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December 11, 2012 -
Vol. 2
No. 13
Continued Attempts to Push
Illegitimate Agenda
Oppose the Austerity Agenda to
Pay the
Rich!
Build the Independent Politics of the Working
Class!
All Out to Repeal Bill 115!
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Continued
Attempts
to
Push
Illegitimate
Agenda
• Oppose the Austerity
Agenda to Pay the Rich!
Build the Independent Politics of the Working
Class!
• Liberals' and PCs'
"Balanced" and
"Pre-Emptive" Attacks on Rights -
Mira Katz
• Education Minister's
Threats Against Toronto
District School Board - Laura
Chesnik
Letter to
the Editor
• Going on Strike Is a
Right, Not an
"Opportunity"
Ongoing
Actions to
Defeat Bill 115
• Teachers and Education
Workers, Students and Supporters Say "No Means
No!"
Liberal
Leadership Race
• Debates Deepen Liberal
Crisis
Continued Attempts to Push
Illegitimate
Agenda
Oppose the Austerity Agenda to Pay the Rich!
Build the Independent Politics of the Working
Class!
Representatives of the political parties at the
forefront of the neo-liberal agenda in Ontario
are stepping up their
offensive against the workers and people in the
province. In the latest
developments, Education Minister Laurel Broten
continues to threaten
teachers. Quoted in the Ottawa
Citizen on December 10, she said would
use her arbitrary
executive powers under Bill 115, the Putting
Students
First
Act, to impose contracts if agreements
are not in
place by December 31, the deadline put in place
by the bill.
Broten's announcement is a continuation of the
attempts to dictate to
teachers what they can and cannot do. Last week,
she made every effort
to divide teachers by blaming their
organizations for the problems
which really started with the implementation of
Bill 115 as it
rescinded all of the previous arrangements under
which teachers and
their local boards participated in determining
teachers working
conditions and student's learning conditions.
Teachers gave a
resounding NO! to the Education Minister's
tactics with a 92 per cent
vote in favour of holding province-wide protests
if Broten uses the
broad powers under Bill 115. Nevertheless, the
Liberals are continuing
to try to find a way to impose conditions on
teachers and sideline them
in order to take $2.19 billion out of public
education. Meanwhile, the
Hudak Conservatives continued to push the
Liberals to use the arbitrary
powers immediately, revealing once again the
one-two punch of the
Liberals and PCs as the parties to pass the
austerity agenda and impose
the neo-liberal project to take money out the
economy to pay the rich.
Later in the week on December 7, Broten also
continued
attempts to
undermine local governance of publicly-funded
education when she
imposed a
"special assistance team" on the Toronto
District School Board to
deal with its "financial problems." The
Minister's dictate is based on a report by
consulting
firm PricewaterhouseCoopers which calls for
closing 10 to15
schools and laying off 700 workers. It is
further evidence of the
attempts to replace publicly elected and run
school boards with
"special interests" to facilitate private
delivery of public
education in Ontario.[1]
 Elsewhere,
outgoing Finance
Minister Dwight Duncan, in a speech to the
Toronto Board of Trade,
warned
that "Ontario has to make some "difficult
choices" and that "all the
choices haven't been made." He also said: "the
province cannot waver on
the strong actions needed to drive down the
current $14.4-billion
deficit by 2017-18 or even earlier" and that
"the province needs to
keep its average annual growth rate at 1.5 per
cent, and that can only
be achieved by unpopular decisions like
decreasing program spending and
freezing public-sector wages." As if words would
distinguish him and
his Liberal Party
from the Hudak PCs despite having the same
plans, Duncan argued that
"the Tory plan
to lower taxes would amount to billions of
dollars in cuts to health,
education and social services." In response,
Progressive Conservative
MPP Lisa MacLeod was quoted as saying: "He
really isn't someone who
will be involved in the decision
making in the province's finances in the next
five years." But who's
kidding who? The back-and-forth between the two
parties does not do
anything to hide that both have the same agenda
for Ontario
which is to remove as much as they can from the
social economy which
workers and people rely on for
their well-being so that more wealth can be
siphoned off by the rich
under the guise of governments operating under
"exceptional
circumstances."
