Before Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced he would rescind the clause barring a strike by an education union, labor leaders discussed a possible nationwide strike that would temporarily shut down not only the province’s auto plants, but the country’s ports as well. even Confederation Bridge on Prince Edward Island. Ultimately, the full show of force never took place. It was canceled last Monday after Mr Ford and his education minister, Stephen Lecce, decided to back down. National union leaders say the goal of the potential protest was to outflank the support of the Ontario Education Union, which represents 55,000 school custodians, teaching assistants and other support workers. They hoped to send a message to other governments around the country that were considering following Mr Ford’s example and removing the right of public sector workers to strike. Private sector unions feared the same could be done to them if any future job action threatened key industries or infrastructure projects – potentially upsetting the uneasy balance of industrial relations across the country. The controversy began on November 3 when the Ontario government passed legislation, Bill 28, which used Section 33 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, better known as the dissent clause, to override the education union’s right to strike. A mediator had said the province and the union, an affiliate of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, were far apart in their negotiations. The bill also imposed a contract that included 2.5 percent annual wage increases for workers earning less than $43,000 and 1.5 percent raises for those earning more, well below union demands. Mr Ford argued he had “no choice” because the union had given the required five days’ notice of a legal strike. Ontario students had already endured two years of pandemic-related learning disruptions, and the provincial government’s stated goal was to keep them in class. But the day after the bill passed, the union walked out anyway, risking millions of dollars in fines for breaking the law. Many schools were closed across the province, leaving parents scrambling. Behind the scenes last weekend, more than 100 labor leaders from across Canada gathered in hours-long virtual conference calls to plan a broad response, said Mark Hancock, CUPE’s national president, who had flown to Toronto from his home in Coquitlam, BC. , to help teachers in their conversations. In addition to plans for a Nov. 12 demonstration at Queen’s Park and a province-wide “political protest” on Nov. 14 that would hit many parts of the economy, possibly including auto plants, union leaders from across Canada discussed broader action, Mr. Hancock said. There was talk of temporarily closing the ports and perhaps the Confederate bridge. The concern was that if Mr Ford’s government was not challenged, other provinces would follow, he said. The protest also aimed to pressure Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to use Ottawa’s rarely deployed power to block provincial legislation. “We would be smart about it and make sure that Canadians are not put at risk as a result of the actions,” Mr. Hancock said. Karen Littlewood, the head of the Ontario Secondary Teachers’ Federation – also now in contract talks with the provincial government – was on the teleconferences. He urged other unions to step up. “If we fought it ourselves as an education [unions] and it wasn’t responsive across the board and across the province and across the country, it wouldn’t be effective,” he told The Globe and Mail. Lana Payne, president of Unifor, the country’s largest private sector union, said she was among labor leaders contacting Mr Ford’s office, calling on the government to back off. He also sent messages to Ontario Labor Minister Monte McNaughton, who has been the face of the government’s approach to organized labor. Ms Payne said she told the government that anxious workers, reeling from the pandemic and facing skyrocketing inflation and skyrocketing interest rates, were not going to accept the erosion of collective bargaining rights. “My message to the government was that this is a mood that you should not try with this kind of legislation at this time because the resistance will be much greater than you would expect,” Ms Payne said. Unifor’s national executive endorsed the idea of ”escalating actions leading to a general strike and possibly including a general strike,” he said. Leaders of the union’s major autoworkers division warned Mr Ford in an open letter on November 6 that they were “exploring all options” and would not “stand idly by as you undermine the most fundamental rights”. Ms Payne called Bill 28 “a very big slippery slope”. He said set an example that not only threatened other public sector workers in Ontario and other provinces, but potentially those in the private sector as well. Several private sector unions, including the local chapter of the International Labor Union of North America, had endorsed Mr. Ford in this year’s provincial election. But even they were quick to reprimand the government for using the extension clause. The broad coalition of unions, poised to announce plans to fight back, did not learn the government was backing down until last Monday, when Mr Ford promised to scrap the legislation and make an “improved offer” to resolve the dispute. David Doorey, associate professor of employment law at York University, said the backlash should have been easy to predict, given the potential for further use of the extension clause to upend the country’s industrial relations model. “The Ford government’s strategy was naive in the extreme, lacking an understanding of the Canadian industrial relations system,” he said. Now, with Bill 28 officially repealed This coming Monday and with negotiations with CUPE continuing, the threat of labor Armageddon has receded. But tough talks with the province’s other education unions lay ahead. And Mr. Ford did not rule out another use of the extension clause, which he describes as a “tool,” despite condemnation from the prime minister and the Canadian Civil Liberties Union. This week, Mr Ford also denied that pressure from unions had prompted him to change course, saying he made the decision to “hide the temperatures” and return children to the classroom. David Tarrant, a former Ford senior partner who now heads the Atlantic Canada office of lobbying and strategic communications firm Enterprise Canada, said the prime minister has shown in the past that he’s not afraid to reverse course when a decision causes an outcry — a rarity characteristic among politicians. (At the height of the pandemic in April 2021, Mr. Ford almost immediately reversed a wildly unpopular decision to give police more powers and close playgrounds, for example.) “One of the endearing qualities of Doug Ford, for better or for worse, is that he’s essentially a pragmatic populist and doesn’t make decisions based on rigid ideological beliefs,” Mr Tarrant said. “While you can criticize him for that, it makes it very easy for him to say, ‘Whoops, I didn’t expect this to be the reaction, and we’ll try to find an alternative way forward.’ With a report by Dustin Cook Prime Minister Justin Trudeau denounces the provinces’ use of the constitutional infringement clause. But he rejects a suggestion by Ontario Premier Doug Ford that the issue could be settled by meeting with premiers to discuss constitutional changes. The Canadian Press
