Labour Day 2024: The fight starts with believing in each other and our capacity to make change, together
On Labour Day, we pay tribute to the commitment, dedication, and sacrifice of workers who draw a line in the sand. When it comes to the fight against poverty wages, precarity, and unfairness, nothing is given freely: it is through a collective exercise of power that we improve our living and working conditions and society as a whole.
Labour Day is a celebration of the workers that have come before us, securing the rights we enjoy today and commit not to take them for granted: eight-hour work days, a minimum wage, workplace safety standards, overtime pay, parental leave, and more.
While a lot has changed over the decades, this fundamental truth has not: it is only through worker-driven, mass participation and the collective sharing of risk that we venture out towards a better future on the horizon.
The history of labour has passed us the torch: it is now our obligation to continue to fight for each other, for our communities, for our collective futures, and for the good of the entire working class.
We need to believe to our core that together, it is possible to win the fights of today. That shared belief is the foundation of the labour movement.
This Labour Day comes at a very special time in OPSEU/SEFPO history — never before have so many OPSEU/SEFPO members taken a stand for change through labour action. Workers across the province are fired up and fed up — standing up against their bosses, an anti-worker government, and corporate greed.
Members of Local 631, CMHA Cochrane-Timiskaming workers, braved freezing February temperatures in the northern stretches of Ontario in their fight against concessions, locked out for nearly three weeks. Local 5115 members, Regent Park Community Health Centre workers in Toronto at the heart of their communities, hit the picket lines during a two-week strike — and won meaningful wage gains and long-deserved improvements to benefits frozen for over three decades.
Just down the road, over 400 Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) workers of Local 535 created a living gallery on their picket lines, garnering international attention in their struggle against encroaching precarity for workers while gallery executives make a lavish living. To the east in Ottawa, more than three hundred Children’s Aid Society of Ottawa workers — members of Local 454 — put a provincial crisis on the map, illuminating the crisis in child welfare and deteriorating conditions stemming from long-standing government neglect and underfunding.
And this summer, thousands of LCBO workers belonging to Locals under the Liquor Board Employees Division (LBED) took on the Ford government and big box billionaires — and won! Our two-week long fight engaged Ontarians across the province and forced a settlement that protects jobs and public revenues in a historic, first-ever strike of LBED workers. We showed Ontario that when workers stand shoulder to shoulder, they lead the way. Not only that, we engaged in mass public education about the importance of public revenues that fund the services everyone relies on.
While it’s been a hot labor summer (and year) of strike actions, the union has been hard at work organizing on all fronts: campaigning, organizing, bargaining, lobbying, and building coalitions. Alongside community allies and other unions, OPSEU/SEFPO is always fighting against the pressing issues of our time — from attacks on public health care and our hospitals, to unnecessary closures of beloved public institutions we all hold dear like the Ontario Science Centre and participating in social and environmental justice movements not just in our province but across the country and internationally.
The major crises of today are worker issues — they affect workers, they affect our members, and you can be sure to find OPSEU/SEFPO right alongside you at the heart of the fight!
We are a fighting union, ready to keep the momentum going: we’re putting employers and the Ford Government on notice that this is just a glimpse at what OPSEU/SEFPO members are capable of. Coming up we have tens of thousands of members going into bargaining (in the colleges, OPS Unified, corrections and across the broader public service) and members in every sector are getting organized like never before.
Our message to workers is the same as that of our neighbour down south, Shawn Fain of UAW: “Enough is enough. It’s time to decide what kind of a world we want to live in. And it’s time to decide what we are willing to do to get there.”
Happy Labour Day!
Solidarity,
JP Hornick President, OPSEU/SEFPO
Laurie Nancekivell First Vice-President & Treasurer, OPSEU/SEFPO