Reflections from a departing labour federation president: Sid Ryan
The Ontario Federation of Labour president says he won’t seek re-election and considers his legacy as a union leader
By: Sid Ryan Published on Tue Sep 22 2015 | Toronto Star
I am writing to you – the activists and the grassroots of the labour movement – to announce that I will not be seeking re-election as President of the Ontario Federation of Labour. What I do next, what issues I champion, what challenges I tackle, has yet to be determined, but I will not be leading Ontario’s House of Labour.
I am addressing you openly because you are the heart and soul of the labour movement. It is your interests I have championed throughout my career as a union leader and I want you to hear from me personally. If there is one thing that both my strongest supporters and my harshest critics agree on, it is that in mobilizing workers I have often spoken over the heads of labour leaders to reach union members directly. It is a critique that I wear with pride.
I have had the privilege of serving Ontario workers for nearly a quarter century – 17 years at the helm of CUPE Ontario and the past six years as President of the OFL. At no point in my career have I made life easy or comfortable for the powerful. I have refused to compromise progressive principles for politically expediency. I have preferred to wage the working class fight – both inside and outside our movement – on the ground with the members. Our movement is always strongest when it is bold, transparent and principled.
These convictions have guided me in taking some controversial stances during my career. When I lead CUPE Ontario into unequivocal solidarity with the right to a free Palestine, when I called for negligent employers to go to jail over workplace fatalities and when I denounced police violence and racism, I put my reputation behind my convictions. When the circumstances required it, I put partisanship aside to defeat Conservative Leader Tim Hudak, just as today I am calling on every worker, in every riding, to make Thomas Mulcair the next Prime Minister of Canada. I have always believed that good leaders are not afraid to lead and no activist worth their salt can create meaningful change without ruffling a few feathers.
It is no mystery that, along the way, I have accumulated some critics (you may have heard from a few in the pages of the Toronto Star), but union members are unmistakably united. I have been elected unanimously three times as OFL President and union members have repeatedly given me a mandate to put equity, community and action at the heart of everything we do. Together, we put 10,000 people on the streets of Hamilton in support of steelworkers, 15,000 in London in support of autoworkers, 30,000 in Toronto in support of school teachers and support staff and we rallied for workplace rights in every region of Ontario. We have built an unprecedented labour-community alliance of over 90 groups that began the pushback against Rob Ford’s privatization agenda, challenged McGuinty’s austerity cuts, and catapulted inequality into the media.
The enthusiastic response that I have received from union members, precarious workers and equity seekers across the province has been a powerful validation of the unity and solidarity at the core of our movement. It gives me hope that the labour movement is as vibrant and relevant as ever and, with the rise of precarious work, migrant labour and governments who put corporate interests ahead of the public interest, the need has never been greater.
However, any movement is bigger than any one person.
Some of the labour leaders who have opposed me have said that they share my working class values but they can’t unite behind my leadership.
Today, I am issuing a challenge to these labour leaders to live up to their words: build an open and progressive labour movement that puts equity and social justice at its core, even when doing the right thing is unpopular.
And to the union membership, I give the biggest responsibility: hold your elected leadership to the task, demand openness and transparency, call for equity and inclusion and, above all, give them the confidence to take strident stances.
After all, none of us can accomplish a better future unless all of us believes that a better future possible.
