HAMILTON – The
Ontario Public Service Employees
Union will officially launch the
largest union organizing drive in
Ontario history tonight.
OPSEU, which
currently represents over 16,000
full-time support and academic staff
at 24 Ontario community colleges, is
inviting more than 12,500 college
part-timers and sessionals to sign
union cards now.
“Our union is
throwing its full support and
resources into the drive to win
union representation for college
part-timers and sessionals,” said
Warren (Smokey) Thomas, president of
OPSEU. “These workers have been
exploited as a source of cheap
labour for far too long. It’s time
they had access to the advantages
collective bargaining offers.”
The OPSEU drive
follows a June 2007 ruling by the
Supreme Court of Canada that
collective bargaining is a protected
right under the Canadian Charter of
Rights and Freedoms. Under Ontario
law, college part-timers and
sessionals had been barred from
unionizing. In August of this year,
the McGuinty government announced
its intention to extend bargaining
rights to these workers.
Don Fraser,
president of the Hamilton and
District Labour Council and a member
of the United Steelworkers, will
sign a membership card at the
official launch tonight. Fraser, who
teaches part-time in the Labour
Studies program at Mohawk College,
is one of several Mohawk part-timers
who will sign an OPSEU card at the
ceremony.
“We are seeing
enthusiastic support for our
organizing drive from right across
the labour movement,” said Roger
Couvrette, president of the
organization of part-timers and
sessionals. “There is widespread
recognition that this organizing
drive, when it succeeds, will right
an historic wrong.”
