Even as school absences are at record levels due to a tsunami of COVID-19 and other respiratory illnesses, the president of the CSQ, Quebec’s third largest labor federation and biggest teachers’ union, is vehemently opposing any reintroduction of mask mandates in the province’s schools.
The pandemic has revealed more than ever that workers, wherever they live in Canada , confront the same essential political issues and must wage a common struggle to eliminate the virus from our schools.
The meeting marked the first time that education workers from all professions, including teachers, education assistants and other support staff, could discuss a united struggle in opposition to the unions’ attempts to divide them and suppress their struggle.
Governments in every province, from John Horgan’s New Democrats in British Columbia to the hard-right Ford Tories in Ontario, reopened schools at the beginning of this month after dismantling all remaining COVID public health measures.
A decisive vote for strike action must be made the starting point for the political mobilization of <em>all</em> education workers to defend public education, defeat the hard-right Ford government’s austerity agenda, and secure inflation-busting wage and benefit increases.