Category: Campaigns
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Solidarity Works
The tentative agreement OPSEU has reached with the LCBO is a reminder of what solidarity can produce. It is the stuff that puts our union front and centre in the Canadian labour movement. Solidarity is about standing shoulder to shoulder as our LBED membership has just done, achieving a landmark tentative deal with a tough,…
Andy Pedersen
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Paying down the deficit: here’s how
Well, it’s 2010. Happy New Year! As you read this, staff at the Ontario Ministry of Finance are hard at work to put together the 2010-11 provincial budget. This year’s budget deficit has grabbed a lot of headlines, with Finance Minister Dwight Duncan saying it will hit $24.7 billion. To no one’s surprise, the Premier…
Andy Pedersen
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Last chance for Liberals to refocus
As the Ontario Liberal Party gets ready for its Annual General Meeting Oct. 15-17, one thing is clear: The Liberals are in rough shape. Something like 70 per cent of Ontarians think the McGuinty government is on the wrong track. It’s not hard to see why. The Premier’s vision of a prosperous Ontario with strong…
Andy Pedersen
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Getting high
Justin Trudeau recently admitted he had smoked marijuana after becoming an MP (yawn). This sparked a national debate. Talk of getting high is all the rage. I say, "It"s about time." But I am not talking about the same kind of high. It is time to turn that frown upside down. After the past lows,…
Andy Pedersen
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Corporations Giving “the Business” to Canadians
Last week, in an apparent moment of heightened consciousness, Margaret Wente of the Globe and Mail scolded corporations for their poor behaviour. This is the same Margaret Wente who frequently rails about unions and the need for their demise. She hasn’t yet made the connection that unions are the last line of defense against greedy…
Andy Pedersen
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A Gift That Keeps On Giving
Sometimes the best gift comes from the strangest place…or more precisely, person. For the holiday season, Tory leader Tim Hudak offered up a gift of mammoth proportions. Hudak and his spin doctors thought they would get some political mileage out of taking on "Ontario"s Union", OPSEU. The results were not what they expected. It started…
Andy Pedersen
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We’re not for sale!
When you apply privatization and outsourcing to public services it all adds up to the same thing: Profit for a few and job losses for many. Worse yet, it brings inferior services to all. Trade unions oppose privatization due to the immediate and permanent impact on jobs, but there is more to consider. When services…
Andy Pedersen
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Their fight is our fight
A thousand OPSEU members march on Queen’s Park, joining thousands more autoworkers and retirees rallying to preserve pensions. A few days later, thousands of people from all over attend a rally to protect our rural hospitals from layoffs and closures. We call it solidarity – actions that show a revived unity in the labour movement…
Andy Pedersen
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Solidarity Forever
When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run, There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun; Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one, But the union makes us strong. CHORUS: Solidarity forever, Solidarity forever, Solidarity forever, For the union makes us strong. Is there aught…
Andy Pedersen
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OPSEU supports the Occupy movement
Dear friends, OPSEU stands in solidarity with all who struggle for justice. We support the Occupy protestors as they expose growing economic inequality and corporate corruption. We will add our strength to this peoples’ movement for as long as it takes. The Occupy movement is provoking change. Taxes on financial transactions are gaining recognition as…
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Labour’s voice has never mattered more
Around about Labour Day I usually find myself humming a few good old union songs. Songs like “There once was a union maid,” “Joe Hill,” “There is power in the union,” and of course, “Solidarity Forever.” If there are enough people around I even sing out loud. So here’s a question: “Why are there so…
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Get ready to defend your right to retire
If you are an OPSEU member with a pension plan, get ready to defend your right to retire. The Oct. 6 provincial election is coming up fast. In the weeks ahead, you’ll hear more voices calling on government to pay less in pension premiums. Business groups will say your pension is “platinum plated.” Sun TV…
Andy Pedersen
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Convention 2012: A baptism of fire
Convention 2012 will go down as one of the most eventful in our storied history. It was to be expected. A call for a dues levy in this economic climate will do that. It was just what our union needed. Passionate debate. Exchanging of ideas. A clash of philosophies. But in the end we achieved…
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A compassionate society is possible
To hear some business people talk, the only way things can ever change for most of us is to get worse. The gap between the rich and the poor has been growing in Canada for about 30 years, and it has nothing to do with recessions. In good times and bad, the rich have been…
Andy Pedersen
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We need an economic summit, now
We need an economic summit to unite the three pillars of the Ontario economy – business, labour and government – together as a team to help the ailing economy. There are all kinds of examples of progress being made when you get the right people in the room. That means people from the boards of…
Andy Pedersen
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The wage freeze: a Labour Day response
Dear friends, Every year, some bad boss reminds me why Labour Day matters. In 2010, a company from Brazil stripped pension rights from nickel miners in Sudbury. Billionaire Galen Weston told 30,000 Ontario grocery clerks to eat a 25 per cent pay cut. And Premier McGuinty told a million provincial workers to accept a wage…
Andy Pedersen
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Rise up!
Dear sisters and brothers: It’s clear to me that the timing of this year’s Convention theme couldn’t be better. This year’s theme is “Rise up!” And everywhere I look in OPSEU, I see green shoots of activism sprouting up. Of course there is never a time when our members aren’t taking action on some issue.…
Andy Pedersen
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OPSEU members are setting the agenda
Dear friends, On Dec. 3, OPSEU members took part in 24 events across Ontario with one goal: to start a public conversation about corporate tax cuts. Neither the Liberals nor the Tories want this conversation to happen. Under Mike Harris, under Dalton McGuinty, the most profitable corporations in this land have had their way on…
Andy Pedersen
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Labour Day and the value of work
Dear friends, As we head to Labour Day and the Oct. 6 provincial election, I’ve been thinking a lot about work. Without work, we have no food, no clothing, no housing. Without work, we have no healthcare, no education, no support for those who can’t work. Without work, we can’t live. The roots of the…
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Get colleges under control
Dear sisters and brothers, Ontario’s colleges are out of control. With all the media glare around the e-Health and OLG scandals this year, the outrageous antics of the Colleges Compensation and Appointments Council – the colleges’ employer group – have mostly gone unnoticed. With the spotlight elsewhere, the Council has been obstructing democracy, misleading its…
Andy Pedersen