As if the attack on people's consciousness was
not
already enough, Tim Hudak entered the fray at a
December 4 news
conference with ideas for
further privatization of public services,
particularly the LCBO.
Hudak's announcement is his attempt to show what
his party has planned
for the province to allow private interests to
make big
scores by selling off public assets.
Race to the Bottom Agenda
Among the most worrisome aspects of Bill 115
and the
austerity agenda for the workers and people is
the attempt to drive
down everyone's standard of living and demand
that this be accepted
without question. This is an insult to the
consciousness of
human
beings and the dignity of labour. It also has
adverse
consequences for uniting workers and people in
the fight to defeat the
anti-social offensive so that the space is
opened for discussion
together on how to bring in new arrangements
that will resolve the
problems in society and in people's lives in
their favour.
Bill 115 and the overall austerity agenda are
forcing people to accept
concessions in their working lives and also in
their collective
consciousness for the recognition of the rights
of all. In its place is
growing competition and individualism and the
pressure to accept that
there is no working class with common interests
and instead "just individuals and families." It
is putting pressure on
people to argue, for example, that "teachers
should accept what they
get." But to their credit the teachers are
standing up and saying NO!
and asserting that this fight is for the rights
of all, for an
improvement in the
standard of living and for the dignity of
labour.
Illegitimate Agenda
 Bill
115 and the overall
austerity agenda continue to be illegitimate and
are revealing this
reality every day. The illegitimacy of Bill 115,
for example, is
revealed by the Liberal government itself which
has isolated Minister
Broten to fight for the implementation of Bill
115 on her
own. The rest of the Liberal brass, including
the premier himself, have
jumped ship in the wake of broad opposition to
their plans which gave
rise to their defeat in the Kitchener-Waterloo
by-election.
The latest announcements by representatives of
both the
Liberals and PCs will not solve any of the
problems being faced by
people and in fact will make them worse. In the
midst of opposition to
Bill 115, these announcements present themselves
as distractions for
the
workers and people. They have the aim of
crushing the resistnace of the
people to the anti-social offensive. But the
teachers are demonstrating
that they will not be
overwhelmed or sidetracked in the fight to
defend their rights.
Teachers have every right and a duty to do so
especially considering
what these parties represent.
Note
1. See Ontario
Political
Forum, July 16, 2012 - No. 41.
Liberals' and PCs' "Balanced" and
"Pre-Emptive" Attacks
on Rights
- Mira Katz -
Elementary teachers and
other education workers represented by the
Elementary Teachers'
Federation of Ontario (ETFO) on December 10
initiated one-day rotating
strikes and days earlier had voted 92 per cent
in favour of a
province-wide day of political protest should
the government
intervene to end a strike or impose a collective
agreement on any ETFO
members. Faced with this determined resistance
to their dictate,
Education Minister Laurel Broten and the
Progressive
Conservatives are trying to work out how they
will violate
the rights of teachers and education workers.
Broten says she will allow one day strikes
before using
the tools available to her in Bill 115 to end
them, saying this was the
"right balance." The PCs reminded Broten that it
was only through their
support that Bill 115 was passed in the
legislature and demanded
pre-emptive action to outlaw any strikes at all.
 The
Liberals' "balanced"
approach as well as the PCs' "pre-emptive"
approach to violating
teachers' and education workers' rights was
rejected with contempt by
the President of ETFO Sam Hammond who told the Globe
and Mail:
"I'm
not
concerned
about
what
the
minister
has
said
in
terms
of
two,
three days. Quite frankly, we have the right to
strike. If we wanted to
strike two days, three days, five days, or
continuously, we have that
right under the Ontario Labour
Relations Act." Asked by reporters if
ETFO was ruling out strikes longer than one day,
he said, "I'm
ruling nothing out. We always keep all
of our options open, not knowing what situations
may be ahead of us."
