The province’s government and the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) are at it again. Employees of the Ontario government are on strike since March 13. Once again, OPSEU picketers are standing in front of government buildings with signs, slogans and chants. It’s part of departing Premier Mike Harris’s legacy. His political reign has seen three rounds of collective bargaining between the province and its employees. The result has been two strikes and one near-strike — a record that would shame any employer.

The two OPSEU strikes of 1996 and 2002 will now stand like a set of bookends on the shelf that holds the history of the Harris government. These strikes are apt symbols of his style of dealing with opposition to his Common Sense Revolution.

Why is the Ontario government hanging tough with OPSEU now? As in 1996 and 1999, the Conservatives are demanding concessions from these employees. The government wants to limit OPSEU’s ability to control the employees’ share of surpluses from the jointly governed pension plan. It wants to diminish health and other benefits. And it wants to set up a new class of “just in time” disposable employees with limited rights under the collective agreement.

In other words, the Ontario government wants to once again lower the benchmark for public-sector collective bargaining and working conditions for all public-sector workers. It hopes to extract these concessions from OPSEU to force other public-sector workers to expect less.

The government doesn’t want to talk about the real pay issue. Management board chair David Tsubouchi attests that the dispute is over OPSEU’s “unreasonable wage demands.” Yet in the 1990s, thanks to inflation, OPSEU members absorbed a reduction of more than 10 per cent in the real value of their wages.

True, it was a decade that opened with a recession; but it was, for the most part, the biggest economic boom in recent memory. The slump that was feared last fall is over — if indeed it ever happened. As the economy continues to move forward, OPSEU is looking to restore some of the earlier sacrifices its members made.

Now the government is testing OPSEU’s resolve to use the strike weapon. Its mid-February offer made it relatively easy for OPSEU to sell a strike vote. The 88 per cent strike vote by members in later that month is a testament to the support that the union receives from its members in this dispute. But, with almost two weeks between the tallying of the strike vote and the March 13 strike deadline, the government hardly negotiated.

Maybe that’s just the way this government is. Discord is its name, conflict is its game and “wedge issues” are its political bread-and-butter. Why take a pass on a fight? Especially with civil servants and their union. Yet it’s hard to make sense of that approach right now. You’d think that they would want that part of themselves well concealed as the new leader, Ernie Eves, takes over the reins.

OPSEU is not alone in getting this kind of “back-of-the-hand” treatment in Ontario. There are many categories of people, organizations and institutions that the government does not like. Civil servants and unions are certainly on the list, but so are teachers, nurses, economic and environmental regulators, Native activists, cities, students, school boards, to name a few. Its war on the poor has been severe and unworthy of Ontarians. The second-half of the twentieth century saw the development of the public sector and the social safety net. As a result of public services, more people had access to economic, cultural and political life. The last quarter of the century saw the counterattack of the neoliberal political movement, which diminished, privatized and eliminated many of those services.

The public sector and the social safety net in Ontario have deteriorated because of the Common Sense Revolutionaries. Healthcare and education were cut. Welfare rates are down. Deregulation and privatization are up. OPSEU has coined the term “Walkertonization” to describe this move away from collective responsibility, care for the unfortunate, regulation of water, food, the environment, health and safety and employment standards.

How much can we expect from Ernie Eves to reverse this destructive politics? While he campaigned as a moderate, it’s hard to forget that he was Mike Harris’s treasurer for six years, during the most reactionary and confrontational moments of the Common Sense Revolution. However, the dispute with OPSEU gives Eves the opportunity to set a new political tone in Ontario right at the start of his mandate.

This OPSEU strike is a reminder that the opposition has not gone away. How could it, in light of events like Walkerton, Ipperwash, the homeless and countless other travesties? The price of neo-liberalism in Ontario has been high.

Confrontation no longer hides the damages inflicted on Ontario by the Harris government. This run-in with OPSEU and with their own employees reminds us who the provincial Conservatives are. It’s not a pretty sight.

David Rapaport is the author of No Justice — No Peace, The 1996 Strike Against the Harris Government in Ontario; 1999. These days, he can be found on the picket lines at Queen’s Park.