Posted by OCAP on 6/24/2009, 1:44 pm
OCAP STANDS IN SOLIDARITY WITH TORONTO CITY WORKERS
The members of CUPE 416 and 79 who work for the City of Toronto are now on strike. The business media has begun its inevitable campaign of misinformation to produce the greatest possible backlash against these workers. We are encouraged to focus on uncollected garbage and suspended services but not, of course, to give any regard to the rights of public sector workers or to think as working people about what is at stake in this strike.
OCAP, as a matter of basic principle, stands in solidarity with workers' struggles. We don't hate or blame workers who have been able to win a living wage or support calls for them to be driven into poverty.
Rather, we want to see the poor provided with wages and incomes that raise them out of poverty.
This strike occurs in a context that makes it especially important for all of us that it end in victory and that the concessionary demands of the 'progressive' Miller Administration be defeated. The Mayor defended his shameful efforts to gut the collective agreements of City workers by pointing to rising welfare caseloads brought on by the economic downturn.
What a disgusting statement. To pit City workers against those who are being forced to turn to the wretched sub poverty pittance that welfare provides is an outrage. This comes from a man who boasts that there are more cops on the streets under his regime than every before and who is taking us towards an obscene billion dollar a year police budget, while he has frittered away the welfare reserve fund to a fraction of where it was when he took office.
The Mayor points to the state of the economy to justify his attack on City workers. In doing this, he makes clear what side he is on when it comes to who should pay for this economic crisis. As unemployment shoots up, we face the situation with an empty shell of an unemployment insurance system that shuts out most of the unemployed and with a post Mike Harris welfare system that fails to provide the necessities of life. None of the 'solutions' to the crisis involve meeting the basic needs of the unemployed and poor. For those who still have jobs and unions, the bankrupt corporations they work for will be bailed out at vast public expense while their rights as workers are destroyed and they are presented with massive concessionary demands.
The process of attacking workers started in the auto industry and other parts of the private sector. The drive for austerity is now spreading, inevitably, to the public sector. Beginning with militant fights by postal workers in the 1960s, public sector workers have spent decades struggling for decent wages and conditions.
The present crisis of capitalism will mean an all out confrontation to take back those gains. Moreover, an attack on the workers who deliver public services can't be separated from the attack on the services themselves and the rights of those who receive them. That is the context of this strike and we in OCAP know what side we're on. We call for full support for the City workers. Send messages of solidarity. Be there with them on their picket lines. Stand with them in their fight because they are fighting for all of us.
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