On this day, the Canadian Labour Congress recognizes a union member with an award for their disability rights activism. The award is named in honour of Carol McGregor, an outstanding disability rights activist, member of BCGEU/NUPGE and the CLC Disability Rights Working Group, who was much loved by all those who worked with her. Carol passed away in 2006.

On the tenth anniversary of this award, the Canadian Labour Congress is pleased to announce Sheryl Burns as the 2021 recipient of the Carol McGregor CLC Disability Rights Award.

Sheryl became a union activist and CUPE member in 2005, working in Vancouver’s women’s shelters and as a legal advocate supporting survivors of abuse, including women with disabilities. She is now the President of CUPE Local 1936, representing social service workers throughout British Columbia’s Lower Mainland. In this role, she provides fierce advocacy to ensure the duty to accommodate is enforced for members who are permanently or temporarily disabled.

She is recognized for her outstanding leadership for persons with disabilities in Canada’s labour movement and tireless advocacy in the community. This includes fighting for and winning accommodations for workers, crucially preventing job loss, ensuring job gain, and significantly improving working conditions for workers with disabilities. Most recently, Sheryl led important work to ensure accommodations for workers struggling with mental health issues during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sheryl has spoken on various panels and delivered numerous workshops on disability rights and decent work for people with disabilities and has pushed for important changes within CUPE and the broader labour movement, including improved accessibility provisions and increased representation of members with disabilities in leadership positions.

In the community, Sheryl holds a position on the Executive Board for Disability Alliance British Columbia and was previously a member of the City of Vancouver Persons with Disabilities Advisory Committee. In these roles she worked on campaigns for improvements to emergency preparedness for persons with disabilities, a strengthened Guide and Assistance Dog Act, a push for more accessible transportation, and improvements to income assistance and housing for persons with disabilities, among other issues.

Sheryl is a General Vice-President on the CUPE BC Executive Board, has been the co-chair of the CUPE BC Persons with Disabilities Committee, and currently sits on the Executive Council of the BC Federation of Labour as the Persons with Disabilities Representative, a position she has held since 2014.

“Sheryl has been a powerful advocate for disability rights throughout her life, bringing her lived experience as a woman with a hearing disability to a multitude of spaces,” said nominators, Mark Hancock (National President, CUPE) and Charles Fleury (National Secretary-Treasurer, CUPE). “She has displayed incredible strength and courage in negotiating ableist barriers to achieve significant change and improvements for persons with disabilities in Canada.”

Congratulations, Sheryl!

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“Over the last year and a half, we have faced unprecedented upheaval as COVID-19 has wrought havoc on our communities,” Bruske told a crowd of CUPE New Brunswick members in Fredericton on Friday. “This is the most important election in a generation. Workers and their families have kept our country going through this pandemic and they must be front and centre in the parties’ recovery plans.”

Earlier this week, Bruske launched a national tour aimed at supporting federal candidates who are committed to making life more affordable for workers and their families by creating good jobs that offer decent wages, benefits, and a path to unionization.

“Canada’s unions are putting workers’ issues at the heart of this election,” said Bruske. “We are fighting for issues like replacing lost jobs with better ones; disaster-proofing our social safety net through investments in pharmacare, affordable housing, and universal child care; and tackling climate change so no worker is left behind. Now is our chance to work together to do what is best for our families and our communities.”

Learn more about how Canada’s unions are helping to shape the recovery at canadianplan.ca.

To arrange an interview, please contact:
CLC Media Relations
media@clcctc.ca
613-355-1962

The post CLC President encourages New Brunswick voters to choose a worker-centred recovery in federal election appeared first on Canadian Labour Congress.

Early in the morning beneath the small town of Plymouth, Nova Scotia, a methane gas leak into the Westray mine shaft from the Foord coal seam mixed with coal dust and caused in an explosion. The sky lit up with a blue flash and homes more than a kilometer away shook with the force of blast. Within seconds 26 miners working underground on that shift were killed.

In little over an hour a team of men was down the mine on foot to attempt a rescue. They were soon joined by rescue teams from mines in Cape Breton, Pugwash and Bathurst as is the tradition of miners rushing in to help their fellow miners. But there were no survivors of this explosion.

When the explosion happened, the Westray mine was the only working underground coal mine in Pictou County, Nova Scotia’s coalfield. The coal seam there had been mined for 200 years with a long history of explosions. The nearby Allan mine, which closed in 1951, experienced eight methane explosions in its 40-years of operations.

The Westray death toll was Canada’s worst mining disaster since the 1958 “bump” in the Springhill coal mine that claimed the lives of 75 miners. Coal mining has always been dangerous work. Between 1838 and 1950, 246 Pictou County miners were killed in similar methane and coal-dust explosions. Many of them were mining the Foord seam that the Westray mine was working. Between 1866 and 1972, another 330 miners were killed in other mine related accidents. According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics a worker in the coal mining industry is six times more likely to die of a job-related issue than in any other private industry on earth.

Despite these dangers, it turns out the Westray mine was an accident waiting to happen. Before the mine opened, concerns had been raised about its safety. During its construction, in July 1991, a letter was sent to the provincial Labour Minister from MLA Bertin Boudreau warning that the new coal mine “is potentially one of the most dangerous in the world.” The promise of new jobs, rich profits and political reward left those warnings and others unheeded.

Following the disaster, a provincial inquiry lead by Justice Peter Richard found “The Westray story is a complex mosaic of actions, omissions, mistakes, incompetence, apathy, cynicism, stupidity and neglect.”  (The Westray Story: A Predictable Path to Disaster.) Yet, all attempts to prosecute the company and its officials for actions that lead to the deaths of 26 men failed.

Canada’s unions responded with a campaign to change the Criminal Code so corporate managers and directors who fail to take steps to protect the lives of their employees could be held criminally liable in the event of workplace deaths. Private members’ bills were introduced in Parliament only to fail until, on the fifth attempt, in 2003, the federal government enacted what would come to be known as the “Westray Bill” that provided a new framework for corporate liability in Canada.

The Westray mine site was razed in 1998 and the mine shaft sealed entombing the bodies of 11 miners. A memorial was built in a park in nearby New Glasgow approximately at the location above ground where the remaining miners were trapped. The memorial’s central monument, engraved with the names and ages of the twenty-six men who lost their lives in the disaster, states, “Their light shall always shine.”  The memorial lands were protected by the Nova Scotia government and further mineral exploration is prohibited within the park.

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This award is named in honour of Carol McGregor, an outstanding disability rights activist, member of BCGEU/NUPGE and the CLC Disability Rights Working Group―and who was much loved by all those who worked with her. Carol passed away in 2006.

In 2020, the award recognized the lifetime achievements of Darryl Flasch, a member of the British Columbia Government and Services Employees Union (BCGEU/NUPGE). As an active trade unionist since 1990, Darryl has dedicated 30 years of his life to removing barriers and ensuring the inclusion of workers with disabilities in his workplace and in the labour movement. He also worked tirelessly to advocate for more tools and resources within his union, including accessibility audits, in order to build a labour movement and communities that are inclusive of all abilities.

The post Darryl Flasch – Winner of the 2020 Carol McGregor CLC Disability Rights Award appeared first on Canadian Labour Congress.

Canada’s unions are proposing a set of ambitious initiatives in order to achieve a strong, sustainable and inclusive economic recovery. It is a recovery that places workers directly at the centre of every policy and strategy going forward. Canada’s unions are ready to help mould this bold future and build our path to recovery.

Read more here.

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We need to advocate for better mental health resources and supports for workers. This can help prevent mental illnesses from occurring in the first place. That’s why the Canadian Labour Congress offers a Mental Health At Work online portal.

The post Mental Health Resource Centre appeared first on Canadian Labour Congress.

This is a monumental challenge in the era of COVID-19, but it is a challenge that we must meet. There are numerous Canadian and international examples of inadequate workplace health and safety protections leading to worker exposures and deaths and in some cases widespread community transmission of the virus. Workers are on the frontlines of this pandemic, and yet references to worker health and safety in public health guidance are rare and often insufficient.

As Canadian jurisdictions begin to re-start sectors of the economy, governments and employers must take steps to protect workers’ health and safety from COVID-19 exposure.

