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On January 29, 2017, six Muslim men were murdered at a Quebec City mosque while they prayed. This terrorist attack affected many families, friends, neighbours and communities across Canada, leaving us all with a sense of horror and overwhelming sadness.

With the one-year anniversary of this Islamophobic attack quickly approaching, it is important to take the time to reflect on why the massacre took place. As difficult as this may be, we must recognize the reality that Canada today includes hate, division and racism.

Ignoring the threat of Islamophobia only lets the problem grow, says Mark Hancock, CUPE National President.

“But our solidarity also grows,” he says. “At our 2017 National Convention, CUPE members committed our union to fight the rising tide of racism and hatred we see in the world. We continue to empower members and allies to speak out against all forms of racism and discrimination – including Islamophobia.”

Muslim communities in Canada need to know that we stand beside them, says Charles Fleury, CUPE National Secretary Treasurer.

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The president of CUPE Ontario is asking the provincial government to provide more help to Ontario’s seniors.

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Fred Hahn provided a presentation to a legislative finance committee during pre-budget hearings held Friday at the St. Clair Centre for the Arts in Windsor. The discussion was one of several held across the province as the process of completing Ontario’s next budget gets underway at Queen’s Park.

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Workplace Safety and Insurance Board to review some 4,500 claims made by injured workers whose compensation may have been unfairly cut due to controversial guidelines.

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The provincial workers’ compensation board will reverse a controversial policy that slashed benefits by blaming injuries on “pre-existing conditions,” even if they had no physical impact on workers before they got hurt on the job, the Star has learned.

The Workplace Safety and Insurance Board will also review 4,500 claims made by workers whose compensation may have been unfairly reduced as a result of the policy.

Implemented in 2012, the policy represented a significant — and some argued illegal — departure from the founding tenets of the workers’ compensation system in Canada: the so-called thin-skull principle, which says workers cannot be discriminated against because of a pre-existing condition that caused no symptoms before a workplace accident.

The issue was also the subject of a class action lawsuit filed in 2014 by Toronto lawyers Richard Fink and Alan McConnell. The suit argued that injured workers were being “denied the full extent of benefits to which they were entitled” as a result of a “secret policy” to “aggressively reduce” the lump sums awarded to people with work-related permanent injuries.

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Today, the Liberal government formally apologized in the House of Commons to gay, lesbian and transgender Canadians for the discrimination they have suffered over the decades, often at the hands of federal agencies.

CUPE welcomes the apology, and honours the tremendous pressure generated by the LGBTTQI community to bring it into being. That pressure included a class action lawsuit brought by former members of the federal public service, the military and the RCMP, for the discrimination and life-shattering hatred they suffered. Thousands of people across Canada were harassed, threatened and fired from their jobs for their sexual orientation.

Gina McKay is President of CUPE 2348 and a member of CUPE’s National Pink Triangle Committee, as well as the Diversity Representative of the CUPE Manitoba executive board. She travelled from her hometown of Winnipeg to be in attendance at Parliament to witness the apology. She was invited by the government, recognized for her LGBTTQI, union and community activism.

She says the apology is a good step towards addressing the systemic discrimination and oppression that LGBTTQI people still face.

“Acknowledging people’s painful experience and confronting these truths are important steps towards creating change,” she says. “The apology sets a tone that encourages us to create more inclusive and diversity-positive spaces – in our workplaces, communities and unions.”

Gina hopes the apology will help build a stronger foundation for the work that labour activists do to advance human rights for our members.

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CUPE, representing 55,000 education workers in Ontario applauds the Campaign for Public Education’s (CPE) latest effort to secure a review and overhaul of the province’s outdated funding formula.

“CUPE has been calling for a review and overhaul of the funding formula for years,” said Terri Preston, who chairs CUPE’s education sector in Ontario. “The analysis provided by CPE adds to the growing body of evidence that this is urgent. It’s clear that the current funding formula is inadequate to meet the needs of students, communities, and education workers.”

A funding formula reliant mainly on head counts and based on the notion that schools are just a collection of classrooms will never meet the needs of students. Students and parents live this reality every day, and CUPE’s custodial and maintenance workers have long pointed this out.

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CUPE National President Mark Hancock sent a letter to the Prime Minister this week to impress upon the fact that while the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) has been expanded, there remain significant flaws that must be remedied to allow a more secure and dignified retirement for all Canadians.

After significant pressure from the labour movement and other sectors, in 2016 Canada’s federal and provincial governments achieved a historic deal to expand the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) by introducing and passing Bill C-26. This was the first expansion of CPP benefits since the plan was established 50 years ago and CUPE applauds the provincial and federal governments who worked to make it a reality.

Unfortunately, C-26 contained significant and avoidable flaws that must be immediately remedied. As it currently stands, workers with child-raising responsibilities and persons with disabilities have been excluded from the expanded portion of the CPP. This will unfairly penalize women and persons with disabilities when it comes time to collect their new CPP benefits.

No government would think it fair to penalize persons with disabilities, or workers who took time away from the paid workforce to provide care for their young children. Staying true to the commitment of a more secure and dignified retirement for all Canadians is of the utmost importance. The time to fix this oversight is now.

Hospital funding in Ontario is much lower than hospital funding in the rest of Canada — $4.8 billion lower. The result is much less care for hospital patients in communities like Durham Region. A report to be released in Oshawa on Friday, September 30, 2016 at 10:00 a.m., at Alexander Park across from Lakeridge Health, 1 Hospital Court, will indicate how many hospital workers and nurses are missing for the care of the people of Durham.