The right of teachers and education workers to
say "No"
by
withdrawing their labour in defence of their
rights as workers and in
defence of public education has been established
through many
sacrifices in the past to affirm that right. In
Ontario this includes
the bold move of teachers who resigned en masse in
the 1970s to affirm their right to bargain
collectively and strike.
Broten with her "balanced" approach and the PCs
with their hardline
"pre-emptive" approach can say what they like;
teachers and education
workers have the right to resist government
dictate whether they are
given permission or not. It is this resistance
which will establish a stability in the schools
that favours the public
and not the private interests demanding payments
as holders of the debt
and deficit.
Education Minister's Threats Against
Toronto District School Board
- Laura Chesnik -
On Wednesday December 12 at 4:30 pm, at its
regularly
scheduled meeting trustees of the Toronto
District School Board (TDSB)
will meet to consider whether or not to fall in
line with Minister of
Education Laurel Broten's recent threats of
provincial takeover if it
doesn't accept the province's imposition of a
Special
Assistance Team. Broten stated if the TDSB does
not voluntarily accept
the offer, "we will begin to take the necessary
steps to appoint an
investigator to assess whether the Board has the
capacity to make the
necessary corrective actions on its own to get
its financial affairs
back on track or if other measures are
required."
Following Broten's threats,
right on cue, Conservative Education Critic,
Lisa MacLeod, in the
type-cast role of bad cop, stated Minister
Broten should preemptively
appoint a
supervisor to take over the TDSB. Attempting to
divert
from the government's responsibility to fund
education and the
government's
recently-imposed budgeting changes to school
boards, MacLeod stated:
"[t]his is a systemic failure across the board
and the trustees must be
held responsible for this as well."
 Broten's
demand that the TDSB
"voluntarily" accept the
Team comes on the heels of a report by
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) --
the firm that current Liberal leadership
candidate Sandra Pupatello
works for -- that was issued to the TDSB through
the Minister of
Education.[1] PwC states the
objective of the
report is to: "identify $10 million in
operational savings to help
balance the FY [fiscal year] 2012-2013 operating
budget." However,
going far beyond its objective, PwC salivates
that if the TDSB
implements the recommendations in its report,
the school board would be
able to "achieve annual savings" of $91.7
million.
In terms of school board budgeting and
deficits, it
cannot
be forgotten that the Ministry of Education made
changes to the
budgeting practices of school boards this year
that included how they
account for "unfunded liabilities" like banked
sick days used as
retirement gratuities. Ontario
Political Forum reported on
July 9 that: "District school boards report that
the Ministry is
demanding they budget for retirement gratuities
as if all their
employees were to retire within the year and for
retirements as if all
their employees were to retire within 15 years."
This change increased
school board deficits and is a form of
self-serving crooked accounting
to try to justify the takeover of school boards
that are not permitted
to run a deficit of more than 1 per cent of
revenues.
 It
is also important to note
that the PwC report is neither neutral nor
objective in its language or
reporting. The report states: "in 2012-2013,
total projected education
funding will be held stable at almost $21B.
Funding to school boards
will increase by approximately 1.5%." This
statement is
deliberately
charged as reported inflation rates as of
October 2012 in Canada put
2012 inflation at 1.66 per cent; meaning the
"stable funding increase
of 1.5 per cent"
that PwC refers to doesn't even cover the cost
of inflation.
The ground work to take over the TDSB is being
done in a
similar manner to the takeover of the Windsor
English Catholic District
School Board (WECDSB)[2] where
alleged deficits
require intervention that is then used by the
province to hire firms
like Deloitte and Touche or PwC to
save the farm. In the case of the TDSB, the
sky-is-falling theatrics
are then used to cause hysteria that decisions
need to be made
yesterday on such important matters as accepting
the province's offer
for the Special Assistance Team.
It is no coincidence that these threats to
takeover
Canada's largest school board are taking place
at a time when teachers
and education workers of the TDSB and all others
in Ontario are
fighting to defend their rights. The threats
being issued against the
TDSB are threats to all teachers, education
workers, and school boards
in Canada and are part of the attack of Bill 115
and the so-called
austerity agenda. They should be viewed with
utter contempt. Teachers
and education workers should prepare for the
onslaught of
disinformation that will not lay the blame for
the economic problems
where
it should be -- with the continued payment of
the rich using public
resources -- but on the teachers and education
workers.
