Ontario Govt Can't Break Teachers' Strike Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit ------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the November 13, 1997 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- ONTARIO GOVERNMENT CAN'T BREAK TEACHERS' STRIKE By G. Dunkel With 126,000 teachers on strike since Oct. 27, the government of Ontario, Canada, tried to break the teachers' union. Officials sought a court order forcing the strikers back to work. But in the face of strong and growing popular support for the strike--and in light of labor calls for a province-wide general strike in Canada's industrial and financial heartland if the order were issued--the courts backed off. On Nov. 3, Justice James MacPherson, who had heard Ontario's request for an injunction over the weekend, refused to issue the order. MacPherson said it would be "significantly premature." Even before teachers walked out, the Ontario Teachers Federation had made it clear that this was not a traditional strike for better wages and working conditions. It was a "political protest against Bill 160," according to the OTF. Mary McDonal, a Toronto teacher in Toronto, told the Toronto Sun: "This has nothing to do with our pay or even our jobs. We are saying ... that what the government is going to do is going to hurt education and hurt the children." Bill 160 would chop $700 million to $1 billion from education, effectively abolish local school boards and transfer their powers to a single board sitting in Toronto. Over 10,000 teachers would lose their jobs and the education of over 2.1 million students would be severely affected. The OTF had said its members would walk if the bill was introduced. And they did. The Canadian Union of Public Employees, which had faced off Premier Mike Harris' government earlier this fall, firmly backs the strike. Their members have not only honored the teachers' picket lines, but joined them. CUPE offered the striking teachers $1 million. Ontario CUPE President Sid Ryan said: "What's needed here is to show the government that there's more at risk than smashing the teachers' strike. We all have a stake in the strike." He called for a meeting at the Ontario Labor Federation to plan a wide response to any government attack on the teachers. The Canadian Auto Workers released a statement calling for picket lines in front of every unionized shop in Ontario if the government attacks the teachers unions. CAW President Buzz Hargrove said, "You can bet your bottom dollar that the CAW will be leaving the work place." The OTF has built on tremendous popular support for the strike by keeping up strong picket lines, hanging banners over major roads, distributing leaflets wherever people gathered, distributing lawn signs, creating food banks, winter clothes exchanges, blood banks and UNICEF fund drives. In towns where the strike has closed child-care centers, unions have opened their halls for alternative arrangements. A parent in Toronto summed it up: "I feel that the teachers are fighting for the students' rights as well as their own and I think it's really important to show our support for that as well." - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if source is cited. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@workers.org. For subscription info send message to: info@workers.org. Web: http://workers.org) ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytlab-11.07.97-04:00:57-7090