It’s time for us to get our act together and start building the kind of power that once forced capital to accede to demands in the past: public health care, public pensions, unemployment insurance and social benefits, non-market social housing, pay equity, women’s and queer rights.

In greater Toronto where the industry has relied on generations of immigrants to provide its workforce, the labour movement has changed lives of thousands of workers who have come from every part of the world to apply their skills and build a future together.

Toronto Water Watch was a labour-community coalition that defeated Mayor Mel Lastman’s attempt to start
privatizing Toronto’s water and wastewater system. It helped connect a wide network of residents, environmental activists and union members to win the battle for public opinion and force one of the few defeats of Lastman’s agenda at City Hall.

The strategies adopted by the Campaign for Public Education helped build huge public support for an education fightback. The CPE’s efforts, combined with similar ones across the province, was a key factor in the Conservative regime’s defeat in 2003.

Hotel Workers Rising was a continent-wide campaign by the hospitality workers union UNITEHERE to raise standards in the hotel industry and secure organizing rights for new workplaces. Toronto was one
of eleven cities united in a co-ordinated bargaining strategy.

The fight to defend the jobs of nearly a thousand cleaners at the City of Toronto in 2011-12 pitted the city’s labour movement against Mayor Rob Ford and his City Council majority. The campaign won against all odds by claiming the moral high ground and shifting the debate to focus on the impact of poverty jobs in society.

CUPE Local 4948 shows how labour can build a powerful coalition – on a strong foundation of engaged union members.

The Chinese Workers Network (CWN), was founded in 2012 to address
the key question of building labour power in Canada’s largest urban
centre.