Colleges try their hand at strikebreaking

A message from OPSEU President Warren (Smokey) Thomas
September 6, 2011

Dear friends,

College support staff had only been on the picket line for a few hours when the colleges began trying to undercut the strike.

As usually happens during strikes, the employer is urging support staff to cross picket lines and go into work. The employer is doing this by informing OPSEU members that it is legal under the Colleges Collective Bargaining Act for them to do so.

It is also legal to betray your friends and colleagues. This does not mean it’s a good idea. Anyone who goes into work reduces the pressure on the employer to negotiate a contract. The net result is a longer strike.

We want to end the strike soon, but not at any price. We are on strike to get a collective agreement that we can all live with. The fastest way to get that is to stand together.

Strikes end, but being a strikebreaker – also known as a scab – is forever. The history of labour disputes is that no one forgets the person who went in to work while others walked the picket line. The scab knows that he or she was a scab; his or her co-workers know it, too. The scab’s betrayal is never forgotten, and life at work is never the same. You don’t go back to having lunch together. You don’t go back to being friends.

And you don’t go back to being a union member. There are consequences, after the strike is over, if a local finds that a member has been a scab. The scab can no longer hold office in the union or vote to elect union officials. He or she cannot participate as an elected delegate in union training sessions, meetings, or conferences. He or she cannot attend or speak at meetings of the union’s Executive Board.

The OPSEU policy on strikebreaking, or scabbing, is spelled out in detail in Article 30 of the OPSEU constitution and Section 25 of the union’s policy manual.

The issue with scabbing, however, is not about legal processes. It is about betrayal – betrayal of your friends, betrayal of your co-workers, betrayal of the workers who fought for your collective agreement in the past, and betrayal of the workers who will benefit from your collective agreement in the future.

A collective agreement we can be proud of is just around the corner. When we stand together, we win.

In solidarity,

Warren (Smokey) Thomas
President, Ontario Public Service Employees Union