DEENA LADD
work with us have. In Ontario, we have a 30 percent unionization rate. The other 70 percent of workers rely on basic employment standards. They have no paid sick days, they have no just cause protection and they cannot speak out if they have a violation of their rights at work without losing their jobs. If these are the people we’re asking to get involved in our campaigns, we need to understand the privilege and the power that we have. If you have benefits, if you have good wages, if you have a collective agreement, if you have a union, if you have a pension, you are part of a very privileged group of workers. When you’re fighting for your own improvements, better collective agree- ments, better language, it’s going to be hard to get support for those issues because many around you in your community have nothing. It’s critical that we build alliances between union and non-union
workers so we can raise the floor for everyone. If the floor is too low, all our working conditions, our wages, our benefits are going to suffer. This is what we’ve been seeing over the last 20 or 30 years. Fighting concessions is a huge challenge at our collective bargaining tables. If you have a union, you have made very few gains because you’re sur- rounded by so many people who have nothing and there’s a lot of resentment there. Why should they fight for your 15 paid sick days, for instance, when they have zero? If we don’t understand those con- nections, if we don’t understand that we have to ensure that everyone has at least the basic floor, that our struggles are connected, we can’t fight for more. Part of the Fight for $15 and Fairness campaign and part of the work that we’ve been doing at the Workers’ Action Centre has been
trying to make those connections, to understand that if we are to build better wages and working conditions, better public education, better health care, stronger community services, stronger public ser- vice jobs and better working conditions in the private sector, we need to bring everybody up. We can’t leave anyone behind and that means understanding who is left behind and why they’re being left behind. Racialized and immigrant women are making 54 cents on the dollar made by men compared to white women who are making 72 cents on the dollar. Poor working conditions and poor wages differentially impact workers. We need to make connections with workers who are coming in through the migrant worker program, who are undocu- mented, who have their status threatened if they speak up about poor working conditions or discrimination.
IZ: Could you tell us about the organizing you did as a parent to support teachers in the last round of bargaining.
DL: Sure. I’m a parent of two girls and I am really interested in the education they’re getting in our public school system. In my daugh- ters’ school, we formed a social justice committee of parents six years ago. We wanted to work with teachers, other parents and our kids to have conversations around issues of social justice. We noticed there was always a Thanksgiving food drive and there were a lot of chari- table events organized at the school for international fundraising drives, which was great. But when I talked to my kids and asked them if critical conversations were being had about these charity events, it was clear the children were not talking about why they were try- ing to collect food for the food hampers for Thanksgiving. Why was it that families in our communities didn’t have enough to eat and relied on food banks when there is so much wealth in Canada? Why do children in Africa need wells for water? What has happened inter- nationally that countries in the south have been depleted of wealth and resources? We felt that those questions were important to ask. We formed a social justice committee as a vehicle to explore and support critical thinking and discussions. Working conditions, quality education, ensuring that teachers
AD 10 ETFO VOICE | FALL 2017
have what they need to do their jobs and that schools have what they need are all part of a social justice agenda. When the contract nego- tiations were happening between the teachers and the government and Bill 115 was introduced we saw it as part of that agenda. It was very much an issue we were concerned about. Members of our social justice committee asked what we could do to support teachers? What could we do to show the government that we believe in good qual- ity public education, we are concerned about class sizes, we believe teachers should have the professional development, the wages and working conditions they need to do their jobs. It was very natural for us to organize an action at Queen’s Park and reach out to other schools in our neighbourhood and to have some really hard conver- sations with other parents to get them out to the rally, do leafleting to other parents and talk about the issues. That work has been impor- tant because it’s built relationships with teachers in our school. I think it’s vital that teachers work with parents to create spaces
where you can build ongoing relationships, where you’re organizing events that are not necessarily related to traditional forms of solidarity work. Maybe it’s a workshop on diversity. Maybe it’s supporting par- ents who are concerned about issues of gender and want to make sure there are gender-neutral washrooms in their school. I think anything that supports the building of relationships around common issues
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