Doug Ford’s bungling means CUPE now won’t take ‘yes’ for an answer
CUPE #CUPE
You may be wondering why CUPE has started the countdown to yet another school strike next week — the second in three weeks.
It’s for the students.
Forget that union leaders forgot to ever utter the word “student” at last week’s news conference. After that conspicuous omission was pointed out by the press, CUPE’s leadership remembered to repeat their press lines Wednesday:
It’s for the students.
To be clear, education support workers will close down schools across the province next Monday solely because they want to support better education. Students will be shut out of classes for days to come so that students might benefit from better classes after the walkout.
So argues CUPE without a trace of irony. After nearly three years of COVID-19 peril, after roughly three weeks of influenza and RSV stress, after two days of school closures over a constitutional confrontation, brace yourself for more of the same madness, sadness and badness.
It’s for the students.
If all that talk of standing by students sounds self-serving — a talking point to make up for fumbling its lines last time — let’s give CUPE credit for savvy bargaining. Notwithstanding the roller-coaster ride for students and parents, the union has done exceptionally well for its members.
All thanks to Doug Ford’s Tories.
But there’s a problem: CUPE can’t take “yes” for an answer.
Even in victory, the union prefers to keep fighting a losing battle. CUPE has just won an impressive 3.6 per cent annual increase over the next four years (which adds up to 15.2 per cent compounded) — significantly more than other workers, including CUPE members elsewhere.
But it’s still poised to strike at great cost to all — albeit not for more money in wages. It wants more funding to ensure more hours for more workers.
For the students.
If you thought allocating government funding was a decision democratically entrusted to political leaders elected by all voters — not labour leaders elected by their members — you would be constitutionally correct. But in today’s Ontario, all bets are off — thanks again to a reckless premier’s readiness to overturn democratic and legal norms.
If not for his bizarre constitutional overkill — invoking the “notwithstanding” clause to override collective bargaining rights protected by the Charter — CUPE would likely be in the doghouse with the public by now. Had Ford not overreached and overreacted so badly, the union would have been unlikely to garner public sympathy by striking after sticking for so long to its demand for annual increases of 11 per cent for the next three or four years.
But Ford jumped the gun by banning a strike in advance, then shot himself in the foot by deploying the constitution’s so-called “nuclear” option to block any after-the-fact challenges in the law courts. That backfired badly in the court of public opinion.
Instead of blaming education workers for walking out, much of the public reaction faulted Ford’s Tories for provoking them. Cowed and cornered, the premier famously blinked — repealing his unprecedented strike ban.
The government returned to the bargaining table with a new offer that went considerably beyond its previously announced “final offer” of 2.5 per cent annually for lower-paid workers and a 1.5 per cent yearly hike for those making more than $43,000. By all accounts, both sides are now onside with the enriched offer that averages out to 3.6 per cent across the union.
Ford’s bungling will cost the treasury dearly. The bigger education unions have been watching from the sidelines as CUPE took the lead with its lower-paid workers — invoking images of the working poor lining up at food banks despite wages of about $25 an hour on the lower end.
It resisted the government’s offer to give lower-paid workers a higher percentage increase, deeming this a labour heresy (even if many private sector unions have acquiesced to the reality of so-called “two-tier” contracts). To the delight of the bigger, richer teachers’ unions, which are waiting in the wings to ink deals, Ford’s Tories acquiesced.
This means a big hike effectively becomes the floor not merely for low-wage custodians and clerks earning as little as $40,000 a year, but for teachers across the province who can earn twice as much or more. And while it’s true that inflation is hovering at seven per cent this year, diluting everyone’s purchasing power, it is forecast to come down in the subsequent years of this four-year contract.
That’s the bigger victory — not just for the 55,000 low-wage education workers at CUPE but more than 100,000 teachers in the other unions. It’s a deal the government was dragged into — or more precisely, a booby trap that boomeranged on an impatient and imprudent premier, who outsmarted only himself.
The government not only climbed down from a constitutional standoff, it sat down at the table to hand out a deal that seemed unfathomable a few weeks ago. Ford had warned CUPE not to “force my hand,” but ended up opening his wallet to all unions.
Few are faster on their feet than Ford when executing a flip-flop. For all his dexterity and verbosity, the backflipping premier wasn’t wrong when he observed that while he was “putting water in my wine,” CUPE was “doing cartwheels” in celebration of his capitulation.
It’s true that labour unions, public and private, rallied to CUPE’s cause when Charter rights were at stake, and made the case for higher pay. Now that neither the Charter nor wages are on the table, union solidarity only goes so far and public sympathy has its limits.
CUPE may yet take the money and run. Or it might fall in love with its new-found press lines about the people it almost forgot:
It’s all for the students.
Martin Regg Cohn is a Toronto-based columnist focusing on Ontario politics and international affairs for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @reggcohn SHARE:
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