Photo: Vivian McCaffrey

ELEMENTARY TEACHERS’ FEDERATION OF ONTARIO

21

Promoting Union Values

goals are to mobilize members to get involved in 
campaigns and to prevent the re-election of the 
Conservative government.

During the year, ETFO worked with the Canadian 
Labour Congress (CLC) in its campaign to promote 
relevant federal issues for the election including 
jobs, pension/retirement, health care and child-
care. Dozens of ETFO members attended regional 
CLC pre-election workshops held during the win-
ter in communities including Kitchener, London, 
Toronto, Windsor, Ottawa, Hamilton, Sudbury 
and Thunder Bay. Members were also encour-
aged to participate in the Time for Change CLC 
follow-up tour planned for June.

ETFO also supported the Canadian Teachers’ 
Federation (CTF) Hear My Voice campaign. With 
the message “I teach. I vote”, CTF has prepared 
election materials that target two issues; young 
people’s mental health issues and child poverty. 
The campaign, which ETFO will promote to its 
members, calls on political parties to implement 
a national mental health strategy and a federal 
poverty reduction strategy.

In April, more than 75 members attended an 
ETFO Women in Politics conference, which set 
the context for the federal election and included 
a session on training participants to be election 
volunteers.

ETFO Takes Action on Union Issues

This year, ETFO set up a new section on the front 
page of its website at www.etfo.ca called ETFO 
Takes Action. It will continue to provide updates 
on issues related to trade unionism, public ser-
vices and equity and social justice and ways for 
ETFO members to take action.

Keeping Hydro Public

In the spring, the Wynne government announced 
plans to partially privatize publicly-operated local 
utilities including Hydro One. ETFO endorsed the 
campaign KeepHydroPublic.ca and joined other 
unions at the Ontario Liberal Party’s Annual 
General Meeting in Blue Mountain to protest the 
sell-off of public services.

Supporting Crown Holdings Workers

ETFO was quick to support the 120 members of 
United Steelworkers (USW) 9176 in their lengthy 
strike against Crown Holdings Inc. by supporting 
a national consumer boycott of beer packaged in 
Crown Holdings cans. ETFO members also mobi-
lized to support the strike by visiting their picket 
line. The Philadelphia-based multinational corpo-
ration, which doubled its profits in 2012, failed to 
engage in good-faith bargaining and attempted 
to undermine and eliminate the union from its 
Toronto facility.