Using data available from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), Fewer Hands, Less Hospital Care compares funding, staffing, nursing, and readmissions in Ontario and other provinces. The data also shows that Ontario has fallen a long way behind other provinces since the Liberals were elected provincially in 2003 — and especially since the beginning of their austerity program in 2010.

According to CIHI, Ontario government per capita funding for hospitals is $1,395.73. The rest of Canada, excluding Ontario, spends $1,749.69 per capita on hospitals. In other words, provincial and territorial governments outside of Ontario spend $353.96 more per person on hospitals than Ontario does. That is a whopping 25.3 per cent more than Ontario. Ten years ago, in 2005-2006, the hospital funding gap between Ontario and the rest of Canada was just 4.3 per cent. As a result, Ontario now provides far less nursing care for patients as the gap in funding between the rest of Canada and Ontario has steadily gone up.

“What’s so disturbing is that the provincial Liberals are proud of cutting hospital patient care. People are sent home from hospital while still acutely ill. They are denied admittance because beds are overbooked and hospital care is effectively rationed. Ambulances are stacked outside emergency rooms, unable to discharge patients,” says Michael Hurley the president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU)/CUPE. Hurley will, along with local hospital staff, release the report on Friday.

“These are real people in Durham paying the price for Ontario’s lower hospital funding — they are not percentages and numbers on a page. It’s time for the provincial government to increase funding for hospitals like Lakeridge Health in line with their real inflationary costs,” says Pam Parks, CUPE 1999 president.

CUPE has launched a province-wide campaign to raise awareness of the funding challenges in K-12 education.

The campaign is called “Where’s the funding?” and features billboards, a website, and a postcard campaign.

“Investing in our children is investing in the future of Saskatchewan. But the current trends in education funding paint a troubling picture of our government’s priorities,” said Jackie Christianson, chairperson of CUPE Saskatchewan’s Education Workers’ Steering Committee. “Most school divisions are experiencing budget shortfalls, and it is our children who are feeling the impact.”

In several school divisions, cuts are already having an impact on staffing levels. Both Saskatchewan Rivers School Division and Good Spirit School Division cut staffing hours. Prairie South School Division laid off over 30 staff, and Prairie Spirit School Division laid off over 60 full time equivalent educational assistants. In addition, other school divisions, like Regina Public School Division, are resorting to other methods to bring in money, such as charging parents for lunchtime supervision.

“Budget cuts have real consequences for children, placing both the quality of education and the safety of children and workers at enormous risk,” said Christianson. “A decrease in support staff will diminish the quality of education for all students. Children who require additional support will struggle in school if they don’t have access to the support.”

The provincial government is also doing more to hamper school boards than to help. Earlier this year the government made the unprecedented announcement that school boards would be on the hook for half of the 18 million dollar wage increase the Ministry of Education signed with teachers. School divisions were told they would have to “find savings.”

Recently, the Workers’ Compensation Board made the decision to give rebates to all employers in the province who pay into the fund. The Government of Saskatchewan responded by clawing back those funds from the provincial operating grants of every school division, even though private schools were able to keep their rebate.

The provincial government has also been musing about school board mergers and restructuring, which is creating uncertainty for parents, staff, and school boards.

“Our government must invest adequate funding in education to allow school divisions access to the required resources, ensuring all Saskatchewan children’s rights to a quality, safe, and healthy education,” added Christianson.

The union representing 435 striking front line, administrative and support workers today called on local politicians to start asking ‘hard questions’ about why the Children’s Aid Society of the Region of Peel (Peel CAS) is spending outrageous amounts of money to recruit strike breakers.

“For an agency claiming it can’t afford to negotiate improvements to workload language to then turn around and offer more than double the wages, accommodations, meal allowances and ‘incidental expenses’ is simply beyond comprehension,” said Sonia Yung, President of Local 4914 of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE 4914).

Yung made the comments following reports published last night on the Brampton Guardian website, confirming that Peel CAS is offering prospective strike breakers lavish incentives during the strike.

“Our members earn less than half the hourly wage Peel CAS is offering scab workers,” said Yung, adding that CUPE 4914 certainly don’t expect Peel CAS to cover the cost of their transportation, housing, wireless, meals, and give them $50 in walking-around money. That’s what Peel CAS is offering to scabs, then claiming poverty when we say we need to spend a little more time with each client.”

CUPE 4914 went on strike on September 18 after rejecting what Peel CAS negotiators characterized as its ‘final offer.’

Yung called on politicians across Peel Region to start asking Peel CAS some ‘hard questions.’

“If you’re a provincial politician, I think you need to be asking if paying scab labour outrageous sums is the best use of provincial tax dollars. If you are a municipal or regional councillor or a member of parliament, ask if your constituents are getting the quality of care they should be getting,” said Yung.

The government of Saskatchewan announced a three person advisory panel to develop recommendations for the reorganization of health care.

The advisory panel has a mandate to “recommend a structure with fewer regional health authorities to achieve administrative efficiencies as well as improvements to frontline service delivery.” The final report is due on October 31, 2016.

The CUPE Health Care Council has submitted a formal submission for the panel’s recommendations. You can read our full submission here.

CUPE is the largest health care union in Saskatchewan, representing over 13,000 members. We represent a wide range of health care employees in five major classification areas: clerical, technical, nursing, support, and plant operations.