Ford buckled on Bill 28

November 10, 2022

Last week, Doug Ford rammed through legislation that criminalized fighting for decent work and violated our rights under our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Yet four days later, Ford's Bill 28 was dead. Faced with a tidal wave of public anger and a looming general strike, Ford was forced to cancel his own vicious legislation.

None of this would have been possible without the courage of the frontline education workers who are members of Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Ontario School Board Council of Unions (OSBCU). These workers are cleaners, lunchroom supervisors, librarians, early childhood educators, IT workers, cafeteria workers, safety monitors, education assistants, social workers and maintenance workers. 55,000 strong, they drew a line in the sand and said enough is enough. Their courage to defy unjust laws gave all of us courage to stand together.

But the fight is not over. CUPE education workers do not have a deal yet. And other education workers in different unions are still negotiating.

Let's keep painting the province purple!

Help keep the campaign going with 3 easy actions:

  1. Solidarity Saturday: Join a rally to support of education workers. 

  2. Join the Ontario-wide emergency phone action this Sunday at 6:00 pm. 

  3. Visit our resources page to download posters and materials to support education workers. Display your posters on doors, windows or even on the refrigerator in the lunch room.
    • If you don’t have a printer you can order your Paint the Province Purple posters from us.
    • If you live in the Greater Toronto Area, you can pick up posters and purple ribbons anytime between 8:00 am and 8:00 pm from outside our office at Suite 223, 720 Spadina Avenue (M5S 2T9). 

November 15: Join the next decent work organizing meeting

Our next organizing meeting, co-sponsored by the Ontario Federation of Labour, is taking place on Tuesday, November 15 at 7:00 pm. We’ll be strategizing our the next steps to win decent work and wages for all

RSVP for Tuesdays Organizing meeting


In this meeting, we’ll focus on:

  • Supporting education workers, from early-education to post-secondary education. 
  • Intensifying the fight for 10 paid sick days and a $20 minimum wage.
  • Fighting back against bad bosses including supporting the striking GO transit workers who are standing up for safe public transit, job security and fair schedules.

Thanks to you, we accomplished so much. But we need to keep building a movement so strong that, in the words of OPSEU President JP Hornick, “We can shut this province down any time we need to.”