TML Daily condemns the Harris government in Ontario for
threatening the teachers with a court injunction in its attempt
to portray their political strike as a "law and order" issue. The
government keeps repeating that it is an "illegal strike." Media
reports have been rife with speculation about whether the
government will get a court injunction to force teachers back to
work, recall the legislature to pass back-to-work legislation or
resort to some other means to suppress them, such as a ruling of
the Ontario Labour Relations Board. Harris has now announced his
government will seek an injunction.
According to media reports, the facts are that "126,000
teachers are covered by one of 287 collective agreements between
unions and 129 school boards in the province. In the few cases
where contracts have expired, the unions have not gone through
the legal processes required under labour law before workers can
legally walk off the job."
In other words, the case is open and shut - the teachers
strike is illegal. The government is therefore presumably
justified in turning the teachers political struggle into a law
and order matter and using the state, including the courts, to
suppress them.
Both the government and the media are self-servingly keeping
silent about the main facts of the case. Bill 160 is itself the
biggest breach of contract between the government and the
citizens of Ontario as concerns the responsibility of government
to make sure the claims of the members of the polity are
respected for the highest quality education, and of teachers to
working conditions acceptable to themselves, commensurate with
the work they do. The fact that the government does so "legally"
hardly makes it right. The teachers have a political opinion
which the unrepresentative democratic process avails them of no
means to express or enforce. The Ontario government is
criminalizing political opinion which makes it no different from
any other tin-can dictatorship.
This attempt to criminalize the teachers' political struggle
is also accompanied by an attempt to suggest that it is the
resistance of the people which gives rise to repression. This is
also false. It is the state which gives rise to repression. If
the state is acting against the interests of the people, it must
be condemned, as in the case of the struggle of the Ontario
teachers. Might is Not a Right, and never will be. It can always
be replaced by a greater Might. But the Right to Education and
the Right of the members of the polity to have a say in governing
their polity are Rights.
TML Daily is certain that by fighting for these rights the
people of Ontario will prevail in both the short and the long
term.
TML DAILY, 10/97
Shawgi Tell
Graduate School of Education
University at Buffalo
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