For Your Information -- Toronto District
School Board
As the largest school board in Canada, and one
of the
largest in North America, the Toronto District
School Board (TDSB)
includes more than 260,000 students,
approximately 37,000 employees,
22 trustees and 565 schools.
In 2002, the TDSB (along with the Ottawa and
Hamilton
school boards) was taken over by the province
under then Education
Minister Elizabeth Witmer. The takeover was a
result of the fact that
the school board passed a deficit budget. TDSB
maintained it was
impossible to carry out its mandate and meet the
requirements of the Education
Act for balanced budgets because of
insufficient provincial
funding.
The TDSB's budget at that time, under the
complete
authority of appointed supervisor Paul Christie,
was balanced by
cutting $90 million. The cuts included the
elimination of many
secretarial
positions, phasing out of school-community
advisors, reducing the
number of vice-principals, cutting outdoor
education and
adult education, and re-evaluating the position
of social workers in
the system.
Note
1. To view the PwC report click
here:
2. See Ontario
Political Forum, July 9,
2012 - No. 40.
Letter to the Editor
Going on Strike Is a Right, Not an
"Opportunity"
In a statement where he invoked the need for a
"reasonable balance," Dalton McGuinty said
teachers have the
"opportunity" to strike, while parents and
students have the "right" to
stability in the schools. How can students and
parents have rights
while teachers and education workers are denied
the right to say
"No" to government dictate that threatens
students' learning
conditions?
Without teachers and education workers having
the right to say "No" in
the form of a strike if they so choose,
governments have free rein to
attack and erode public education as they are
doing today in the name
of "restraint." This will never lead
to any kind of stability that favors students,
parents or the society,
let alone teachers and education workers. More
than likely what
McGuinty really means by stability, is using
money taken from education
to guarantee stable payments to those that hold
Ontario's debt and
deficit.
Ongoing Actions to Defeat Bill
115
Teachers and Education Workers, Students and
Supporters Say "No Means No!"
Elementary Teachers Begin One-Day Rotating
Strikes
On December 10 members of the Elementary
Teachers'
Federation of Ontario (ETFO) began rotating
strikes involving full
withdrawal of services for one day, starting
with schools in the Avon
Maitland (Huron and Perth Counties) and Ontario
North East (between
Temagami and Hearst) School Boards. On December
11 the strikes move to the Niagara and
Keewatin-Patricia District
Boards. For more information about the dates and
locations of the one
day strikes as they are announced click here.
Members of OSSTF Escalate Sanctions and Hold
Vote on a Day of Political Protest
As of December 10, Ontario Secondary School
Teachers'
Federation (OSSTF) members escalated their
work-to-rule sanctions at
schools around the province to include
withdrawing from
all extra-curricular and voluntary activities in
response to the
Minister of Education's interference in the
collective bargaining
process. In a message to members, OSSTF General
Secretary Pierre Cote
wrote, "We cannot simply acquiesce to such an
attack on our collective
agreements and such a gross violation of our
constitutional rights. A
school system in which teachers and support
staff are stripped of
fundamental civil and human rights cannot long
remain strong. Only
through free collective bargaining can we
establish the decent,
supportable working conditions that become the
students' learning conditions and, indeed, their
own future working
conditions. Our good will and the contributions
that arise there from
will return when we have the opportunity to
ratify freely negotiated
collective agreements. Until then, in defence of
the education system
and our rights as citizens and workers
we will stand in solidarity with our colleagues
around the province."
OSSTF has also announced that membership votes
will be taken in all districts this week on a
province-wide day of political protest to call
for the repeal of Bill 115.
