March 26, 2012 - No. 29

No Austerity Budgets -- Increase Social Expenditures

Say No to Austerity Budgets!
Stop Paying the Rich and Increase Investments
in Social Programs!

In the Legislature
• Say No to Austerity Budgets! Stop Paying the Rich and Increase Investments in Social Programs!
• Austerity Measures Will Make Things Worse - Steve Rutchinski
• The Economy Needs a New Direction! - Dan Cerri

April 21 Ontario Day of Action
• Demand Prosperity, Not Austerity - Ontario Federation of Labour

The Need to Invest in Education
• Education Workers Join Teachers' Unions in Resisting McGuinty Government's Economic Bullying - Christine Nugent
• Toronto District School Board Trustees: Vote No to Cuts! - Sylvia Etts

Resistance to Cuts to Public Services
• Support Toronto Public Library Workers - David Greig
• Address of Library Workers' Union President to Strike Support Rally
• Hospital Workers Denounce Incentive-Based Hospital Funding - Rob Woodhouse

In the Legislature

Say No to Austerity Budgets!
Stop Paying the Rich and Increase Investments
in Social Programs!

With the Ontario budget to be released tomorrow, Tuesday, March 27 and the federal budget later this week on March 29, it is important to keep a few things in mind: we did not cause the deficit, and austerity measures will make things worse. Neither the federal nor provincial levels of government have a mandate from the people to impose an austerity agenda that will wreck our social infrastructure even further. These budgets are illegitimate.

Most important to keep in mind is that the working class has no say, no power to set the direction of the economy federally or provincially. That is the problem that needs to be solved. The working class is not sufficiently well organized as an independent political force which is capable to make its demand effective that governments must increase investments in social programs, which can be done if they stop paying the rich. The crucial thing in that respect is to get together with one's peers to form Groups of Writers and Disseminators which discuss what is happening to our society and set their own agendas of work to realize these agendas. This includes popularizing their work and their views. It is what it means to be political because they vest themselves with decision-making power. It is a step forward from just individually or collectively complaining about what others are doing in their name. Today it is crucial that we be political, lead and argue out the need to set a new direction for the economy and what that will be. Those who administer and deliver social services are more than capable of telling us what it takes and what it costs to do so and how a human-centred, not a capital-centred, society would function.

Austerity Measures Will Make Things Worse

- Steve Rutchinski -

Who is responsible for Ontario's $16 billion deficit? It is not due to overspending on public services or public infrastructure. The Ontario government's own Public Accounts 2001-2011 explains: "From 2003 until the start of the global recession, average growth in program spending was held below growth in revenues. [...] In response to the global economic downturn, the Province collaborated with the federal government, municipalities and other organizations on a program of additional stimulus spending that started in 2009." Ontario spent a total of $16.3 billion on stimulus projects. For its part, the federal government allocated $46 billion for its "anti-recession" campaign in 2009 and 2010.

Why is it that society is being forced to pay for a crisis it did not cause and for deficits run up, not in the public interest, but in the interest of a rich and powerful minority? Working class alternatives as to how to face the financial crisis that triggered these events were not given serious consideration. There is no discussion now as to the fact that the banks made record profits in 2011 compared to 2009 (see table one below). Close to 90 per cent of Ontario's debt is held domestically, so record bank profits directly correlate with the deficits incurred through "stimulus" spending. Not only did they make a big score, run up on our tab as a result of the crisis, but in addition, society is forced to pay in excess of $10-$12 billion in interest on that debt as well!

Why should society now have to bear the consequences while those responsible for the crisis and who profited from the crisis tell us there is no alternative, that society must continue to pay the rich while we must choose between adequate pension benefits or adequate long-term care for the elderly, or other necessities such as public kindergartens, quality public education, hospitals and other health care facilities in the communities where people use such services?

Taking More Out of the Economy Makes Things Worse

It does not take a financial genius to know that high unemployment, the loss of good paying jobs, more part-time and lower paying jobs puts downward pressure on government revenues. The Ontario 2011 Budget papers reported that tax revenue was down $2.2 billion "mainly due to weaker revenues from processing 2009 tax returns." The overwhelming majority of Ontario's revenue comes from working people in the form of personal income tax, retail sales tax and the Ontario Health Premium tax. Corporate tax revenue accounted for only 13 per cent of total provincial revenues in 2007-08 and the plan was to reduce that to 11.5 per cent of provincial revenues by 2010-2011.

