The Challenges Ahead
The ruling class in Ontario continuously seeks to create conditions to criminalize the teachers and education workers by blaming them for the problems parents and students encounter with the education system. It also tries to break the unity in action of Ontario teachers and education workers. Like its stand towards the Indigenous peoples' firm No! to others deciding what happens on their lands, the ruling class will not permit any power other than its own to assert its right to decide what happens in favour of private interests. When faced with political differences and a united opposition of the people, it resorts to threats and dictate rather than negotiations and political solutions that could harmonize the individual and collective interests in a manner that provides a path forward.
"Every government of any stripe over the past 30 years has suffered their censure for allegedly failing to appreciate, accommodate and compensate their members to the degree they feel is their due. Liberal, Conservative, New Democrat, no matter, it's always the same: some issue arises that union bosses condemn as an insult to their profession, an attack on students and a mortal threat to the future of education." Instead of recognizing that they must invest in public education on an ongoing and constant basis and recoup these investments from the rich who benefit, the ruling class cannot fathom why, despite trying to divide and rule over teachers and educator workers and their unions, they will not willingly submit to the neo-liberal program of cutting and restructuring education to pay the rich through privatization and other schemes. The article then resorts to slanders, insinuating that educators are sheep being forced to follow the dictates of "union bosses" for fear of retribution: "Teachers themselves may be dedicated professionals with deep concern for students and respect for learning, but they have long since ceded contract authority to their unions. Requests to authorize walkouts over whatever issue is currently deemed intolerable are overwhelmingly approved. Those who may hold personal doubts know better than to challenge the powers that be."
The fact that calls are being given to eliminate the right to strike of education workers clearly shows that the ruling class does not want to negotiate and has not learned from its mistakes. Instead, it wants the Ford government to be the instrument of making dictate permanent by eliminating the right to strike. This must be firmly opposed by all working people by standing with educators in their strike actions to show that anything other than a negotiated resolution will not be accepted. (Photos: WF, OSSTF, ETT)
This article was published in Article Link:   Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca |
A recent
editorial in the National Post entitled
"Time to End Teachers' Right to Strike" directly called for the Ontario
government to eliminate educators' right to strike through legislation.
The article expresses the frustration of the ruling class with teachers
and education workers who refuse to accept attacks on their working
conditions
that they have firmly established are students' learning conditions:
This
comes at the same time as the Ontario government used its majority to
try and eliminate university and college student unions because it felt
they were led by "crazy Marxists." The ruling class cannot fathom that
the teachers and education workers themselves are in fact the ones who
have fought to ensure that their unions do not accept
the degradation of their working conditions or secret deals that divide
the movement as a whole. This was the case in 2014, for example, when
the Ontario Liberals imposed contracts on education workers through
legislation then got one of the education union presidents to run as
their candidate in a by-election after cutting a deal with the
government that was said to be "the best that could be done" under the
circumstances. The union's own members went out of their way to ensure
that the president was held to account along with the entire Liberal
minority government that was propped up by the Progressive
Conservatives at the time, bringing it to its knees in that by-election.