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All Out to Support Ontario Province-Wide Strike of Education Workers Make Your Mark on the Province-Wide Strike of Education Workers! Wear Red on Friday!
The Ford government has lost the battle for public opinion in its attempts to attack all social programs by targeting education workers. It is nonetheless preparing to release a budget that it hopes to use in a new effort to bolster its claim that it must take funds from social programs and use them to pay the rich in the form of debt and deficit repayments and new transportation infrastructure. It is once again repeating the self-serving view that education is a cost and that only by limiting increases in wages can even the existing standards in education be maintained, never mind improved, which is what is required. In November 2019 the government passed Bill 124, Protecting a Sustainable Public Sector for Future Generations Act to try to dictate parameters for the negotiations with all public sector workers in the form of a one per cent limit on new compensation. This is an attack on all working people as the government is trying to paint those who create the value through their work as a cost and a drain on the economy that must be attacked through legislation, while the entire public purse is put at the disposal of paying the rich.
All working people in the province, irrespective of whether they work in education or not, are called on to put their mark on February 21 in defence of the rights of teachers and education workers. This will express the conscience of Ontarians in defence of the right to education and the right of working people to have a say over the direction of the economy and in particular the public services and social programs we all depend on. Wear red on Friday, February 21 wherever you are as a way to join in this fight for your empowerment! Join the picket lines if you can, and show that the working people of Ontario stand as one! Education Is a Right! (Photos: WF, Megan Simon)
This article was published in   Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca |
On Friday, February 21, nearly
200,000 Ontario teachers and
education workers across 72 school boards and nearly 5,000 schools will
carry out a joint action to say 
In 2018-19 the
Ontario government paid out $12.4 billion to the
moneylenders in the form of interest alone on the provincial debt.
Instead of developing public revenue and recouping from the rich the
value created by public services which they consume, the Ford
government has instead set out to attack the workers and the youth. In
this
respect, the joint actions of educators are in fact expressing the
conscience of the working class of Ontario that they are not a cost but
those who create the value in the economy and have a right to decide
how it is used.