Article content
Workers, students, activists and union leaders gathered Sunday at Charles Clark Square, demanding improvements to public education, workers’ rights, health care and long-term care and calling on others to join the Fight for a Better Ontario.
advertisement 2
Article content
Mario Spagnuolo, interim president of the Windsor and District Labor Council, said Windsor’s gathering was one of 21 International Workers’ Day rallies across Ontario organized by the Ontario Federation of Labor on a day recognized for “the labor movement, a worker’s fight, a call for social justice.”
“And this year, I would put forward, is an even more critical year to celebrate workers and to highlight the sacrifices of everyday people,” Spagnuolo said. “Today we want to remind the community that we must fight for a better Ontario.”
About a hundred people gathered to hear speakers call for a “workers-first” Ontario agenda, ahead of the upcoming provincial election on June 2.
An Indigenous welcome, drumming and poetry intersected speeches by labor leaders, university students and community members.
advertisement 3
Article content
Spagnuolo said the labor movement’s mobilization ensures that “those who can make change don’t forget about the little people — the people on the front lines, the service workers, the front line healthcare workers, the farmers, the men and women in our factories , those who kept society going in the middle of the global pandemic.”
MPP Lisa Gretzky (NDP – Windsor-West), who attended the rally, said May Day is a celebration of the “gains that workers have made over the years and to recognize that there’s more work to be done.”
“And it’s not just talking about workers and celebrating workers, but it’s also talking about some of the most marginalized people in our community and around the province.
“We’ve known for years, through successive governments, that there have been issues with our health care system, with our long-term care, with home care and so much more,” Gretzky said. “But really the pandemic has kind of laid bare what those problems are.
advertisement 4
Article content
“And so today is also a rally cry for all of our connected health care systems and the workers within it to say, look at it, we need to be making investments.
“When we’re investing in health care, we’re investing in the workers,” she added. “That benefits the people of the community that rely on those services.”
University of Windsor student Gagnet Kaur, who is also a field worker with the Canadian Federation of Students, said post-secondary education is more and more inaccessible due to a lack of support by the government and rising tuition costs. “Recent grads are graduating with an all-time-high debt,” Kaur said. “This is forcing students to give up on their dreams of owning houses, starting businesses and even starting their own families.
advertisement 5
Article content
“Post-secondary students like us are the future of Ontario and the future has never looked more grim,” she said.
Ontario Federation of Labor president Patty Coates told a crowd at Queens Park in Toronto Sunday that labor is “advancing our vision for the Ontario we need and mobilizing to win it.
“In the lead-up to the provincial election, we’re making sure that workers’ issues are on the table,” Coates said in a statement. “We need better in this province.
“That means a $20 minimum wage, decent work, affordable housing, permanent paid sick days, well-funded public services, livable income support for all, climate justice, status for all, and an end to racism and oppression.”
