Currently, education workers might be the leading opposition to the Ford government as both post-secondary and elementary unions begin bargaining. In 20 respectively, major strikes by education workers across Ontario Colleges (OPSEU) and at York University (CUPE 3903) both met similar fates: draconian back-to-work legislation after months of employer inaction at the bargaining table. Even after the back-to-work legislation, illegal picket lines were held in multiple cities by other unions and allied groups in support of CUPW, but these too slowly waned. In 2018, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) led successive rounds of rotating strikes across the country but were swiftly legislated back to work by the federal government. Today, striking seems to be less radical and more repressed. With the notion of “strike” re-emerging as an important tactic beyond the confines of the labour movement-evidenced by its use within housing and climate struggles-we take the occasion to look at the evolving significance of the “general strike” in mass mobilizations against class divisions, patriarchy, racism, settler colonialism, ecological ruin, and right-wing populism. Nevertheless, the occasion demonstrated how the idea of the general strike still resonates among activists, organizers, and the public in the struggle to resist neoliberal policies. 3 Yet, on the day of the action, the events failed to produce anything approaching the numbers required for an effective general strike and fell far short of bringing any of the cities to a grinding halt. Hamilton filmmaker Dakota Lanktree and Toronto organizer Florence O’Connell organized the events and invoked the language of the “general strike” in their promotion and discussion of the planned actions 1 : their intent was “…to grind this province to a halt to make these ill-informed cuts stop.” 2 In the days leading up to May 1st, thousands of people flocked to the organizers’ Facebook event page to affirm that they were either interested in or planning to attend some two-dozen events taking place in a number of cities. Following a spate of funding cuts to health and education programs by Ontario’s Ford government in early 2019, a series of collective actions were proposed for May 1st, International Workers’ Day.
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