Teachers and Education Workers' Rallies
Continue
Teachers, other education workers and their
supporters
continue to hold rallies to demand the repeal of
Bill 115 at MPPs'
offices, outside the Liberal Party Leadership
Debates and in other
public venues around the province with more
actions scheduled
well into January. On December 3, several
hundred teachers, education
workers, parents and other supporters also
marched outside the Toronto
District School Board to protest the Board's
actions related to Bill
115, in particular principals being allowed to
withhold Student
Progress Reports that had been completed
by teachers in accordance with Ministry of
Education guidelines,
contributing to tensions and confusion in the
system.
Teachers
and education workers rally at Liberal
Leadership Debate in Thunder Bay December 9,
2012.
 
  
 
Weekly picket
at
Education Minister Laurel Broten's office in
Etobicoke-Lakeshore,
December 7, 2012.
Students Walk Out over Bill 115
 
Students
in London
and Hamilton.
On December 10, coinciding with the withdrawal
from all
extra-curricular and other voluntary activities
by their teachers,
students at many high schools around the
province began holding
walkouts, with most blaming Bill 115 for the
loss of these activities
and calling
for its repeal. Many students expressed support
for their teachers as
they had during walkouts earlier in the fall.
Some of the walkouts that
were reported on December 10 took place in
London, Sarnia, Chatham and
elsewhere in the Thames Valley and Lambton-Kent
Boards; in Hamilton,
Niagara Region, Toronto,
York and Durham Regions, Simcoe and Kingston.
More walkouts are
expected throughout the week, with a mass
protest announced for
Thursday December 13 at 1 pm at Queen's Park.
Wallaceburg
Toronto
Bracebridge Protesters Call Their Conservative
MPP to
Account
On Friday, December 7 over 200 secondary,
elementary
teachers and education workers of the Trillium
Lakelands School Board,
held a protest at Conservative MPP Parry
Sound-Muskoka MPP Norm
Miller's Bracebridge office to
call him to account for voting for Bill 115 this
past summer. Parents
and children leafleted the community encouraging
support for the
protest. They arrived with banners and placards
and encouraged the many
honks that filled the streets.
 "We're
here to stick up
against bullies, and the No. 1 thing we're
against is the fact that
we've lost two rights that everybody else in
Ontario has. They have the
right to go to the Ontario Labour Relations
Board, and teachers do not.
Teachers also do not have the right to appeal to
the court system for a
fair hearing
against this draconian legislation that turns
Ontario into a
dictatorship," said Monck Public School teacher
Sandy Long. Long
teaches grade 7 and 8 students.
"With this whole bullying thing, it really
touches home
to them [the students] as well, and we've had a
lot of support from
them," he said. "I think Mr. McGuinty and the
Liberal government, and
even the Conservatives who supported them, have
to realize that it
takes a lot to tick off a kindergarten teacher
or
a Grade 1 teacher, and to get those very, very
kind and patient people,
to push them out onto the streets to protest."
Trillium Lakelands Elementary Teachers Local
Vice-President Karen Bratina condemned Bill 115
for putting the
"government above the courts of Ontario" and
"above the Labour
Relations
Act. The message is we won't stop until
the Bill 115
is
repealed or gone completely, it needs to be
repealed completely or
severely modified," she said. "We cannot as
educators in Ontario accept
a legislated bill that takes away our democratic
and constitutional
rights that we've worked so hard to earn."
Rally Against Austerity Agenda at PC Leader
Tim Hudak's
Office
 More than 100 teachers, steelworkers,
educational
support staff, teaching assistants from
McMaster, building trades
workers and community members participated in a
vigorous rally at Tim
Hudak's office in Beamsville on December 7. For
more than 90 minutes
with a militant spirit of "No Means No!" they
demonstrated their
opposition to Bill 115 and the anti-social
austerity agenda being
promoted by the McGuinty government and the
Hudak Conservatives.
The rally was addressed by Rolf Gerstenberger,
President of Local 1005
USW who began by congratulating the secondary
school teachers for
voting No! to Bill 115, and for not being cowed
down by all the threats
being made against the teachers. Opposing this
bill is rallying point
not only for everyone to support the teachers,
but for all those
fighting for rights, Rolf pointed out.