Before opening, employers must have in place a safety plan that keeps workers healthy and safe and ensures that workplaces don’t contribute to the spread of COVID-19 in the community. Specifically, employers must have an infection prevention and control plan, developed with the participation of workplace health and safety committees, or worker health and safety representatives. This plan must be in place before an employer is allowed to re-open. This plan must include a detailed health and safety response in the event of a workplace COVID-19 outbreak. Governments must have the capacity and commitment to enforcing occupational health and safety laws. If we are to avoid a dangerous second wave of COVID-19 infections, governments must also ramp up research and staffing capacity for rapid, effective COVID-19 testing and contact tracing to stem the spread of infections.

Health and Safety Rights at Work:

Canadian health and safety law is based on three basic rights at work, including:

1. The right to know about the dangers in their workplace;
2. The right to participate in decisions that affect their health and safety; and
3. The right to refuse unsafe work.

Employers have a duty to remove workplace hazards that put the health and the lives of workers at risk.

These health and safety rights at work are enshrined in law in every jurisdiction in this country. Canada’s unions are clear: we will not relinquish those rights, risking workers’ lives as governments and employers make decisions to re-open sectors of the economy. We will not accept employers or our governments prioritising profits over people, putting workers in harm’s way without the appropriate safeguards and protective equipment. Employers must fulfill their duty to ensure a safe workplace, even in the face of this pandemic. Governments must protect a workers’ right to refuse unsafe work, and not ask workers to put their lives on the line without ensuring that every possible step is taken to allow them to do their jobs safely.

When a worker invokes their right to refuse unsafe work, they are deploying the last tool available to them to protect themselves from grave danger. It is not a step that anyone takes lightly. Accounts of government regulators ruling against all but a handful of refusals are extremely troubling. Reports indicating that there have been over 200 work refusals in Ontario with not a single one being upheld after the provincial government quietly set-up an internal committee to oversee the inspectors’ enforcement efforts, and inspectors reporting a chill on their ability to do their jobs is unacceptable to workers. Unions having to file complaints with the provincial labour relations board for employers to fulfill their health and safety obligations and the government to enforce the law is unacceptable. Workers deserve better than this. Ensuring that workers can exercise their basic health and safety right to safe work is non-negotiable.

Paid Sick Leave and Job Protection:

Although certain provinces have instituted COVID-19-specific measures to allow for quarantine or self-isolation, many of those sanctioned sick days are unpaid. No jurisdiction in Canada provides adequate, job-protected paid sick leave, leaving workers in the impossible situation of having to choose between paying the bills and protecting their health and that of their coworkers and community. Further, access to the protections that do exist often depends on where a person lives and what job they do. This is a recipe for a public health catastrophe.

Governments must ensure that every worker has access to at minimum, 14 paid, job-protected sick days so that they can take time off work when they are sick and need to quarantine or self-isolate.

Key to preventing a second, more severe wave of COVID-19 infections is ensuring that every worker in the country has access to sufficient paid, job-protected sick leave, regardless of where they live in Canada.

Worker Engagement:

Before re-opening, employers must make a COVID-19 safety plan that demonstrates how they will operate safely. This safety planning is key to ensuring that the workplace is effectively implementing COVID-19 controls and that the health and safety of workers and others aren’t put at risk as a result of their work arrangement.

It is important that employers consult with workers, their unions and their health and safety representatives about how to make sure these safety plans and COVID-19 controls will work. Engaging joint health and safety committees early on, and in an ongoing way is crucial to ensuring safe workplaces. Engaging workers, through their health and safety committees to participate in assessing COVID-19 related hazards and developing responses is an important part of good health and safety practice and must be included in workplace COVID-19 safety planning.

It is also the law. Canadian law and international labour conventions to which Canada is party require employers to involve workers in decisions that affect workplace health and safety. Employers cannot ignore workers’ concerns, making decisions unilaterally. Governments must commit to robust enforcement of these statutes.

Hazard Prevention and Control:

Hazard prevention planning and the hierarchy of controls are common workplace health and safety prevention tools. While there will be COVID-19 related hazards in the workplace for the foreseeable future, certainly until an effective vaccine is widely available, those hazards must be controlled to protect worker safety. Employers can play a role in preventing COVID-19 being transmitted to workers and the wider community by putting in controls to minimize the risk of infection, including:

• Supporting people with flu-like symptoms to self-isolate;
• Ensuring separation distances in the workplace;
• Disinfecting surfaces;
• Maintaining good hygiene, particularly good hand hygiene and cough/sneeze protocols.

Other controls to minimize exposure:

The workplace hazard prevention/control program and the hierarchy of controls must be deployed to reduce the likelihood of exposure. This includes:

• Eliminating hazards and Substituting higher risk procedures with lower risk activities, including allowing ongoing increased flexible working from home/telework arrangements to facilitate greater physical distancing within workplaces;
• Implementing engineering controls, including workplace design, equipment and ventilation system changes to reduce exposure;
• Using administrative controls such as staggered scheduling, controlling or restricting access to common spaces, more frequent cleaning/disinfecting of the workplace, preparing and training for emergency situations, as well as training and communication on COVID-related health and safety procedures and the use of personal protective equipment (PPE). Assessing work schedules and the potential need for additional health breaks to accommodate for fatigue related to the use of PPE, or increased workload related to COVID-19 protocols.
• Ensuring that workers have access to appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) when the hazard cannot be eliminated through substitution, engineering or administrative controls. As it will be impossible to completely eliminate COVID-19 hazards in some workplace contexts through the use of substitution, engineering and administrative controls, an adequate supply of appropriate PPE will be critical to any strategy to re-open the economy. Workers will also require training and opportunities to practice in order to use PPE effectively. PPE must be provided at no cost to the worker.

The Precautionary Principle and Appropriate Personal Protective Equipment

As a new coronavirus, our knowledge of this virus, how it is transmitted and how infection presents with symptoms of COVID-19 is far from settled. As with any new hazard, a health and safety approach requires that we use the precautionary principle when making decisions on how to eliminate or control for this hazard. That means, implementing the higher level of protection, and not waiting for scientific certainty before taking precautions. Otherwise, individual workers are left to bear the burden of new hazards while our knowledge evolves. Just as knowledge about how COVID-19 symptoms presents in different populations is evolving, so is the evidence of how this virus is transmitted. There remains a lack of consensus on potential transmission pathways for COVID-19. Workers at elevated risk of exposure as a result of the populations they work with must be protected from all potential, not only the most common, routes of transmission.

Personal protective equipment is the last line of defence in the hierarchy of controls. If it fails, the worker is exposed to the hazard without any protection at all. This is why the precautionary principle is at the core of the labour movement’s argument for providing the higher levels of protection for workers.

Governments and employers would do well to remember the lessons of earlier outbreaks with this observation from the author of the SARS Commission Report:

“Scientific uncertainty and scientific debate can go on forever,” wrote Justice Archie Campbell at the conclusion of a public inquiry he led into Ontario’s handling of the SARS outbreak that killed dozens and sickened hundreds nearly two decades ago.

“What we need to do is to follow the precautionary approach that reasonable steps to reduce risk need not await scientific certainty … There is no longer any excuse for governments and hospitals to be caught off guard and no longer any excuse for health-care workers not to have the maximum level of protection through appropriate equipment and training.”

The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS) is making all of its pandemic planning and mental health resources available at no charge. Those resources can be found here.

CCOHS has also prepared a series of COVID-19 tip sheets for a variety of workplace sectors, which can be found at no cost here.

Worker Safety Data Collection and Transparency:

Some workers are at increased risk for workplace COVID-19 infections. Healthcare workers represent a disproportionately high percentage of those infected in Canada. Workers in food processing, transport, essential retail and all public-facing positions are also at increased risk for infection. To date, there is insufficient tracking and reporting on workplace exposures, illnesses and deaths of workers in these and other sectors. There is also a need for greater tracking and transparency on how this pandemic is affecting populations differently. We see in other countries that the number of exposures, illness and poorer outcomes varies significantly across equity-seeking groups and income levels. Canadian jurisdictions must collect and report on this data. Public health agencies can assist by supporting public exposure and infection registries to collect and report on this data. There is also a need for greater tracking and transparency on the state of supply of personal protective equipment (PPE). Fears of shortages without sufficient data lead to decisions that are putting frontline workers in harm’s way.

Protect Workers from Reprisals:

Just as the burden of the pandemic is not being experienced equally, neither will workers’ ability to return to the workplace as jurisdictions begin to re-open sectors of their economy. Workers with responsibilities to care for children or vulnerable adults, or who are at elevated risk for poor outcomes if they are exposed to the virus must be protected from reprisals if they cannot return to work when their workplace re-opens.

Employers must also accommodate, or implement specific controls to protect workers with elevated individual risk factors such as chronic medical conditions, pregnancy or older age when they return to the workplace.

