While CUPE’s sellout materially weakened the education workers in their struggle, conditions remain highly favourable for the development of a mass working class movement against capitalist austerity and an end to real-terms wage cuts.
All indications are that the CUPE leadership has no intention of allowing Monday’s strike to go ahead. Instead, they are using the strike notice both as a bargaining chip with the government in negotiations and to placate the militancy of the rank-and-file, which is still angered and frustrated by the bureaucracy’s scuttling of their previous strike.
School support-staff workers must not be left to fight alone against the Ontario Tory government’s class war agenda of wage cuts, austerity and the destruction of workers’ rights.
Imgrund, who built up a large following among workers in Ontario thanks to his advocacy for COVID-19 public health measures, has been targeted by a rabid alliance of far-right anti-vaxxers, COVID deniers, and “left” proponents of identity politics.
The government’s proposed four-year deal is a declaration of war on the working class. The below-inflation pay offer sets the stage for an intensification of the assault on public education and an escalation of attacks on the living standards of all workers.