Austerity measures to further cut the public service -- such as the 60,000 or more federal jobs federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is planning to cut, or Premier McGuinty's public service salary freeze and job cuts will only aggravate the federal and provincial revenue crisis. In the same way, corporate tax cuts have deprived the public purse and contributed to adding $83 billion to cash reserves mainly of the biggest corporations that control our economy since the onset of the recession in 2008 but, as the Globe and Mail reported, has done nothing to create new jobs.

These are not unknown facts, especially to those planning and imposing austerity measures and wrecking the social infrastructure of our society. Taking more out of the economy will only make things worse and prolong the crisis.

Stop Paying the Rich! Increase Investments in Social Programs!

The Economy Needs a New Direction!

- Dan Cerri -

Workers and people in Ontario are once again being bombarded with the erroneous idea that the debt and deficit are the most important problems facing them and that they must pay them down through wage freezes, cuts to social programs, user fees and other concessions. This is the atmosphere created in the lead up to the tabling of the Ontario Budget on March 27. In the Ontario Legislature, Opposition Leader Tim Hudak argued for urgent decreases in spending to which Premier Dalton McGuinty said: "We'll be tackling the deficit in earnest, as my honourable colleague knows, in our budget, which marks the beginning of an important five-year plan. That will call upon all of us to make thoughtful, responsible and, in fact, smart choices."

Apparently the Premier's idea of "smart choices" is for people to accept attacks on the things that they require to survive. The lead up to the budget has already witnessed threats to teachers' wages and other areas of educational workers' lives, increases in fees for driver's licenses and other permits, more proposed cuts to public services and job losses. It has also witnessed a recent announcement to fund health care based on a performance model that negates health care as a right for all. The McGuinty government's claims that it will not implement all of the recommendations of the anti-social Drummond Report. However, the stage has been set to deliver an austerity budget to tackle the deficit and debt that will have severe consequences for the people in Ontario, their families and their communities.

The Liberal government will deliver a budget which, in its words, "is 'uniquely Liberal,' that protects core education and health care initiatives but does so by withdrawing funding from other areas." This is very much a liberal rendering of an austerity budget, but with the same aim and consequence as all others. The aim of presenting it this way is to prevent the working class and people from coming to the conclusion that the deficit and debt are the result of the crisis of the capitalist system. The consequence is the continuation of a chaotic planning of the economy that causes mayhem for society and for people's lives.

Workers and all people in Ontario should discuss the budget in the context of its present aim and consequences and demand that governments at all levels develop a coherent way to organize the economy and society. This can be done by organizing a new economy and society that defends public right, not private monopoly right.

April 21 Ontario Day of Action

Demand Prosperity, Not Austerity

- Ontario Federation of Labour, March 22, 2012 -

Premier McGuinty put banker Don Drummond in charge of recommending nearly 400 cuts to jobs and public services in Ontario. At a time when Ontarians are in desperate need of economic recovery, these cuts will jeopardize every aspect of society: from health care to full-day kindergarten to pensions. No public service is safe. However, in McGuinty's reckless plan to balance Ontario's books by putting more people out of work and destroying the social safety net, he refuses to roll-back corporate tax cuts that are starving the province of billions of dollars that could be better used to create new jobs and help tens of thousands of struggling Ontario families to get back on their feet.

Click to enlarge poster.

Ontarians from all sectors of society must come together to tell Premier McGuinty that he cannot cut his way to economic prosperity. Ontarians need a job creation strategy and it is time that banks and corporations began paying their fair share.

The Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) is working with community groups and organizations across Ontario to call on workers, retirees, students and community members to join a mass rally at Queen's Park from 3:00 to 5:00 pm on April 21 to demand prosperity, not austerity!

Help to mobilize your members, your families and your communities to stop the cuts and put Ontario on the road to economic recovery.

Our collective future depends on it.

 Tell Premier McGuinty to build Ontario, not tear it apart!

The Need to Invest in Education

Education Workers Join Teachers' Unions in Resisting McGuinty Government's Economic Bullying

- Christine Nugent -

A large number of non-teaching, education support workers will be affected by the wage freezes, concessions in sick benefits and other measures dictated to teachers recently at the Provincial Bargaining Table. This is a group of workers which the Drummond Commission singled out for 10,000 job cuts.

Some of these workers provide support services so vulnerable students can realize their potential, an essential element in a public education system. Others provide administrative and physical plant maintenance, ensuring the schools operate efficiently and safely. In each school, teachers and all support staff work as a team to make the school a matrix that nourishes student learning.

There is concern that the school boards, already severely underfunded, which have never fully recovered from the hole carved out during the 1990s, will respond to further squeezing by McGuinty. The school boards have been under pressure for several years to implement budget cuts affecting both teaching and non-teaching education support workers.