Workers’ Compensation Systems:

Our first priority must be preventing worker exposures, illness and deaths from COVID-19. However, workers need to know that their workers’ compensation system will provide the benefits and supports that they need if they become ill as a result of their work. This is especially true in this pandemic. That means, broadening coverage to include all workers – including those in workplaces currently exempt from mandatory compensation coverage, as well as precarious and gig economy workers. It also means ensuring coverage for workers who must be quarantined or self-isolate as a result of a workplace exposure but may not yet have symptoms of COVID-19. It means streamlining adjudication processes for workers and protecting injured workers’ right to appeal decisions. It also means removing systemic financial incentives for employer claims suppression related to COVID-19 infections.

Finally, it also means moving to presumptive coverage for COVID-19 related illness, so that workers are not denied access to supports, waiting for their claim to be accepted. Certain international jurisdictions have implemented presumptive compensation coverage for some frontline workers, recognizing that streamlining the process for accessing supports will result in better health outcomes and safer return to work pathways for workers at higher risk of COVID-19 infection. We are encouraged to see that WorkSafe BC has begun the process to include COVID-19 for presumptive compensation coverage. Other jurisdictions must move in the same direction, to ensure that workers have the supports and compensation they need when their work makes them sick.

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In the midst of a global pandemic, essential workers are now facing heightened risk. The very least we can ask is that every worker has access to paid sick leave.

No one should ever have to choose between their job, their health and the public interest.

Our federal and provincial governments must work together on this. They must put in place a uniform policy of 14 paid, job-protected sick days for all workers in Canada.

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While we honour the lives lost and those changed forever, we also stand with all essential workers at the frontline of the current crisis. Workers in healthcare, grocery stores, food processing, transport and so many others wake up every day and go to work in order to support each of us and our communities. Canada’s unions will continue to ensure every worker has the protections they need to do their job.

If you are a frontline worker or know someone who is also risking their lives at work, we want to hear from you.

Share your story with your local newspaper and help everyone better appreciate what it means to be a frontline worker in this unprecedented time.

The post Sharing our stories for the National Day of Mourning appeared first on Canadian Labour Congress.

Canada’s unions have called on the provincial, territorial and federal governments to provide immediate income supports to workers affected by COVID-19 quarantine and closures. We have also called for employers to permit flexible working arrangements and provide paid sick leave while maintaining drug coverage.

Nationally, under the Canada Labour Code: 5 days of leave in a calendar year for sick leave or related to the health or care of any of their family members, includes 3 paid days after 3 months of continuous employment.

Yukon, under the Yukon Employment Standards Act: 1 unpaid day of sick leave every month the employee has been employed by that employer, less the number of days on which the employee has previously been absent due to illness or injury, up to a maximum of 12 days.

Northwest Territories: 5 unpaid days in each 12-month period for sick leave or family responsibility leave in a year after 30 continuous days of employment with the same employer.

Nunavut: Unclear.

British Columbia: 5 unpaid days of leave relating to the care or health of a child in the employee’s care or another member of the employee’s immediate family.

Alberta: 5 unpaid days of leave in a calendar year for sick leave, or for family care responsibilities after 90 days of employment with the same employer.

For COVID-19: 14 unpaid days of leave with no requirement of a specific term of employment or doctor’s note, retroactive to March 5, 2020. This applies to part-time and full-time workers but does not apply to the self-employed or contractors.

Saskatchewan: Under the Saskatchewan Employment Act, 0 days of paid leave and 12 days of unpaid sick leave or for the care of family members.

For COVID-19, an unspecified number of unpaid days of leave for isolation, quarantine or to care for dependents with no requirement for a medical note or for a specific employment period, and retroactive to March 6, 2020.

Manitoba: Under the Manitoba Employment Standards Code, 3 unpaid days of leave in a year for sick leave or for family care responsibilities after 30 days of employment with the same employer.

Ontario: Under the Ontario Employment Standards Act, 3 unpaid days of leave in a calendar year for a personal illness, injury or medical emergency after two consecutive weeks of employment with the same employer; 3 unpaid days of leave for illness, injury or medical emergency of a family member after two consecutive weeks with the same employer; and, 8 weeks of unpaid leave to provide care or support to a family member that has a serious medical condition.

For COVID-19, an unspecified number of unpaid days for those who are in isolation or quarantine, or those who need to be away from work to care for family and children because of school or daycare closures. These measures are retroactive to January 25, 2020, with no requirement for a specific period of employment or for a medical note.

Quebec: Under an Act Respecting Labour Standards, 2 paid days of leave to take care of a relative or person with whom they act as an informal caregiver or in the case of sickness after 3 months of employment; 10 days per year to fulfil obligations relating to the care, health or education of the employee’s child or the child of the employee’s spouse, or because of the state of health of a relative or a person for whom the employee acts as a caregiver and the first 2 days shall be paid according to a formula, and after 3 months of continuous employment.

For COVID-19: Residents of Quebec 18 and over who are isolating because they have symptoms or have tested positive, have been in contact with an infected person; or, have travelled outside of the country may be granted $573 per week for a period of 14 days of isolation or up to 28 days if justified, if they are not receiving compensation from their employer, private insurance or another government program. The order to self-isolate must be given by the Government of Canada, the Gouvernement du Quebec or another responsible authority. To apply, residents must register here.

New Brunswick: Under the New Brunswick Employment Standards Act, 5 unpaid days of leave in a calendar year for sick leave after 90 days of employment and 3 unpaid days of leave in a calendar year for family care responsibility leave.

Nova Scotia: Under the Nova Scotia Labour Standards Code, 3 unpaid days of leave in a year for leave due to the sickness of a child, parent or family member; or for medical, dental or other similar appointments during working hours.

Prince Edward Island: Under the Prince Edward Island Employment Standards Act, 3 unpaid days of leave in a calendar year for sick leave after 3 months of continuous employment; 1 paid day of leave in a calendar year, in addition to any unpaid leave that the worker is entitled to, after five continuous years of employment; and, 3 unpaid days of leave in a calendar year for family care responsibility leave after six continuous months with the same employer.

Newfoundland and Labrador: Under the Newfoundland and Labrador Labour Standards Act, 7 unpaid days of leave for sick leave or family responsibility leave in a year after 30 continuous days of employment with the same employer.

The post Sick Leave Across Canada appeared first on Canadian Labour Congress.

No one should ever have to choose between their job, their health and the public interest.

Our federal and provincial governments must work together to implement a uniform policy of 14 paid, job-protected sick days for all workers in Canada.

The post Every worker deserves paid sick leave appeared first on Canadian Labour Congress.

Summer is the time for Pride events and marches in Canada. But while these celebrations are now somewhat commonplace in many cities across the country, just over 45 years ago a small brave group of people marched on Parliament Hill to demand what was then referred to as “gay rights” in a manifesto entitled “We Demand”.

The labour movement in Canada has been, and continues to be, a strong ally and voice for LGBTQ2SI (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer, 2-spirited, Intersex) rights and in fighting homophobia and transphobia in Canada – in the workplace and beyond. This includes:

• Hosting committees and working groups to fight against homophobia, transphobia and harassment. Many unions have changed their own constitution to reflect this.
• Negotiating a range of clauses in collective agreements that protect the rights of LGBTQ2SI workers above and beyond the law.
• Bringing to court violations of LGBTQ2SI rights such as individual grievances and provisions such as marriage leave, leaves of absence, spousal benefits, and pensions plan benefits.
• Mobilizing and lobbying to change laws including the Canadian Human Rights Act, equal benefits, employment equity, equal marriage and gender identity and gender expression.
• Collaborating with civil society organizations, within Canada and internationally, to fight for LGBTQ2SI rights through awareness campaigns and active participation in events.

Some of the work being done by unions and the labour movement:

• Canadian Labour Congress
• Public Service Alliance of Canada

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Early in the morning beneath the small town of Plymouth, Nova Scotia, a methane gas leak into the Westray mine shaft from the Foord coal seam mixed with coal dust and caused in an explosion. The sky lit up with a blue flash and homes more than a kilometer away shook with the force of blast. Within seconds 26 miners working underground on that shift were killed.

In little over an hour a team of men was down the mine on foot to attempt a rescue. They were soon joined by rescue teams from mines in Cape Breton, Pugwash and Bathurst as is the tradition of miners rushing in to help their fellow miners. But there were no survivors of this explosion.

