The Militant - April 1, 2002 -- Government employees in Ontario walk out

Vol.66/No.13 April 1, 2002

Government employees in Ontario walk out
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BY ROBERT SIMMS
TORONTO--Members of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) are waging their second strike in six years. Since the March 13 walkout, 33,000 members have set up picket lines around government office buildings and work sites where the functions of government ministries are carried out such as health, education, transportation, provincial parks, and court clerks.

Union members voted for the walkout with an 88 percent majority. Six years ago, OPSEU waged its first strike ever with a 65 percent strike vote.

The main issues in the strike are wages, demands of the government bosses for cuts to benefits, contracting out of union jobs, and the inability of temporary or casual workers, even after years of working for the government, to get "permanent" jobs. The government wants to make it even harder for casual workers to win permanent jobs.

Union members are demanding wage increases of 5 percent annually over three years while the government is offering 1.95 percent.

Since it was elected nearly seven years ago, the Conservative government has carried out massive spending cuts to all government services, including heath, education, and the environment. One of the most notorious was at the Ministry of Natural Resources, responsible for environmental testing.

Cuts to staff and regulations led to the situation in Walkerton, Ontario, two years ago where unsupervised water tests led to the deaths of seven people and more than 2,300 people becoming ill in a town of 4,800 from a dangerous form of E. Coli in the town's water supply. The Conservative government is widely blamed for the catastrophe.

At one picket line set up outside an environmental testing laboratory in Toronto's north end, government scientist Dallas Takeuchi said workers are worried not only about their own conditions on the job but also about how well public health is being protected. For example, even before the strike began there was a one-month backlog for testing water, soil, and other samples for contamination, due to lack of scientists and technicians.

When the union went on strike six years ago, it had 55,000 members. But the Conservative government's cuts have eliminated more than 10,000 jobs in the civil service.

OPSEU also includes several thousand prison guards in its current membership of 45,000, but the government deems these essential workers and they remain at work. Emergency dispatch workers (911) also remain on the job.

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