An example of how students' education has been affected can be seen when looking at school libraries. Estimates for the 2011-12 school year show a 6 per cent decline in the number of library technicians employed province-wide from 2008-09 levels despite their role in student success. A study by People for Education released last May found that only 56 per cent of elementary schools have a teacher-librarian, down from 80 per cent in the 1997-98 school year. The number in high schools is 66 per cent this year, down from 78 per cent 10 years ago. The nurturing of students' learning through school libraries is essential and the dismantling of the school libraries and their support is unacceptable.

At the Provincial Bargaining Table where the province is imposing unacceptable conditions, education workers are represented by the following organizations:

- Association of Professional Student Services Personnel (APSSP);

- Canadian Office and Professional Employees Union, Ontario (COPE);

- Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE);

- Coalition of Education Assistants of Ontario - Educational Resource Facilitators of Peel;

- Coalition of Education Assistants of Ontario - Dufferin-Peel Educational Resources Workers' Association;

- Coalition of Education Assistants of Ontario - Halton District Educational Assistants' Association;

- Coalition of Education Assistants of Ontario - Waterloo Region District School Board;

- Custodial and Maintenance Association (CAMA);

- Labourers' International Union of North America (LIUNA);

- Maintenance and Construction Skilled Trades Council (MCSTC);

- Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU); and

- Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

Discussions are taking place amongst these organizations in conjunction with the four teachers unions to organize resistance to the provincial government's recent decrees.

CUPE Education Support Workers

School custodians and stationary engineers, administrative assistants, bus drivers, cafeteria employees, education assistants, English as a second language and literacy instructors, community advisory and clerical staff, both in the schools and at the board office are organized and represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees. CUPE represents 45,000 members in this sector in Ontario.

The education workers in CUPE have over the past two years organized an Ontario School Board Coordinating Committee in preparation for coming to the provincial bargaining table. The committee unites CUPE members in the education sector who do the work that makes learning and teaching possible. They are an integral part of the education system, which acts as a whole. An attack on any one part of education delivery is an attack on all parts, severely affecting the students and their families.

The committee allows education workers from across the province to share information and strategies for bargaining and to discuss issues and policies of concern. With 300 CUPE locals organized into 24 regions, this committee helps locals fight contracting out and defend public education in the face of cutbacks to education spending.

There are 106 CUPE collective agreements in the education sector which will be up for negotiations on August 31, 2012.

The unity of all organizations is essential in organizing resistance to the government and those politicians determined to strip the public education system of its sustenance which will pave the way for privatization.

Toronto District School Board Trustees:
Vote No to Cuts!

- Sylvia Etts -

The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) will make a decision on March 28 that will affect the quality of education in the city and the livelihoods of both teachers and support staff workers whose job it is to guarantee student success. The TDSB is proposing cuts. This comes on the heels of the McGuinty government's austerity measures announced in the past month to the teachers' and education workers' organizations at the Provincial Bargaining Table.

The workers affected by the recommended cuts are:

- Regular Program Educational Assistants: a loss of 430 full-time equivalent (FTE) positions. Education assistants work with students with special needs. These positions were to be protected for a five-year transition period, but there are several years to go yet on that pledge.

- School Office Staff: a loss of 134 FTE positions (both elementary and secondary) due to the Ministry of Education issuing a new clerical employee formula.

- Special Education: positions will be lost but the numbers are unknown at this time.

- Caretaking: a loss of 10 FTE positions.

- School Based Safety Monitors: a loss of 6 FTE positions.

- Aquatic: a loss of 2 FTE positions.

Also affected are 200 high school teachers and 39 elementary vice-principals.

Representatives from the TDSB blamed the lack of funding from the provincial government, specifically for the all-day kindergarten program. The TDSB will be in an $85 million deficit next year. Running a deficit is contrary to the Education Act as amended under Mike Harris. They also say Toronto is rich in its delivery of services compared to other boards and can afford to cut.

The TDSB is the largest school board in Canada and the fourth largest in North America with nearly 600 schools and provides educational services to more than 250,000 students each year.

The demographics of its student base are in many ways different from those of most other school boards in Ontario. The TDSB is responsible for about one-seventh of all students in provincially-funded school boards.

A 2010 TDSB report stated that while there has been a decline in overall enrolment since 2005, the board had 16 per cent more special needs students.