When the explosion happened, the Westray mine was the only working underground coal mine in Pictou County, Nova Scotia’s coalfield. The coal seam there had been mined for 200 years with a long history of explosions. The nearby Allan mine, which closed in 1951, experienced eight methane explosions in its 40-years of operations.

The Westray death toll was Canada’s worst mining disaster since the 1958 “bump” in the Springhill coal mine that claimed the lives of 75 miners. Coal mining has always been dangerous work. Between 1838 and 1950, 246 Pictou County miners were killed in similar methane and coal-dust explosions. Many of them were mining the Foord seam that the Westray mine was working. Between 1866 and 1972, another 330 miners were killed in other mine related accidents. According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics a worker in the coal mining industry is six times more likely to die of a job-related issue than in any other private industry on earth.

Despite these dangers, it turns out the Westray mine was an accident waiting to happen. Before the mine opened, concerns had been raised about its safety. During its construction, in July 1991, a letter was sent to the provincial Labour Minister from MLA Bernie Boudreau warning that the new coal mine “is potentially one of the most dangerous in the world.” The promise of new jobs, rich profits and political reward left those warnings and others unheeded.

Following the disaster, a provincial inquiry lead by Justice Peter Richard found “The Westray story is a complex mosaic of actions, omissions, mistakes, incompetence, apathy, cynicism, stupidity and neglect.”  (The Westray Story: A Predictable Path to Disaster.) Yet, all attempts to prosecute the company and its officials for actions that lead to the deaths of 26 men failed.

Canada’s unions responded with a campaign to change the Criminal Code so corporate managers and directors who fail to take steps to protect the lives of their employees could be held criminally liable in the event of workplace deaths. Private members’ bills were introduced in Parliament only to fail until, on the fifth attempt, in 2003, the federal government enacted what would come to be known as the “Westray Bill” that provided a new framework for corporate liability in Canada.

The Westray mine site was razed in 1998 and the mine shaft sealed entombing the bodies of 11 miners. A memorial was built in a park in nearby New Glasgow approximately at the location above ground where the remaining miners were trapped. The memorial’s central monument, engraved with the names and ages of the twenty-six men who lost their lives in the disaster, states, “Their light shall always shine.”  The memorial lands were protected by the Nova Scotia government and further mineral exploration is prohibited within the park.

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Celebrated on March 8 every year, International Women’s Day (IWD) is fundamentally a political protest about conditions in the workplace and society. The day has moved around over the past century finally settling on March 8^th in 1975. Its roots go back to a 1909 protest organized by the Socialist Party of America in New York in honour of the women garment workers’ strike held the year before. Protest continues in the coming years on the last Sunday in February calling for improved working conditions and equal rights.

The idea for a formal day of action belongs to Luise Zietz, who initially championed the cause at the 1910 International Women’s Conference in Copenhagen, organized to precede a general meeting of the Second International. Delegates from 17 countries agreed to promote equal rights and voting rights for women on an annual basis. On March 19^th, 1911, protests in Germany, Austria, Denmark and Switzerland marked the first truly international day. Over 1 million women and men rallied to demand the right to vote, the right to work, to vocational training and to end workplace discrimination.

During World War I, women in Europe protested on March 8^th, 1914, calling for an end to war and to express worker solidarity.  In 1917, Russian women called for a “Bread and Peace” strike on the last Sunday in February, which fell on March 8^th in the Gregorian calendar – an event that marks the start of the Russian Revolution.

The day was finally entrenched on March 8^th in 1975, when the United Nations declared International Women’s Year (IWY). In Canada, IWD and IWY have been platforms to demand equal citizenship, voting rights, pay equity, reproductive rights, Indigenous rights, childcare, equality and justice.

Today, unions work with community groups, national organizations and international partners to win a better deal for women and their families including: comprehensive pay equity, a national public child care program, workplace support for victims of domestic violence, and ending the culture of discrimination and harassment.

Women and their unions are #donewaiting and working together for fairness from employers and governments.

The post A day rooted in women’s ongoing struggle for fairness, economic equality and social justice. appeared first on Canadian Labour Congress.

Workers in the federal public service were organizing themselves into unions for over 75 years before finally winning the same labour rights enjoyed by other Canadians. The first union, formed in 1891, was the Federated Association of Letter Carriers. In 1918, FALC lead postal workers in the very first countrywide strike of federal government employees, which, while illegal, won fairer wages and work hours for its members.

Unions were not legally recognized within the federal public service even in 1965, when another postal union, the Canadian Postal Employees Association, (the forerunner of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers), who represented inside workers went on a national ‘wildcat’ strike to protest poor working conditions and the lack of union recognition.

The early 1960s was a time of militancy and organizing for workers in the federal public sector, driven by the authoritarian management style of civil service managers and the lack of staff input into their wages and working conditions. The cancellation of wage increases –twice – by the Conservative government of the day was the final straw for many. Postal workers turned to the recently formed Canadian Labour Congress, which trained hundreds of new organizers within their ranks. This training was put to good use in the coming years.

The election of a new minority Liberal government in 1963, which had promised to bring collective bargaining rights to federal employees gave hope and spurred on organizing efforts. The Civil Service Association of Canada and Civil Service Federation along with the Professional Institute called for collective bargaining rights. Postal workers also wanted the right to strike, but the Federation was content to have disputes go to arbitration.

The Liberals, meanwhile, dragged their feet until July 22, 1965 when postal workers started an illegal strike that forced the government into action. It introduced C-170, the Public Service Staff Relations Act later that year. While there was widespread support for giving bargaining rights to federal employees, there was sharp division over giving them the right to strike.

Organizing and advocacy on the part of workers won the day, bringing significant changes to labour relations between the federal government and, eventually, provincial and territorial governments and their workers. On February 23, 1967 Canada became just the third country, joining Sweden and France, to allow its public sector workers to go on strike.

Federal government employees responded by joining unions in record numbers. The Civil Service Association of Canada and Civil Service Federation joined forces to create the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC).  Between them, they had majority support in most job categories of the federal government, which allowed them for the first time to address many issues for their members.

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The mill relied on the local supply of logs to make wood pulp. Along with the woodcutters who were facing a wage freeze, local farmers provided 25% of the logs the pulp mill needed to function. The land in the region was poor and despite the extra income earned from logging, it was difficult to make a living farming. When asked by the union to stop providing logs to the mill to help put pressure on their employer to settle, the farmers refused and relations quickly soured. The striking workers responded by sabotaging the farmers’ lumber, making it unsaleable.

Conflict within the community escalated. On January 23, the mayor of Kapuskasing, Norman Grant, was quoted in the Globe and Mail saying, “These settlers are getting so desperate they are going to go into the bush with guns and shoot anyone who tries to interfere with their cutting.”

At midnight on February 10, a group of 400 unarmed workers gathered to stop a shipment of the farmers’ wood from being loaded onto railcars. Twenty farmers were waiting for them at the loading station, determined to protect their lumber. Standing between them were fewer than 20 Ontario Provincial Police officers and a line of chain.

The workers easily got past the police and their chain, but as they approached the lumber, a number of the farmers stepped out from hiding and began shooting into the crowd of workers. They killed Fernand Drouin, and brothers Irenée and Joseph Fortier. Eight others were wounded: Harry Bernard, Ovila Bernard, Joseph Boily, Alex Hachey, Albert Martel, Joseph Mercier, Léo Ouimette and Daniel Tremblay.

Later, the leader of the Ontario NDP, Donald C. MacDonald, publicly declared that affidavits revealed that police knew farmers had brought firearms with them that night, but did nothing to prevent their use.

After the attack, the province sent 200 police officers to the area and appointed Professor Bora Laskin of the University of Toronto as mediator between the LSWU and Spruce Falls. Workers voted to end the strike and return to work under the terms of their old contract on February 17 agreeing to arbitration to resolve the issues behind the 33-day long strike.

Over half of the workers were temporarily held in a former POW Camp, south of Iroquois Falls, on charges of rioting until they were released on bail posted by the union. The farmers had their firearms seized (14 in total) and faced charges of non-capital murder. Eventually, 138 union members were found guilty of illegal assembly, with the union paying $27,600 in fines, while three farmers were found guilty of firearms violations and fined $150 each.

Today, Reesor Siding is a ghost town. A memorial to the incident, raised by the workers’ union, and a provincial historic plaque are all that remain to remind us of the conflict, the scars of which lingered for years afterward. The Globe and Mail reported threats to destroy the monument when it was built.  In 1969, musician Stompin Tom Connors wrote his song “Reesor Crossing Tragedy” and reported receiving death threats and orders for him not to play the song at upcoming venues.

