| November 1, 2021 -
No. 102 Defend Public
Interest by Upholding Workers' Rights! Stop
Anti-Social Assault on Locked Out New Brunswick Education Workers!
CUPE NB mobile office
travels to Miramichi, October 30, 2021
Opposition to Pay-the-Rich
Schemes
• Injured
Workers Hold Halloween Lobby Actions
• Hilton
Metrotown Workers’ “Come Back Stronger”
Day of Action
Defend Public
Interest by Upholding Workers' Rights!
On October 31, the New Brunswick government locked out some
3,000 striking education workers, members of the Canadian Union of
Public Employees (CUPE NB). Approximately 20,000 workers who are
members of the union are currently on strike for wages they deem
acceptable and essential to solving the problem of retaining and
attracting workers in public services. In its
October 31 press release, CUPE NB wrote:  "The Government
of New Brunswick has locked out the education workers of CUPE 2745 and
CUPE 1253. At 11:20 am, the Ministry of Education gave notice to CUPE
that, effective immediately, the government will lock out school bus
drivers, custodians, janitors, educational assistants, student
intervention workers, student attendants, speech therapy assistants,
school administrative assistants and clerks, district administrative
support and library workers. Workers in positions designated are being
placed on leave without pay. This is clearly a move by the government
to try to divide CUPE and create chaos. Premier Higgs can choose to end
job action by paying public sector workers the fair wages we deserve.
Instead, the Premier and Minister Cardy have chosen to lock out
education workers and prolong the withdrawal of services. Our union is
stronger, and a fair deal is more likely when we are united. The
government is choosing to dig in and we now expect they are planning
more divisive actions to come. CUPE members will remain united and in
solidarity across sectors and classifications in this fight."
Even though the union had reached essential services
agreements to maintain services in all affected sectors, the government
has closed schools until the strike is over and imposed home-based
online learning. Education workers designated as essential have been
placed on unpaid leave. Since the strike began, the government has
issued daily press releases, blaming workers for creating instability
amongst the population and negatively impacting the delivery of health
services and the pandemic response. It continues to claim that the
workers' strike actions are unpredictable, even though the workers gave
the government 100 days' notice before going on strike. The
lockout of 3,000 education workers is yet another abuse of power and
refusal to sort out problems in a peaceful manner that respects
hardworking people with families without whom the schools do not
function. For the government to resort to online learning for students
is also unacceptable. It suggests that schools are no longer needed for
children. It disrupts parents lives as if parents too are
disposable. It is an unconscionable abuse of government power.
This abuse of power is doubly wrong as it comes after the lack of
social contact between children as a result of the pandemic and the
harm that has caused young people. The cause of the education workers
is just and the government's action of locking them
out and
resorting to online learning is immoral. The government
deserves
to be truly condemned for this abuse of power. Workers' Forum
calls on the people of New Brunswick to let the government know they
condemn this anti-social assault on all the people of New
Brunswick. 
Opposition
to Pay-the-Rich Schemes 
Barrie--Springwater
Injured workers and their allies held some 50 actions on
October 29 across Ontario at the offices of members of the provincial
legislature (MPPs). They left signs on their doors and copies of a
letter from the Ontario Network of Injured Workers Groups (ONIWG). The
actions highlighted that the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board's
(WSIB) so-called surplus of funds came from cuts to the benefits of
injured workers mandated by successive governments. They demanded the
funds be used to restore these benefits to the workers who need them
very badly, not to rebate employers. On the eve of Halloween, injured
workers do not need more trickery but justice, organizers said.
Photos show activists at the offices of MPPs from Thunder Bay
and Sudbury, to Hamilton, Niagara, Mississauga, and Toronto, and
Peterborough, among others. Justice for Injured
Workers!
The government's corruption
is very obvious when it gives what it calls a surplus to employers when
the entire so-called unfunded liability that was used as the
justification to slash injured workers’ benefits was an
accounting fraud in the first place. Despite being powerless within
their parties and within the Legislature and government, MPPs should
have to answer for what is going on. They should take responsibility
for their presence in the Legislature and answer for legislation which
is passed. It will not do to keep blaming rival cartel parties and
pretending they would do things differently. These pay-the-rich schemes
are dictated by the rich and it is high time MPPs stopped permitting
them by remaining silent. 
Thunder
Bay--Superior North
Thunder
Bay--Atikokan
Sudbury
 
Peterborough
 
Beaches--East York; Scarborough Southwest
 
Toronto
University; Toronto--Danforth
 
Mississauga
Centre; Mississauga Erin Mills
Hamilton area riding of
Flamborough-Glanbrook
Hamilton
West--Ancaster--Dundas
Hamilton
Mountain
 
Niagara West; St. Catharines
On October
28, members of Unite Here! Local 40 organized a picket action as part
of a continent-wide "Come Back Stronger" day of action. The
“Come Back Stronger” actions were organized by the
union to defend jobs and working conditions in the hospitality industry
that are under attack by the conglomerate owners of hotels, who are
using the excuse of the pandemic to fire workers and to attempt to
reduce wages and eliminate hard won working conditions.  Undaunted by the
cold rainy day, the Hilton Metrotown workers erected tents at the main
entrance of the hotel, and then marched back and forth while the drums
beat time. The main slogan for this action was "Housekeeping every
day!"; "Hotel rooms need to be cleaned every day!"
A
union organizer explained to Workers'
Forum that hotel management in hotels all over are trying
to cut down on the amount of cleaning they do in each room, and thus
cut down on the number of employees: for example the clerk at the desk
of a hotel may be required to ask an incoming guest if they want to be
disturbed by having someone come in to clean. Having had it put that
way, many a guest agrees not to have the cleaning done. This is not
only a matter of saving jobs — and many of those workers have
been there for 22 years, he said, but it is also a matter of
maintaining proper standards of cleanliness and public safety.
A statement by the union on Facebook, in announcing the
October 28 action, said "During the pandemic,
DSDL [the
offshore corporation that owns the Hilton Metrotown hotel
in Burnaby] locked out Hilton Metrotown workers
in April after terminating 97 workers this spring. Many of those fired
were women who had worked at the hotel for years. The BC Federation of
Labour issued a boycott of the hotel, and we held a sit-in protest this
past August. What Hilton Metrotown is doing to its workers isn't a
single incident. Hotels are using the pandemic to get rid of their
long-term workforce, many of them women." The union statement
continues, "But the industry is making a comeback and workers need
their jobs back. Bosses may use the pandemic to try to cut services
& jobs but the union will come back stronger! It's time to come
back stronger and say NO more unequal women in the hotel industry!"
 
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