According to a study produced by YouthLink's Inner City Drop-In and Resource Centre, The Changing Face of Poverty in Toronto, one in four families in Toronto is struggling with poverty. Over half of Toronto's single parent families are living in poverty, compared to one in three in 1990. Children who grow up in poverty show almost three and a half times the number of conduct disorders, almost twice the chronic illnesses and over twice the rate of school problems, hyperactivity and emotional disorders as children who are not poor. The proportion of these low-income neighbourhoods has increased from 19 percent to 50 per cent. Middle-income neighbourhoods, meanwhile, have declined from 66 per cent to 32 percent of the city..."

The TDSB also states that they have balanced budgets in the past by using up reserve funds and avoiding capital repairs that can no longer wait.

The school boards receive their funding through education tax rates set by the province. In 2007 the province implemented a plan to equalize the business and residential property tax rate for education by 2015. In Toronto there is an accelerated decline for business tax rates in order to match neighbouring municipalities. The decline of business tax contribution to services has been a mission of this government that is severely affecting the delivery of public services.

Who decides is fundamental in determining whether we live in a society ruled by those whose aim is to use the value produced by the workers for lining the pockets of rich investors and financiers of this province or one where the people who produce the wealth and deliver the services have a say in how social programs like education are funded. Teachers and education workers who are closest to the needs of students in the educational system must be consulted and have decision-making power on this matter.

The loss of education assistants in the classroom is not simply about number ratios between school boards deciding to implement all-day kindergarten or not. Special education staff, safety monitors, caretakers and others in the schools provide necessary functions that allow teachers to develop children's learning. Why else are these workers employed today? Did someone in government find that there are education workers doing unnecessary work to support the classrooms and schools in Toronto?

If passed the recommendations will go into effect September 2012. The TDSB report recommends an increase in lunchroom staff, 400 more early childhood educators and 215 more elementary teachers because of rising enrolment.

CUPE Local 4400 represents TDSB workers. In a media release, union President John Weatherup said, "We believe that these cuts will negatively impact student achievement, special education and safety if implemented." In an interview with CBC he stated, "We are going backwards 10 years to where even Mike Harris' did not want to go."

The 22 public school trustees who were elected during the municipal elections to represent public school supporters in the City of Toronto have a duty to defend education as a right for all. They must Vote No to Cuts!

Teachers, education support workers, students and their families in Toronto who came to know of these cuts through the media without any consultation or decision-making role in the matter should organize to resist. Ontario Political Forum readers in the GTA can contact their trustees and demand they uphold education as a right by voting No! The contact information of the trustees can be found at: http://www.tdsb.on.ca/boardroom/trustees/

(cbc.ca, tdsb.on.ca, youthlink.ca, cupe4400.org,fin.gov.on.ca)

Resistance to Cuts to Public Services

Support Toronto Public Library Workers

- David Greig -

After the expiration of their collective agreement on December 31 and months of negotiations in which the city government via its public library board refused to respond significantly to the needs and concerns of the 2,400 public library employees of CUPE Local 4948, the workers initiated strike action after 5 pm on March 18. The Library management has closed all branches and the workers are picketing and organized successful support rallies on March 19, 23 and 25 at Toronto City Hall and the Toronto Reference Library.

The Toronto Public Library system is among the world's largest with 98 branches and 18.5 million visits per year. Under the current city administration, the system and its workers have been subjected to another and particularly grave array of cuts and threats of the same. In the second half of 2011, resistance on the part of the library workers and the people of Toronto, with participation by prominent literary and cultural personalities, turned back certain aspects of Mayor Ford's assault on the libraries that included the complete closure of some branches. However, with the setting of the 2012 budget, over 100 library jobs were eliminated through, among other things, reductions to hours of service. Now, less than half of the library workers have permanent status. The threat of privatization is also real in view of such developments in the U.S. and the Ford administration's stated aim of cutting, selling off or privatizing "everything that's not nailed down."

The library workers are demanding a contract that would prevent further degradation of their security and well-being and that of the public library system. Instead of addressing the situation whereby over half of the workers are relegated to almost permanent part-time status, often lacking benefits or sufficient work hours to make a living, the city administration and its library board are trying to further undermine the security and well-being of library workers and the system and service they sustain and provide.

In this regard, Local 4948 President Maureen O'Reilly stated, "We are very disappointed that the Board is attempting to continue the attacks launched by the Ford Administration on the rights of our members, more than half of whom are permanently stuck in part-time jobs. It's astounding the Board would rather see neighbourhood services disrupted than back off from cuts to already overworked staff."

The library workers' resistance, their demand for a fair contract that addresses their concerns, and the strike struggle they have now undertaken is eminently just and merits the support of the people. It is an integral part of the fight to uphold the rights of all, and for cultural and educational amenities and institutions meeting the standards of a modern human society.

