Doug Ford’s cuts to OSAP are a massive attack on Ontario students, that will saddle working-class families with a huge financial burden. Faced with this provocation, how has the leadership of the Ontario Public Sector Employees Union (OPSEU) responded? OPSEU president JP Hornick described the changes to education funding as “a milestone in our shared fight for public education,” and OPSEU’s official social media pages hailed it as “an overdue win,” bragging that “our demand for accountability and respect has led to tremendous gains.”
The tuition hike has angered hundreds of thousands of students, whose education, and futures, are now at risk. The increased fees will be an immense barrier to new generations of students. Describing this as any sort of “win” is scandalous. But it is a conclusion that flows naturally from accepting the limits of capitalism.
For years, OPSEU has been demanding more funding for education. Last fall, 10,000 college faculty members organized with OPSEU went on strike against cuts that will result in programs being eliminated and entire campuses being shut down. In that struggle, the interests of students and workers were the same: for the survival of post-secondary education. But how is that survival to be ensured? Someone has to pay for it, either the students, or the capitalists.
When the capitalist system is in crisis, as it is now, the ruling class tries to offload the cost of the crisis onto the backs of the working class. Accepting the logic of capitalism means accepting this imperative.
Unable to see beyond what is ‘sustainable’ for the capitalist system, the OPSEU leadership therefore accepts attacks on students, while paying lip service to the idea that they will continue fighting. In doing so, they play into Doug Ford’s attempt to divide the students from the workers.
We need fighting union leadership that isn’t afraid to challenge capitalism. Such a leadership would not gratefully accept scraps at the expense of working-class students, but would fight for fully funded, high quality, free post-secondary education, paid for by the capitalists.
