As the dust settles from another successful OPSEU convention
I wish to thank delegates and members for the support and faith they
demonstrated in re-electing me to the post of First Vice president-Treasurer
for another two-year term. With your strong show of support our thoughts,
plans and action turn to another year of hard-fought achievements and
challenges.
Given the economic storm clouds hanging over the public and
private sectors, the next 12 months demand a strategic agility to meet the
needs of our members and working families across Ontario.
What, then, should we be paying greatest attention to as we
continue to grow OPSEU both in membership and advocacy?
In my view, and in no particular order, our greatest
challenges rest with fighting for public health care, protecting our
pensions, building our organizational strength and moving forward with our
green agenda.
As has too often been the case in my years with OPSEU, the
state and sustainability of public heath care looms as an issue that touches
everyone but where there is no clear direction. We have watched successive
provincial governments chip away at a fully-financed public health care
system, equally accessible to all, through their indifference and their
unwillingness to stand up to private interests.
This is particularly evident with Local Health Integrated
Networks - or LHINs are they're commonly called. Since they became the
centerpiece of the provincial government's delivery of local health services
they have proven to be costly, unaccountable and too often disinterested in
serving the common good. They're inclined to cut back on badly needed
services - particularly in rural and remote regions - while handing the job
over to the private sector.
LHINs represent a threat to our members' job security. We
must recommit ourselves to restoring democracy to health-care
decision-making and there's no better place to start than by reforming these
unresponsive local bodies.
The global financial meltdown of the past 18 months has
revealed how vulnerable pension plans have become. In example after example
we have seen how the retirement dreams of working people have been shattered
because of mismanagement, ineptitude and greed on the part of so-called
money managers.
More than anything we must maintain stability in our plans.
At OPSEU we have always erred on the side sound and ethical practices and we
have no reason not to believe that this strategy won't safeguard our
contributions in the years ahead.
Looking forward also means seeking new and more creative
ways of greening our practices and operations. I'm delighted with the
progress we've made on this front in a very short time, but this is no time
to sit back and admire the results. The human mind is a splendid thing and
with every passing day more and better ideas are emerging for ways by which
we can build an environmentally-sustainable planet for future generations.
We must seize new and creative opportunities to sustain the
environment - a task that begins in our homes and in our workplaces.
Finally, there is OPSEU itself. Building for the future
means engaging in a dialogue today - with our activists and members, with
our staff, with our brothers and sisters in the broader labour movement, and
with the public at large through their elected officials.
We want to grow, but how? We seek national and international
worker solidarity, by which means? We wish to build social and economic
equality, using what tools?
As the most recent economic meltdown has illustrated,
predicting the future is an inexact science. No one can be certain what lies
around the corner.
But that shouldn't mean we retrench from the task.
On the contrary. We should embrace the future and the
possibilities it holds. Inside the Canadian labour movement I can think of
no better place to start that discussion than right here at OPSEU.