Address of Library Workers' Union President
to Strike Support Rally

On March 19, hundreds of Toronto Public Library workers and their supporters rallied and mass picketed at Toronto City Hall on this first full day of their strike. Maureen O'Reilly, President of CUPE Local 4948, representing the Toronto Public Library workers, addressed the rally.

"The Toronto Public Library has been cut to the bone. These cuts have been felt most deeply by the workers who are now being stretched to provide the same service with less. We entered this negotiation with a goal to protect workers and the services they provide. We were not seeking major gains, but the Board has been unwilling to end its attack on job security, and virtually unmovable on its agenda to shift our workforce to more vulnerable part-time conditions. The Board is still seeking to gut job security so that more than half of our membership is vulnerable to job loss, making it easier for the city to close branches in the next budget."

"In 2011, at the launch of the (2012) budget, the Mayor, Rob Ford, made the announcement that he wants to get rid of 7,000 city workers. He said we were all lazy and he had to get rid of us. In the 2012 budget process, we lost over 200 city workers, both from the outside workers, the inside workers and the library workers, and by my calculation, he's got 6,800 to go. And that's why this fight today is so important. We lost 107 library workers in this last round. He needs to open up our collective agreement so he can lay more and more of us off. And the Library Board is going to portray to you that the union is not moving, that we are being intransigent, and that we're not talking. We are talking, we are available. But we need this issue resolved, because if we lose library workers -- and he only got a hundred of us last time -- and now he's looking to get over half of our membership, libraries are going to be shuttered forever."

"We don't have enough staff to deliver the service now after the service cuts, and any more loss of staff means loss of service to Torontonians, and they need to know that! This is what this is all about. It's not a regular round of collective bargaining. And the library workers, just like we did throughout the budget process and the campaign that we ran in the fall, we are standing up for services in the City of Toronto. Torontonians deserve to have their library service."

(Photos: OFL)

Hospital Workers Denounce Incentive-Based
Hospital Funding

- Rob Woodhouse -

Last week hospital workers held information pickets at the offices of Liberal Party MPPs in Peterborough, Brampton, Niagara Falls and Kitchener, denouncing the provincial government's new incentive-based hospital funding structure as an attack on hospitals and hospital workers. These pickets were part of a province-wide action campaign by hospital workers aimed at mobilizing their own ranks and informing the public about the measures the government is implementing against the rights of all to health care.

In the Ontario government's agenda of cost cutting and privatizing in health care, hospitals have been singled out. This past week, Health Minister Deb Mathews stepped up the government's attack on hospitals with an announcement about their future funding. During a press conference Mathews said that as part of the Ontario Health Action Plan, a new "incentive-based" funding formula would be imposed on hospitals. This will make Ontario hospitals operate more like private American hospitals, as advocated by Ontario's privatization czar Don Drummond.

Hospital workers picket Brampton constituency office of Labour Minister Linda Jeffrey, March 21.

One of the outcomes of incentive-based funding will be sharply lower budgets and possible closing of hospitals that can't achieve the patient throughputs required for incentive bonuses. Mathews admitted that 35 hospitals will likely see a three per cent funding reduction, especially rural and other smaller hospitals. Other outcomes will be more stripping away of profitable hospital procedures by private clinics, the creation of more private clinics to cherry pick profitable procedures, a further reduction of non-acute and acute care beds, increased dumping of patients into inadequate home care arrangements and overall degradation of patient care.

Hospital workers, in defending their livelihoods through many years of cuts, have also been consistent defenders of the health care system they work in. Mathews' announcement was immediately denounced by the hospital workers' organization Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU/CUPE). "We are concerned that it sets the groundwork for the privatization of the health- care system," said OCHU president Michael Hurley. "The message we want to send from the people who work in the hospital system is, [that] we're not going to stand by while there are another round of budget cuts and we're not going to stand by and allow the system to be privatized."

Hospital workers along with other health care workers have been stepping up their resistance to government attacks on their livelihoods and the services they provide, especially since the release of the Ontario Health Action Plan in February based on the Drummond Report. In response to the Health Action Plan release, the OCHU/CUPE newsletter warns: "One hundred of Ontario's community hospitals are at risk of being gutted by the Liberal's Action Plan for Health Care, which seeks to follow a U.S. model by changing hospital funding to increase competition and privatize hospital services. This plan will reduce local hospitals to a shell with an emergency department and little else. All non-acute and some acute hospital services will be contracted-out to the lowest bidding private clinic. Hospitals will be forced either to specialize in providing a few specific services and nothing else, or if they cannot compete, they will be closed"

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