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April 2, 2002
TO: CAW Presidents, Recording Secretaries, Unit Chairs (Ontario)
Support For OPSEU Picket Lines
Greetings,
As the strike of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union drags into its fourth week, it is very important that CAW locals support our OPSEU Sisters and Brothers on their picket lines.
In spite of what you may have read in the governments ads in local papers this fight is not just about wages and benefits, although these are legitimate issues, but about the very future of public services in this Province.
As the Tories at Queens Park continue to privatize public institutions from jails to Provincial Parks they are dismantling public services and creating a very different Ontario.
In addition, this strike is about OPSEU members standing behind their union as the government tries to bust it through disassembling their collective agreements job by job.
There are presently 25% of the total OPSEU membership who are deemed ‘unclassified’ and not entitled to benefits and pensions. Many of these workers have between 7 and 15 years of service!
Not surprisingly, over 80% of them are women.
This strike is also about the government wanting to take away control of the pension surplus from the union. A concession OPSEU is determined not to make.
The CAW joins with other unions in Ontario in saying very clearly, that we fully support the right of OPSEU to stop the dismantling of public services in Ontario.
We fully support their right to bargain a just collective agreement for public sector workers in their union.
Now is the time for us to strengthen our support and let the government know that OPSEU’s fight is the CAW’s fight tool.
If you haven’t done so already, contact your Labour Council’s strike support committee and commit your local to stand shoulder to shoulder with our Sisters and Brothers in OPSEU.
In solidarity,
BASIL ‘BUZZ’ HARGROVE
President
CAW-Canada
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