No Justice, No Peace: The 1996 OPSEU Strike Against the Harris Government in OntarioIn No Justice, No Peace David Rapaport uses detail, insights, and anecdotes from over 150 interviews - with picket line captains, local executives, union leadership, journalists, mediators, and union and management negotiators among others - to provide an insider's view of the strike and its political and economic contexts, often told in the strikers' own voices. Vice-president from 1991 to 1997 of OPSEU's huge Region 5, covering Toronto, Rapaport describes how the election of the Harris government and the early "Common Sense Revolution" cutbacks led to a large opposition movement, the labour/social justice coalition, the Days of Action, and the province-wide OPSEU strike. No Justice, No Peace traces the politics involved, from ideology and belief in free trade to the downsizing of public and private enterprises, from the restructuring and privatization of the public sector to collective bargaining between OPSEU and the Ontario Government, and, finally, to the strike vote and the picket line. |
Contents
Legal Issues | 180 |
Collective Bargaining during the Strike | 189 |
The Strike Ends | 201 |
APPENDICES | 209 |
The Strike Vocabulary | 211 |
A WeekbyWeek Chronology of the Strike | 213 |
OPSEU Strike Financial Statistics | 221 |
Results of the Three OPSEU Polls of the Membership | 222 |
| 107 | |
The Politics of Picketing | 117 |
The Picket Line Community | 137 |
The Wider Community | 161 |
Essential Services A Limited Strike | 170 |
List of People Interviewed | 225 |
Notes | 231 |
Bibliography | 241 |
Index | 245 |
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Common terms and phrases
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Popular passages
Page xi - Acknowledgments This book would not have been possible without the assistance and encouragement of many people
Page x - NAC National Action Committee on the Status of Women NAFTA North American Free Trade Agreement
Page 206 - When OPSEU'S locals ratified the new collective agreement at the end of March by a vote of 95 per cent, the union's solidarity was high and it could claim victory on several matters relating to the issue of job security.
Page 17 - as health, education, and correctional services. Central agencies have governmentwide mandates and their clients are internal. Although they account for a small proportion of classified employees, central agencies exercise substantial authority and influence in
Page 38 - an act to restore balance and stability to labour relations and to promote economic prosperity.
Page 18 - In the peak year, 1946, strikers shut down the British Columbia logging industry, the Ontario rubber industry, the central Canadian ports, the Southam newspaper chain, the country's steel industry, and dozens of mass-production plants, in the biggest strike wave Canada had ever seen ... The new industrial regime that had emerged from this decade of intense conflict was thus enshrined in law and would last for the next three decades.
Page 71 - deterioration of machinery, equipment or premises, (c) serious environmental damage or (d) disruption of the administration of the courts or of legislative drafting.
Page 17 - Excluding the Crown agency sector, the macro organization of the Ontario government consists of eighteen line ministries or offices and six central agencies
Page 95 - vice-president of the Canadian Labour Congress and former president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers,
Page 206 - in the end, OPSEU could only blunt, not stop, the cost-reduction program of the Harris government.