1980s

1980

• President Sean O'Flynn is sentenced to 35 days in jail for his role in the illegal corrections strike. He serves the mandatory two-thirds of the sentence in the Metro West Detention Centre.

• College support staff press Convention to establish a strike fund and a reasonable strike policy.

• Convention establishes the Provincial Women's Committee with a formal role in the union. As a “constitutional committee” it has elected representatives from each region and can propose resolutions and constitutional amendments to the convention. It has a mandate to enhance the role of women in the union, the workplace and society.

1981

• OPSEU establishes a $6-million strike fund. The chief asset of the fund is the union's head office, then at 1901 Yonge St. in Toronto (Right).

• Centennial College in Scarborough lays off 47 maintenance workers and contracts the work out. O'Flynn, two of the workers, OFL Secretary- Treasurer Terry Meagher and Toronto Labour Council President Wally Majesky occupy the office of Centennial's president. After eight days the college agrees to save the jobs.

1982

• OPSEU wins paid parental leave for the Ontario Public Service.

• Buoyed by a couple of arbitration wins, OPSEU takes the issue of VDT (computer terminal) safety on the road as a rallying cry for office and clerical workers. The campaign gives the union its first inroads to bargain technological change with the provincial government.

• The government's five-year plan to close six smaller centres for the developmentally handicapped sparks an energetic fight-back campaign that has the union speaking out for the need for solid community alternatives before the closures take effect.

• (Right) Federal and provincial governments re-establish wage controls on public sector workers and suspend the limited bargaining rights of government workers. The Inflation Restraint Act sets a 5 per cent limit on wage hikes. OPSEU organizes a mass rally and burns Premier Bill Davis in effigy.

• The Ontario Supreme Court rules sections of the Inflation Restraint Act that suspended bargaining rights “don't just infringe on workers' freedom, they emasculate it.” OPSEU rents Roy Thomson Hall for a rally of 1,500 people to celebrate. NDP Leader Bob Rae plays the piano.

• OPSEU publishes the book Madness, by John Marshall, its second critique of the province's system for dealing with psychiatric patients. A blistering indictment of the system, it is the result of a union-sponsored commission of inquiry which held hearings in communities around the province.

• (Left) Women's Conference Members
  plan how to use collective bargaining  and the political process to advance women's rights.

1984

• The courts uphold an arbitration decision which vindicates Nipigon forester Donald MacAlpine for whistleblowing. The case adds to the issues that OPSEU will take forward. The union has since campaigned vigorously for the right of public servants to blow the whistle on wrong-doing.

• College faculty strike over quality of education on Oct. 16. In early November the government legislates them back to work with an arbitrator to rule on wages and Prof. Michael Skolnick assigned to research college educational standards. Within a year they have a settlement that makes up for pay lost during the strike and a ringing endorsement from Skolnick on their quality of education issues.

1985

• James Clancy is elected president of the union, succeeding O'Flynn who is moving to a position at the OFL, and defeating former vice-president Ev Sammons by a six-vote margin.

• The first Making It Public campaign takes the union's issues into the fray of a provincial election.

• The 40-year reign of the provincial Conservatives comes to an end with the election of a minority Liberal government supported by the NDP.

• The National Citizens Coalition, a right-wing group, supports a $1 million lawsuit by Merv Lavigne from the Haileybury School of Mines against OPSEU. Lavigne, a malcontent during the faculty strike, claims he was forced to support causes he opposed through the union's use of dues to support social and political movements. In 1991, the Supreme Court of Canada throws out Lavigne's case and orders costs paid to the union.

• OPSEU initiates a study of stress in institutions, and, backed by solid data, achieves a bargaining breakthrough for institutional care workers.

Union's head office, then at 1901 Yonge St. in Toronto
President 1978 - 1985

1982 OPSEU members at Ontario College of Arts on Strike

Rally at North Bay office of Mike Harris, a minister in the Bill Davis government.

Women's Conference Members plan how to use collective bargaining and the political process to advance women's rights.

James Clancy, President
1985 - 1990