At the January 14th City of Hamilton Planning Committee Meeting, Councillor Maureen Wilson directed staff to prepare a by-law to prohibit protests at places of worship and their facilities. This comes after several similar by-laws to prohibit protests at places of worship, hospitals, schools or other places deemed “sensitive infrastructure” have been passed or are being contemplated by Ontario municipalities.
As a council of labour unions, the Hamilton and District CUPE Council stands firmly against any infringement on the rights of workers and allies to protest, picket, demonstrate or otherwise freely associate and express themselves. These rights are clearly entrenched in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the City stands to entangle itself in needless lawsuits if it passes a by-law prohibiting protests.
The Council rejects any attempt to mask an attack on our rights as the protection of another group’s rights and sees this divisive framing for exactly what it is. Furthermore, a potential exception for picketing – which was included in a similar by-law by the City of Vaughan – is not enough. The labour movement is nothing without its allies in social movements and an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.
Many workplaces represented by CUPE – like hospitals, Catholic school boards or faith-based social services – are close to or integrated with places of worship for historical reasons. Banning protests at these sites effectively limits our members’ freedom to protest over issues of safety, funding or collective bargaining. This development is especially concerning to healthcare workers, who make up the majority of the Council’s current membership and already experience significant restrictions to their collective bargaining rights.
As CUPE Ontario, Ontario Council of Hospital Unions and other labour, community and faith organizations have already done, the Hamilton and District CUPE Council commits to challenging any by-law that attacks our members’ freedom, at City Hall or in the streets.