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Labour relations between Canada Post and the workers who sort and deliver the mail for people have rarely been good. Between 1965 and 1978, there were seven strikes. A number of those strikes were illegal. In 1974, for example, an illegal strike was what it took to get fair wages for women who operated coder machines, a job dominated by women classified as low pay.

In 1977, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) was ready to negotiate a new collective agreement and was seeking to address a number of issues: the conversion of part-time and overtime hours into full-time jobs, the impact of technological change, working hours and maternity leave. The employer (the federal government), rather than negotiate in good faith, responded with political interference, misinformation and confrontation.

Remember: at this time, Canada Post operated as a department of the federal government, controlled by Parliament and, more directly, by Cabinet and the Minister responsible (the Postmaster-General). It was not until 1981 that it became a Crown Corporation – another longstanding demand of the CUPW – and governed by the Canada Labour Code.

In the summer of 1977, leaked government documents revealed the Trudeau government was working hard to subvert the union by dealing with postal workers directly (divide and conquer!). Workplace union meetings and the distribution of union literature – as allowed in the collective agreement – were banned (the ban was later overturned by an arbitration ruling). Antiquated public sector bargaining rules were reinstated to remove issues from bargaining, including items already in the collective agreement. Under a system where the employer had the power to make, change, and enforce the rules as it pleased, Canada’s postal workers became very frustrated and jaded about their chances of reaching a fair and just collective agreement.

Finally, on October 17, 1978, after 18 months of frustrated negotiations, postal workers across the country walked off the job to start a legal strike. The federal government responded by introducing and passing back-to-work legislation in the House of Commons that same day, ordering an end to the strike. When the law received Royal Assent the following afternoon, the workers refused to comply. CUPW’s president, Jean-Claude Parrot, and the union’s national executive chose to ignore what they saw as an unjust law and refused to order an end to the strike.

Within a week, on October 25, while the union was in meetings with the federal Minister of Labour, the RCMP conducted a raid on CUPW’s offices. Canada Post then declared that it would fire workers who did not return to their jobs, arguing they had abandoned their posts. In order to protect the jobs of its members, the union ended the strike that day, telling workers to return with their heads held high, as negotiations would continue.

Nevertheless, the government had other plans. Two days later, they rounded up the entire CUPW national executive and placed them under arrest. Bail conditions set for Parrot included requiring him to declare an end to the strike that had already ended. In March 1979, a new collective agreement was imposed on postal workers. The next month, after a seven-day trial, a federally appointed judge sentenced Jean-Claude Parrot to three months in jail and 18 months’ probation for defying Parliament.

Parrot reported to jail the following January to begin serving his time – missing the federal election that saw the politicians responsible for his fate returned to power, after having been defeated at the polls shortly after he was sentenced. In jail, Parrot received more than a thousand letters of support from all across Canada, some written by children.

Years later, Parrot would become an Executive Vice-President of the Canadian Labour Congress, representing Canadian workers nationally and internationally as a representative to the International Labour Organization. Since his retirement in 2002, Parrot continues to stand up for the rights of working people. He published his memoires, My Union, My Life, in 2005.

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In what has been the largest organizing drive in Canada’s history, more than 4,000 part-time Ontario college support staff cast their ballots last year. But an 18-month legal fight launched by the College Employer Council meant the ballot boxes remained sealed until today, when the Ontario Labour Relations Board counted the ballots, resulting in a clear victory for the union: 84 percent of those who cast ballots voted to join OPSEU.

The win means that an estimated 20,000 part-time college support staff, mostly women, including many who work 24 hours or less a week, will join OPSEU and have union representation for the first time.

“Despite facing a myriad of obstacles, these workers were steadfast. They understood that the only way to improve their working conditions, and win on important issues like equal pay for equal work, was to form a union,” said CLC President Hassan Yussuff.

“This is a crucial victory for these college workers, and an inspiring example for all of those in today’s precarious workforce working part-time, on contract or in temporary positions,” he added.

OPSEU’s president, Warren (Smokey) Thomas, said he was looking forward to representing his newest members.

“These workers have laid the foundation for a brighter future for all workers—not only in Ontario, but across the country. We are proud to be their union,” said Thomas.

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“We’ve been working with communities from across the country in support of the sanctuary movement,” said CLC President Hassan Yussuff. “We believe that Canada should be a safe place for everyone; sanctuary municipalities help ensure migrants find welcoming spaces wherever they arrive,” he added.

The United Nations’ theme for this year’s International Migrant Day is “Safe Migration in a World on the Move.”

At least 65.3 million people have been forced from their homes. There are an estimated 200,000 to 500,000 non-status migrants in Canada.

Non-status migrants may include, but are not limited to, people who have had their status revoked, who were coerced by traffickers, or who had their refugee claim denied. Many have experienced conflict, violence, persecution, and other human rights violations.

Migrants experience increased insecurity and violence in their adoptive communities as a result of the rise of racism, Islamophobia, and anti-immigrant sentiment. Racialized women, Indigenous people, LGBTQ2SI, and persons with a disability are especially vulnerable.

“Non-status migrants’ precarious immigration status makes them vulnerable. These are people who live and work in constant fear,” said Yussuff. “We can and we must respond to the needs of these people. We have to place ourselves in their shoes.”

A sanctuary city designation provides residents who don’t have full status documents safe access to municipal services. The designation must be accompanied by comprehensive training and implementation of best practices. The designation also requires broad support from front line community service providers including police, firefighters, school staff and administrators.

“Canadian municipalities can take an active stand against racism and xenophobia through a sanctuary designation. We can and we must respond,” said Yussuff.

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A statement issued by Canada’s finance ministers today promises “to provide greater benefits to parents whose income drops after the birth or adoption of their child [and] to persons with disabilities.”

“We were very surprised to learn that child-rearing and disability protections weren’t included in last year’s hard-won CPP expansion,” said CLC President Hassan Yussuff.

“For 18 months we’ve called on the government to fix the problem by fully protecting workers with disabilities and workers who take time off work to raise their children,” he added.

Unions and women’s groups fought for years to include protections that ensured that parents who took time off to raise children – mostly women – could exclude or “drop-out” periods of low and zero earnings from the calculation of their retirement benefit.

A disability drop-out excludes periods in which a worker has become severe and chronically disabled and is receiving CPP disability benefits.

When the finance ministers agreed in June 2016 to expand the CPP, unions believed these drop-outs would continue to apply in the enhanced benefit. They didn’t.

“We’ll be asking for more details on what the finance ministers are planning,” said Yussuff.

“We know that including these protections in the expanded CPP can mean thousands of dollars more in retirement for parents – especially women – and workers who lost income because of injuries or disabilities, and we want to ensure this problem is fixed once and for all,” he added.

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On December 10, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the declaration, outlining the basic and fundamental rights and freedoms to which all human beings are entitled.

This year on Human Rights Day, the UN kicks off a year-long campaign to promote, engage, and reflect on how each of us can stand up for human rights.

“Canada’s unions are committed to defending human rights. We are proud to have stood against apartheid in South Africa and to have fought for labour rights in Colombia,” said CLC President Hassan Yussuff. “And we continue to challenge racism, xenophobia and discrimination at home and around the world,” he added.

Here in Canada, advancing human rights means:

• Addressing systemic discrimination of all forms, including interrupting anti-black racism, and Islamophobia;
• Reconciliation and nation-to-nation relationship building with First Nations;
• Reforming the criminal justice system to address the disproportionate number of incarcerated Black and Indigenous people;
• Taking steps to narrow the gender wage gap by passing proactive pay equity legislation in early 2018;
• Addressing ongoing systemic discrimination experienced by LGBTQ2SI people, and ending the criminalization of HIV non-disclosure and the ban on blood donation for gay men ;
• Ensuring that promised federal accessibility legislation provides a clear path to address the many barriers to inclusion that people with disabilities face;
• Advocating for an independent and impartial federal ombudsperson to help ensure Canadian corporations respect human rights in the countries where they operate.

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The federal government announced this week that it was beginning consultations around signing the Optional Protocol to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The Optional Protocol would allow individuals in Canada who believe their rights under the Convention have been violated to register complaints with the United Nations.

Unions are also calling for these rights to be enshrined in Canadian legislation. The CLC recently participated in government consultations for new federal legislation on accessibility. Not surprisingly, employment was the top issue identified in these consultations.

“We would like this legislation to take a broad, rights-based approach that not only improves accessibility, but also promotes inclusion of persons with disabilities in all aspects of Canadian life,” said CLC President Hassan Yussuff.