Bill Mahoney, a Local 1005 retiree then recited
a poem opposing the
austerity agenda. The next speaker was Daniel
Peat, the President of
the St. Catharines and Area Labour Council who
is also a secondary
school teacher who expressed the Council's
determination to oppose Bill
115 and to force the government to withdraw the
bill. Mary Long,
President of the Hamilton and District Labour
Council then addressed
the rally followed by Dylan Shannon, President
of the Niagara Area
Steelworkers' Council who expressed support for
the teachers and
outlined that the steelworkers' stand is to
"Stand Up, Fight Back."
Darren Green, President of the Hamilton and Area
Steelworker Council
also expressed support for the struggle of the
teachers. Marlin Picken,
a CUPE member invited everyone to the rally
being held in Hamilton on
December 15 at 10:00 am at the Hamilton City
Hall to oppose Bill 115.
The rally's closing remarks were made by Jake
Lombardo, Chair of Local
1005's Political Action Committee who stated
that this was the second
picket being held at Hudak's office, and is part
of the provincial
effort to defeat all those who are promoting the
austerity agenda in
the
next provincial election.
Liberal Leadership Race
Debates Deepen Liberal Crisis
The Ontario Liberal Party has been organizing a
series
of events across Ontario leading up to a
leadership convention in
January. In his resignation speech Premier
Dalton McGuinty said the
leadership race would "renew" the Liberal Party.
But so far the
leadership race is just further exposing the
bankruptcy
and crisis of the Liberals.
The first event organized was a debate among
the
seven registered leadership rivals on December 1
in Ingersoll, which
turned out to be quite a dismal affair. Poorly
attended, the only
vitality around the event was outside the
meeting hall where 150 people
protesting against the Liberal government
outnumbered those inside. The
protesters
included teachers and other school board workers
demanding the repeal
of Bill 115 and people protesting the energy
policy and other policies
of
the Liberal government.
The most striking feature of the first
leadership debate
was that the candidates restricted themselves to
self-promotion and
vague declarations. None of the candidates were
prepared to address the
legitimacy crisis in their party resulting from
the widespread
opposition to the government's austerity
measures.
The candidates didn't speak to the $13 billion
the
Liberal government is stripping from the budgets
of health, education
and other social programs. No one talked about
Bill 115 and other
measures the government is imposing to strip
workers of their rights
and to impose unacceptable terms on public
sector workers.
Wholesale privatization of public services and
infrastructure also went
unmentioned.
Even the Liberal moderates like Eric Hoskins,
Gerard
Kennedy and Kathleen Wynne had nothing to say on
these issues. This is
because no matter how bona fide
the humanitarian or reformer
credentials of a leadership candidate may be,
they are not relevant in
a race to lead a party committed to austerity
and
to the entire neo-liberal offensive of the rich.
The Liberal Party is
happy to have these candidates in the race to
generate hype about
renewal, but none of them can open their mouth
against the government's
austerity measures.
Even the friends of the
Liberal Party are admitting that its attempt at
"renewal" through the
party leadership race is a political farce
doomed to failure. The Toronto Star gave
the McGuinty Liberals a resounding endorsement
in the
October 2011 election, but the report on the
first leadership debate by
its Queen's
Park correspondent says:
"How do you promote renewal when you're
constrained by
restraint? That's the central conundrum in the
campaign for the Liberal
leadership. It loomed over Ingersoll this
weekend, where the candidates
convened for their first policy debate. It will
linger for the rest of
the race to replace Dalton McGuinty as
premier."
This comment is very similar to those made by
former
Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge during the
2011 Ontario election
campaign. He characterized the campaigns of the
Liberals and
Conservatives in the 2011 Ontario election as a
farce, "Whoever wins
will be seen to have lied to the public." Dodge
was expressing the confidence of the privileged
minority that their
demand for austerity would trump the public
will, that all of the
cartel political parties would be "constrained
by restraint" regardless
of their political posturing.
And the Liberals met
Dodge's
expectations. After winning
an election with promises they "would not touch
education and health,"
the Liberals singled out education and health
for cuts. The
Liberal Party promise of renewal is another lie
to the public.
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