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﻿<title﻿>﻿New Socialist Magazine, Winning the right to strike: Defying anti-union laws - Article﻿</title>﻿
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﻿<b﻿>﻿Winning the right to strike: Defying anti-union laws 
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by Sandra Sarner﻿<br﻿>﻿
﻿<i﻿>﻿New Socialist Magazine, November 1996﻿</i>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
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The Harris government in Ontario is threatening to take away the right to strike from the province's teachers. As SANDRA SARNER shows, this right was won 20 years ago by breaking anti-union laws and it may need to be defended with the same sort of tactics.﻿</font>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

With little real opposition, the Ontario Tories recently passed the anti-labour Bill 40. Now there is talk that the Harris government will attack the collective bargaining rights of Ontario secondary school teachers and deny them the right to strike. 


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Bill 40 overturned earlier legislation, passed by the NDP government. It removes the provision that had made it illegal for companies to use scabs during strikes or lockouts. And it is now harder for workers to organize and far more difficult to obtain a first union contract. 

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
When it comes to labour relations, changing the law often means defying the law. We haven't seen much of this kind of labour militancy in recent years but, in the period 1965 to 1975, public sector workers, including teachers, fought some important battles for union rights that brought them into direct defiance with the anti-labour laws of the period. 

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
Ontario high school teachers were finally granted the legal right to strike in 1975. The law was passed by the Tory government of the time under then Premier Bill Davis who had been forced to back down on an earlier no-strike proposal in the face of a one-day provincial walk-out by one-third of secondary school teachers. 

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Throughout the 1960s, although teachers did not have the right to strike, in the context of chronic teacher shortages, they had successfully used the tactic of "mass resignations." A proposed 1973 piece of legislation would have made even this tactic illegal while entrenching the "no strike" provisions. 


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The proposal evoked mass anger by teachers, the majority of whom were quite poorly paid. They wanted full union rights, including the right to strike since the "mass resignation" tactic would quickly become inadequate once teacher shortages disappeared. 

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On December 18, 1973, in a demonstration organized in only 48 hours, 35,000 teachers -- out of a total of about 100,000 across Ontario -- walked off the job to join a rally at Maple Leaf Stadium in Toronto. They followed with a march to Queen's Park to demand full collective bargaining rights. 

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In Ottawa, 7,000 teachers marched to Parliament Hill and in Windsor, 1,500 rallied in protest as well. 

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This show of mass defiance by a group of previously passive workers was, however, only one factor that forced the Tories to retreat and revise their legislation on union rights for teachers. After all, as our own recent history in Ontario shows quite clearly, one day walk-outs, even by very large numbers of workers, are not enough to turn around a government bent on attacking workers' rights. 

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
Also important was the fact that these events occurred in a period of generalized labour activism when many groups of workers were fighting militantly and sometimes illegally for their demands. 

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Although they did not win the legal right to strike until the mid-1980s, B.C. teachers made significant gains throughout the 1970s through a strong commitment to political action including the occasional use of illegal walk-outs. 

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Perhaps the most powerful example of workers breaking anti-labour laws was the three-week long illegal strike by postal workers in 1965 that won the right to strike and other benefits. This trend-setting struggle set the stage for full union recognition for federal public sector workers. 

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Today things are very different, not just in terms of labour's strength, but also in terms of the pressures on the bosses and their governments to cut into workers' living standards. Nevertheless, there are important lessons for us in looking at the defiance in our own history lessons that can give us confidence in our potential strength and hope for a future when workers will again find the combination of anger, optimism and leadership needed for building a more militant labour movement. 

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