The CLC has a long history of advocating for Canadians living with disabilities and for injured workers, and of advocating for strong health and safety legislation and regulations that make all workers safer. Canada’s unions are also working to improve labour force access for Canadians with disabilities and injured workers.

Earlier this year, the UN reviewed Canada’s compliance with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and made concrete recommendations for action, including the need for a policy on employment for persons with disabilities and strategies to ensure access to decent work.

“We are looking forward to the promised federal accessibility legislation,” said Yussuff. “We hope that it provides a clear path to address the many barriers to inclusion that people with disabilities and deaf and hard-of-hearing persons face,” he added.

This past May, delegates to the CLC triennial convention voted to establish the CLC’s priorities for the next three years. Those priorities include urging the federal government to make the disability tax credit refundable, review and revise the CPP disability program in order to increase access and benefit amounts, and extend the CPP disability drop-out provisions to the enhanced retirement benefit.

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Over the past 15 years, progress against AIDS has inspired a global commitment to end the epidemic by 2030. The CLC established an HIV/AIDS Fund in 2002.

Over the last three years, the fund has also supported the undertaking of a national assessment of HIV/AIDS in the workplace in Nigeria. Nigeria’s HIV epidemic affects all population groups and geographic areas of the country.

The International Labour Organization (ILO)’s Recommendation 200 highlights the role of workplaces in facilitating access to prevention, treatment, care and support of those diagnosed with HIV and AIDS.

“We are working in partnership with the Nigeria Labour Congress and ITUC-Africa, with support from the ILO, the UK Trades Union Congress and Canadian affiliates to carry out these workplace assessments,” said CLC President Hassan Yussuff.

The baseline data on HIV and AIDS in the workplace will help ensure that workers are included in national action strategies aimed at ending the epidemic by 2030.

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“This is a good day for Canada’s LGBTQ2SI workers, and for all those who tirelessly pushed for justice,” said CLC President Hassan Yussuff. “In particular we should acknowledge the relentless advocacy of many unions who fought for this, and our allies and community partners Egale and the We Demand an Apology Network.”

Yussuff said he was especially pleased to see that a settlement had been reached in the class action lawsuit, and that there would be a process aimed at expunging the records of those convicted of criminal offenses. He was also pleased to see funding commitments for historical reconciliation, education and memorialization efforts, along with new awareness and support programs for the RCMP and the military.

“As a gay man, a labour leader and a public service worker, it was incredibly moving to hear the Prime Minister outline in detail the various ways that workers were persecuted and oppressed, just because they were gay, or suspected of being gay,” said CLC Executive Vice-President Larry Rousseau.

“What’s crucial now is that we remember that the systemic discrimination experienced by LGBTQ2SI folk does not end with this apology – too many continue to experience discrimination and violence on a daily basis. We are hopeful that this apology will be followed up with other concrete measures,” he added.

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The campaign is an opportunity to reflect on the impact of gender-based violence on our lives, work and communities, and to take action to eliminate it. In Canada, unions and many other organizations hold events and actions on December 6, the day set aside to remember the women murdered at Montréal’s École Polytechnique in 1989.

This year, in the wake of #MeToo and in recognition that too many women experience sexual harassment and other forms of gender-based violence at work, the Canadian Labour Congress is issuing a challenge to governments, to unions, and to men in the labour movement.

It’s time to up our game.

“If we are truly going to eliminate violence against women, men need to step up,” said CLC President Hassan Yussuff. “We need to acknowledge our complicity in perpetuating a culture that tolerates toxic masculinity. Men need to own up to our own behaviour and hold ourselves and each other accountable. And we need to make a commitment to change – in our workplaces, but also in our own organizations.”

The CLC has developed a partnership with the producers of the documentary film A Better Man. The film portrays a series of conversations between a survivor of domestic violence and her former abuser. It is a powerful film, intended to provoke conversations about accountability, healing, and the possibility of restorative justice.

On November 24, the CLC will launch a discussion guide for unions, using the film as a launching point for a broader conversation about domestic violence and how individuals, unions, and workplaces can act to break the silence and end the cycle of violence.

“We are encouraging union members – and especially men – to watch the film, and to talk about their reactions, whether it’s on social media, at a union event or around the kitchen table with friends and neighbours,” said Yussuff. “We also want to make sure that talk leads to action, to change in behaviour and to change in legislation.”

Following on our groundbreaking survey on Domestic Violence at Work, the CLC has taken action by:

• Launching an education program to empower union representatives to recognize and respond to domestic violence at work, to promote awareness of the issue in workplaces, and to help keep members safe and supported at work.
• Developing collective bargaining language to assist unions in negotiating workplace supports, including paid domestic violence leave and women’s advocates.
• Lobbying governments in all jurisdictions to amend health and safety legislation to recognize domestic violence as a form of workplace violence (as is the case in Ontario), and to follow Manitoba’s example and amend employment standards to give all workers paid domestic violence leave.
• Working with the global labour movement to press for an international labour standard on violence and harassment in the world of work.

The work of union members, unions, and federations of labour has seen results. Ontario will join Manitoba in establishing five paid days of domestic violence leave, and discussions are underway in a number of other jurisdictions. Legislation on harassment and violence in the federal sector was recently tabled, and the latest Budget Implementation Act establishes unpaid family violence leave. Canada’s unions will continue to push for this leave to be paid, and for harassment and violence legislation to clearly define and establish processes to address harassment and violence at work.

On November 25, watch A Better Man on TVO or stream it on TVO.org. Visit our online resource centre to download the discussion guide. Throughout the 16 Days of Action, follow @CanadianLabour for tips and tools, and participate in the conversation using hashtags #16Days and #DVatWork.

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A cancer-fighting medication had kept Judy Pope alive for five years, but when her husband Gary’s health insurance switched to a new provider, a cap on coverage meant the Popes were faced with medication costs of more than $3,000 a month.

Judy Pope’s painful choice is chronicled in a new CLC video launched online on November 16. The video is meant to encourage Canadians to share the Popes’ story and to add their voice to an online petition that has so far garnered thousands of signatures from across Canada.

“Canadians know it is simply unacceptable that anyone should have to choose between bankrupting their family and saying no to a life-saving drug,” said CLC President Hassan Yussuff. “It’s time our governments took action.”

Canada is the only developed country in the world with a universal health care program that doesn’t include a universal prescription drug plan. Our patchwork prescription drug system is inefficient and expensive, and has resulted in the second highest prescription drug costs in the world next to the United States.

Today, 3.5 million Canadians can’t afford to fill their prescriptions. For many, that has meant serious consequences for their health. And for some, like Judy Pope, it has meant giving up the chance at a longer life.

• About one third of working Canadians don’t have employer-funded prescription drug coverage.
• The less someone earns at work, the less likely they are to have prescription drug coverage.
• Women and young workers are less likely to have the coverage they need.
• Half of Canadians worry that some day they’ll have trouble paying for medication they need. That includes almost half of those with prescription drug coverage today.

“Canada’s unions are proud that we’ve won health insurance coverage for many of our members, but we believe anyone with a health card should have coverage for the medication they need,” said Yussuff.

“That’s why we’re working to win a universal prescription drug plan that covers everyone in Canada, regardless of their income, age, or where they work or live,” he added.

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“Canada has seized an opportunity to set an international example by proving that ambitious economic restructuring policy to save our planet can be drafted with people at the its centre,” said CLC President Hassan Yussuff.

Against the backdrop of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bonn, Germany, Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna today pledged federal support for the Government of Alberta’s just transition plan for coal workers, including flexibility on Employment Insurance and working with Western Economic Diversification Canada to support the communities affected by the phasing out of coal power.

“Workers who have dedicated their lives to keeping the lights on can’t be expected to shoulder the burden of meeting Canada’s emission reduction targets,” said Alberta Federation of Labour President Gil McGowan, who was a part of the Canadian labour delegation to this year’s UN Climate Conference.

“The Alberta government took the lead by promising income support, retraining, and local economic development, but workers needed assurance that Ottawa was equally committed to their livelihoods and their communities. We now have that commitment,” he added.

Minister McKenna also announced her government’s intention to work directly with the Canadian Labour Congress to launch a task force that will develop a national framework on Just Transition for workers affected by the coal phase-out. The work of this task force is slated to begin early in the new year.

“Unions are committed to working in partnership with the governments of Canada and Alberta to meet Canada’s international climate change targets while making sure that no one is left behind,” said Yussuff.

