Local 517 Chief Steward Matthew Duffy recently wrote the following letter to the editor.
Madam:
I read your article and noted that some of your assertions were either incorrect or negatively biased towards those members of The Ontario Public Service Employees’ Union.
The Government of Ontario does have an obligation to eliminate its deficit and its debt, as well. This should be a shared effort by all Ontarians and by all corporations. The government of Ontario has a duty to abolish its programme of corporate tax cuts (Corporate Welfare). It is unwise and unfair to force the working class to bear the brunt of the cuts.
Warren Thomas, the president of the Ontario Public Service Employees’ Union, communicated it quite well in a letter dated the 11th of January, 2011, "Have your say on Ontario’s Budget" and a dynamic ad campaign, that commenced on the 19th of January, 2011, facetiously entitled "peopleforcorporatetaxcuts.ca".
You glossed over a prescient point made by Mr. Dwight Duncan, the Minister of Finance, when he said that Ontario Civil Servants are no longer permitted to bank any overtime and that their severance has been reduced. These two changes, alone, have saved the taxpayers of Ontario a considerable amount of money.
Your employment of hyperbole ("…cynical, shameful and disgraceful attempt by the parties…") brings a turn of phrase to mind, by Shakespeare "Thou dost protest too much". This is not surprising given the fact that you have been writing newspaper articles with a decidedly anti-labour tone, for years.
In fact, your penchant for authoring articles, hostile to labour, so often, for so long and with so much spleen has caused The Toronto Sun readership to either pass over your column with their eyes glazed over and/or to dismiss you as an anti-labour crank with a big axe to grind.
Those executives at The Toronto Sun Media Corporation that manage the business of selling newspapers, for a profit, ought to bear in mind that there is a very large segment of their readership that is working class and purchases The Toronto Sun, solely, for its superb sports section, not for the extravagant anti-labour rants of a columnist in the employ of a large media corporation.