario Colleges has been a problem for a long time, with only temporary solutions being offered by the province for the past few governments.
“There was a temporary solution by bringing in a lot of international students who paid through the nose for the privilege of being here, and that’s no longer an option on the same level. Colleges are struggling, but the truth is the under-funding goes way back, probably 30 years, and at this point, it’s $10,000 less than most other provinces. That’s an outrage,” Vaugeois said.
“If this government is serious about public education, they should fund public education. They should fund the colleges properly. People work hard. They deserve to be paid a living wage, a good, solid wage with benefits, and what’s good for MPPs, what’s good for people in Doug Ford’s favoured businesses, it’s got to be good for people who are working on behalf of the public.”
Vaugeois said public dollars should not be going to big corporations, which are providing non-transferable micro-credential training.