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“Unions have been advocating for this for years because we know that designated, paid domestic violence leave means it is easier for survivors to keep their jobs and escape violent and abusive relationships. And sometimes, that can mean the difference between life and death,” said CLC President Hassan Yussuff.

“Dedicated paid leave means people experiencing violence can do what’s needed to keep themselves, their children and family members safe, such as going to counselling, opening a new bank account, or meeting with lawyers or police – all things that have to happen during the standard workday,” he added.

The Ontario legislation, part of Bill 148, makes the province the second in Canada to offer workers five days of paid domestic violence leave. Manitoba was the first to introduce legislation giving all workers the right to five paid days, plus an additional ten unpaid and if necessary, up to 17 weeks of unpaid leave.

The federal government has yet to follow suit, proposing only unpaid leave in its budget implementation bill, C-63. Yussuff appeared before the finance committee on November 9 to urge the government to amend its proposal so that it offers paid domestic violence leave instead.

In 2014 the CLC partnered with the University of Western Ontario on a groundbreaking national study that found one in three workers has experienced domestic violence, and the violence often follows people to work, putting safety and jobs at risk.

Since then, unions across the country have been working to negotiate domestic violence supports into collective agreements, train union representatives to recognize and respond to domestic violence at work, and change legislation to support non-union workers who face domestic violence.

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The proposed legislation was announced today by Patty Hajdu, Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Labour, and would amend both the Canada Labour Code and the Parliamentary Employment and Staff Relations Act.

“Workplace violence and harassment has reached epidemic proportions and is having very real consequences for the day-to-day lives and mental health of workers across the country,” said CLC President Hassan Yussuff. “We are pleased to see the government addressing some of the gaps and inconsistencies in current legislation meant to address this issue.”

Unions have long lobbied the federal government for comprehensive workplace violence legislation requiring employers to develop policies and programs to help prevent workplace violence and harassment, as well as take precautions to protect workers from domestic violence in the workplace.

“The legislation announced today is an important first step, but questions remain about the effective practical protections that will be available to workers, especially the most vulnerable,” said Yussuff.

Yussuff said he would be seeking clarification around issues including:

• Why the legislation does not contain a clear definition of harassment and violence. Unions are concerned that this can’t be addressed through a regulatory process. The Ontario government’s legislation, for example, contains a clear definition.
• Whether the legislation will be backed up with adequate staffing and training resources. We need to ensure that Labour Inspectors will receive the specialized training necessary to enforce the legislation.
• Whether union members will have the right to union representation throughout any complaint process.
• Whether workers will have the right to access information pertinent to their complaint.
• How this legislation will interact with provisions in collective agreements, such as the right to third party arbitration.
• How this legislation impacts the role of the Canadian Human Rights Commission in addressing complaints.

“We are pleased that the labour minister has committed to a stakeholders’ working group to develop regulations and guidance documents and hope that many outstanding issues can be addressed there,” said Yussuff.

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The legislation imposes dubious restrictions on religious accommodation and includes controversial rules which prevent anyone who covers their face from giving or receiving public services. Women who wear face veils as part of religious practice have decried the Bill as a violation of their freedom of religion and of expression, as they already show their faces upon request for identification and security purposes.

Bill 62 applies to Quebec ministries, school boards, universities, public health care institutions, subsidized daycare centres, municipalities, public transit authorities, doctors, dentists, and other health care professionals.

Provincial legislators have not provided any clear guidelines, nor outlined the consequences workers will face should they object to the discriminatory nature of the law.

“This is a harmful, undemocratic, and unnecessary bill that violates the fundamental freedoms of women through state control over their bodies,” says CLC President Hassan Yussuff. “The CLC unequivocally condemns any law which creates two classes of citizens in our country.”

To date, one bus driver may face sanctions for publicly showing support to a protest against the Bill that took place last Friday in Montreal.

Further, the union representing workers at the STM, the Montreal public transit authority, has stated that bus drivers do not want the responsibility of having to interpret the law. Nor should they have to.

“Every Canadian is fully entitled to the rights promised to them under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as well as provincial human rights codes,” says Yussuff. “It’s wrong to ask workers to participate in the violation of those rights – especially while delivering the public services every Quebec resident is entitled to receive.”

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“Today’s commitment by Canada’s health ministers is an important step for pharmacare, and we look forward to working with all governments and stakeholders to develop a plan for Canadians as soon as possible,” said CLC President Hassan Yussuff.

The commitment from health ministers came in a communiqué issued by the ministers at the conclusion of a two-day meeting in Edmonton.

Yussuff was in Edmonton for a breakfast meeting for stakeholders hosted by the Alberta and Ontario health ministers and attended by Federal Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor. Other stakeholders included Canadian Doctors for Medicare, the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, and the Canadian Health Coalition.

Canada’s unions have always made negotiating health insurance for their members a priority, but believe anyone with a health card should have prescription drug coverage. This past Labour Day, the CLC launched a campaign calling for a national pharmacare plan.

Canada is the only developed country in the world with a universal health care program that doesn’t include a universal prescription drug plan. Instead, our multiple-payer system has resulted in the second highest prescription drug costs in the world next to the United States. That’s left 3.5 million Canadians unable to afford their prescriptions.

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The CLC will join other organizations advocating for pharmacare at the meetings taking place in Edmonton this Thursday and Friday October 19 and 20.

“We will be there to encourage the health ministers to take steps that would advance the discussion around implementation of a universal prescription drug plan that would cover everyone in Canada, regardless of age, income or where they live,” said Yussuff.

At July’s Council of the Federation meeting, provincial and territorial premiers called on the federal government to continue to collaborate with them and engage actively in discussions about establishing a national pharmacare plan.

Since then, the Parliamentary Budget Officer issued a report using the Quebec government’s public prescription drug plan formulary to estimate universal pharmacare would yield annual savings of $4.2 billion.

A second report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and Canadian Doctors for Medicare used a more efficient model to estimate net annual savings of $11 billion.

Canada is the only developed country in the world with a universal health care program that doesn’t include a universal prescription drug plan. Instead, our multiple-payer system has resulted in the second highest prescription drug costs in the world next to the United States. That’s left 3.5 million Canadians unable to afford their prescriptions.

This past Labour Day, on the heels of a successful bid to expand the Canada Pension Plan, Canada’s unions launched a campaign calling for a national pharmacare plan.

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Paid maternity leave benefits – a guaranteed period for new mothers to be away from the workplace and then return to their job – had only been established a decade earlier. Before that, a new mother had to quit her job or return to work quickly if her family depended on her income.

Work leave for new mothers was first introduced in Canada when BC introduced the Maternity Protection Act of 1921. This legislation enabled women to take a limited leave of absence before and after giving birth and made it unlawful to dismiss women for these absences. She was also permitted thirty minutes twice a day to nurse her child while at work. Employers not abiding by the legislation were subject to hefty fines.

It does not sound very progressive, but at the time, it really was. It was the only legislation of its kind in Canada at that time, and for many years afterward.

In 1940, the Unemployment Insurance Act was introduced in Canada. It did not cover maternity leave in its early decades. Maternity leave, as we currently understand it, was first introduced in BC in 1966. Five years later, the federal government followed suit, amending the Canada Labour Code.

Under the 1971 provisions, mothers with at least 20 weeks of insurable earnings could claim up to 15 weeks of benefits through the Unemployment Insurance system. It was more than a touch controversial to cover expectant and new mothers under a program intended for the unemployed, and it represented a departure from provincially administered maternity leave to a federally regulated system, as we know it today.

At the beginning of the 1960s, just over 30% of women aged 20 to 30 participated in the Canadian labour force. By the end of the 1970s, the proportion of working women had doubled to just over 60%. Today, over 70% of mothers with children under five years of age are working.

Canada’s unions soon pushed for changes to make maternity leave more accessible, not only in legislation, but also by bargaining for better maternity leave for their members. They negotiated with employers for longer leave times with higher benefits that topped up the portion of the salary paid by UI benefits. Unions also won guarantees that women could return to the jobs they held before their maternity leave, as well as expanded parental leave for new fathers and leave for parents of newly adopted children.

In 1979, Quebec’s Common Front, representing government, education and health workers negotiated 20 weeks of fully paid maternity leave, 10 weeks leave when parents adopted a child, and five days of paternity leave.

But the 1981 strike by postal workers, lead by the CUPW, proved to be the tipping point. The trend was clear: workers and their unions were demanding expanded maternity benefits and they were prepared to strike in order to get them. The following year, federal clerks, members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), and Bell telephone workers, members of the Communications Workers of Canada (CWC), negotiated paid maternity leave.

