Facing the prospect of a general strike across the province, Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced on Monday morning that he would repeal his controversial Bill 28.
Passed on Thursday, Nov. 3, Bill 28 imposed a new three-year contract on CUPE Ontario’s 55,000 education support workers. The bill restricted the workers to an annual pay increase of just 2.5 per cent, well below what the union was asking for. Ford invoked the notwithstanding clause to pass the bill, meaning it could not be challenged in court. It also made any strike action by CUPE illegal.
CUPE, however, pushed forward with their strike action on Monday. Multiple other unions also showed their solidarity and support for CUPE. Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) President JP Hornick calling Bill 28 an “attack on all workers’ rights.”
With a general strike becoming a very real possibility, Ford announced that he would withdraw the offending legislation as a “sign of good faith.”
Premier Doug Ford
Last time we looked at Doug Ford he had just won an Ontario election with record low turnout. That was in June. He decided to spend the intervening months in office to limit Ontario education workers salary increases to something reasonable. This is in and of itself fine, and while there are more important issues this is still a fight you should take up.
However, this was apparently so important to him that he used the notwithstanding clause, making strikes illegal. Then the public sector union threatened to strike, which would have been illegal, so he immediately cucks to them.
This is so embarrassing that it’s either a complete setup or this man is almost unbelievably stupid. Those more familiar with the situation should know better, but this doesn’t make sense from the perspective of an intelligent person looking to crush the Globo Homo Enjoying teachers unions. And of course, while they are terrible, it’s not really clear why this is such a pressing issue, as opposed to the school curriculum itself.
“I’ve always respected the right of workers to free and fair bargaining, but CUPE refused to take strike action off the table. They left us with no choice,” said Ford.
He literally made striking illegal. He could have had them all arrested, but he decided not to. The point of making it illegal to strike is that you take striking off the table.
On CUPE’s website, they state that their position was to ask for a pay increase of $3.25 a year on a three year contract for all of their workers. Meanwhile, Ford’s offer would have equaled just $0.33 to $0.53 a year.
It’s also worth remembering that Rabble and all these other kosher-left propaganda rags are run by idiots who try to tell us that Canadian Union of Public Employeed (CUPE) is asking for a pay increase of $3.25/year. However, Ford wanted a pay increase of only $0.40/year. Something tells me paying the teachers an extra candy bar per year is not worth anyone’s time.
Clicking on the link we see that CUPE actually wants an increase of $3.25/hr, and they want that increase every year. This is pretty much absurd, working out to somewhere around and it makes sense to fight this, since they’re asking for something like a 25% pay increase per year, and an order of magnitude more than what is necessary to keep pace with inflation, although perhaps not the inflation we’re currently dealing with.
If I were in office I would also be fighting the teachers’ unions, although not just on this, but I would not be embarrassing myself by calling in the dictator act and then whining that my opposition is still doing the thing that I made it illegal for them to do.
A classic DoFo flip-flop (or, to take the author’s terminology, a cuck-flop). I’m reminded of him announcing the vaccine pass a few weeks after promising “we’re not gonna have a split society”. I don’t think the man has any real convictions.
Didn’t this faggot’s brother smoke crack and then proceeded to die of fat cancer