Unions didn’t stop at maternity leave. Adoption leave, paternity leave, and parental leave – available to either parent – were routinely negotiated with employers.  In response, the federal government has continually improved the maternity and parental benefits offered through its employment insurance program.

Today, unions continue to advocate for improved access to parental benefits through expanded access to employment insurance benefits overall and through better access to quality and affordable childcare for all workers.  Access to childcare and early childhood education provide economic benefits beyond families with young children. Allowing parents to return to the workforce and to participate fully boosts productivity and delivers proven economic benefits overall.

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Canada’s West was also quickly growing and already chafing under the economic and political control based in the East. Its rapidly growing labour force and union movement reflected this geographic divide.

Workers in the west had a much more radical tradition. Many immigrants had come from socialist traditions and were looking for a new world order in a new land. The creation in 1905 of the Industrial Workers of the World found its strength in the western US and Canada and was symbolic of those views. Uniting all workers into one union was, many believed, the way to build true solidarity and achieve the social forms they wanted.

But Canada’s labour movement was dominated by unions from the East, which were controlled by American unions and focused on representing skilled workers in craft unions. The 1902 convention of the Dominion Trades and Labour Congress (TLC) saw the expulsion of most independent Canadian unions, including the Knights of Labor, which was the strongest voice for industrial workers, and a union that admitted almost all skilled and unskilled workers, women, and racialized workers.

Support for World War I and conscription further divided Canada’s unions. While the TLC supported the war and conscription, opposition to both was strong in the West. In 1917, western union leaders were outraged when Canadian labour leaders attended an American Federation of Labour (AFL) conference to call for labour to support US entry into the war and signed a pledge of loyalty to “the Republic of the United States against enemies, whomsoever they may be.” They saw it as an act subjugation to American interests and American craft unions.

The following year, well known British Columbia coal miner, labour organizer and Vice-President of the British Colombia Federation of Labour (BCFL), Albert “Ginger” Goodwin, was hunted down and murdered as a draft dodger – but western workers knew why he died. He had stood up to the coal companies and the government in his opposition to the war and to conscription. His death sparked Canada’s first general strike in Vancouver.

After the war, the workers and their families who had sacrificed much over the previous years were not willing to do so any longer. Soldiers returned from the war to unemployment. The prosperity they fought to secure was not being shared. Workers across Canada demanded better, so they organized and the strongest voices for change came from the West.

In 1919, at the annual “Western Labour Conference” meeting of western TLC unions, held in Calgary, things came to a head. Some 250 delegates representing major unions from Winnipeg to Victoria attended – the BCFL went so far as to move its convention to Calgary that year so more delegates could go. Years of frustration and alienation convinced a majority of those delegates to vote in support of a resolution to form a new “revolutionary industrial union”, separate from the AFL and the TLC. A founding convention for this “One Big Union” was set for June 1919.

Time was not on the OBU’s side. Before the founding convention happened on June 4, workers in Winnipeg went on a general strike. Many OBU supporters in Winnipeg were imprisoned and some deported following the suppression of the strike, so could not attend. The new union was founded but faced a changed landscape. After the defeat of strikers in Winnipeg, employers and governments were more willing to use all of the tools at their disposal against organizing workers, often with the support of the TLC.

The OBU was a moderate force in the West until 1956 when it merged into the newly formed Canadian Labour Congress (CLC). It never gained the strength that its founders had hoped for and, until the 1970s, the labour movement in Canada was largely controlled by unions based in the United States.

Today, the CLC is Canada’s largest labour organization. It brings together 55 national and international unions, 12 provincial and territorial federations of labour, and represents over 3.3 million workers. Over more than 60 years, the CLC has been instrumental in supporting the labour movement’s many achievements.

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To put pressure on the newly elected government of Jacques Parizeau, David organized a mass march, branded “Bread and Roses”. Bread symbolizing work and better economic conditions and roses symbolizing a better quality of life – the theme was a deliberate tribute to the 1912 textile workers’ strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts that was lead by women and inspired generations of union and social justice organizers.

David’s plan was to use the march to build public support for a list of demands that included increasing the minimum wage, pay equity laws, freezing tuition fees, greater social supports and improved collection of support payments.

Starting May 26, 1995, women from across Québec spent ten days marching to the provincial capital. They marched through 57 villages and followed three routes from Montréal, Longueil and Rivière-du-Loup. More than 800 women joined the march for more than one day, including 525 women who marched the 250 km from Montréal to Québec City. They converged at a rally on June 4 outside the province’s National Assembly.

The government agreed to most of the marchers’ demands, in one form or another, and put Québec well ahead of other provinces on many issues from pay equity, to child care.

The theme song of the march, Du pain et des roses, composed by Hélène Pedneault and Marie-Claire Séguin remains an anthem of the labour movements of Quebec and Canada.

The solidarity of the march inspired the 2000 “World March of Women” that continues to this day as an international project aimed at improving the lives of women around the world. Its focus on ending poverty and violence against women built solidarity and laid the foundation for work that many of Canada’s unions continue today.

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In 1991, Delwin Vriend worked in Edmonton as a full-time chemistry laboratory coordinator at The King’s College, a school affiliated with the Christian Reformed Church. Openly gay and equally open about his same-sex relationship, his supervisor ordered him to “quit or be fired” after the college adopted a statement of religious belief that targeted workers like him. Vriend refused and the college fired him.

Wronged, he contacted the Alberta Human Rights Commission to file a discrimination complaint but was refused because sexual orientation was not written into the Alberta Human Rights Code and, therefore, not protected. Denied justice, he sued the provincial government and the Human Rights Commission.

In 1994, an Alberta court ruled in Vriend’s favour. Echoing previous court rulings on the matter, the judge ruled that sexual orientation should be “written in” as a protected class under human rights law. The province’s Conservative government appealed, and in 1996, the Alberta Court of Appeal overruled the decision.

Vriend appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada, joined by the Canadian Labour Congress as one of the intervening parties. He won his case. The Court ruled on Vriend v. Alberta that provincial governments could not exclude protection of individuals from human rights legislation based on sexual orientation. It found no legal basis for drawing a distinction of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms between a positive act and an omission in the law – a controversial ruling because neither Alberta’s Human Rights Code nor the Charter made specific reference to sexual orientation.

With its decision, the Supreme Court read-in sexual orientation as a prohibited ground for discrimination. In response, a few religious groups and Alberta Conservative MLAs called on the governments of Alberta and Canada to invoke the “notwithstanding clause” to overrule the Court’s ruling. But the writing was on the wall and Conservative Premier Ralph Klein declined to take up the cause, even going so far as to suggest that public protests against the ruling were hateful.

The Vriend decision was one of many court challenges that saw interventions from Canada’s unions and the Canadian Labour Congress. Unions had been standing up for the rights of workers in same-sex relationships at the bargaining with employers, before legislative committees, in the courts and on the streets for years. Today, same-sex families and LGBTQ2SI workers can count on greater equality, access to the same pay, benefits and opportunities thanks to the work of unions.

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The origins of the Common Front can be traced back to the 1971 La Presse strike. In response to draconian anti-worker measures on the part of the Quebec government and Paul Desmarais, the new owner of La Presse, workers from several different unions joined in solidarity with the striking La Presse workers. A march of 12,000 demonstrators in support of the strikers was brutally suppressed by police, leading to riots that wounded many and resulted in the killing of Michele Gauthier, a student activist. The shared experience of the police riot created common ground for the coming together of normally competitive and divided unions.

The Common Front of 1972 was an alliance between the Confederation of National Trade Unions, the Quebec Federation of Labour, and the Quebec Teachers Corporation, as well as several smaller unions to present a united set of demands during negotiations with the provincial government. It represented 210,000 out of 250,000 public employees (84%) and demanded: an 8% increase in wages, job security, increased control over working conditions to better service provision, and a $100 per week minimum wage regardless of race, sex, religion, or job sector. When the government was unwilling to cede to these demands, the Common Front struck, and on April 11, 1972, 210 000 workers walked off the job.

The government of Robert Bourassa had ridden the swelling wave of change that was sweeping Quebec society to win power in the 1970 election. Faced with economic turmoil and the new political threat of the nationalist Parti Québecois, Bourassa’s Liberals (and the political establishment they represented) feared being scuttled. The wave needed breaking.

The province targeted its hospital workers, obtaining 61 injunctions, which the workers ignored. The response was harsh: 13 low-paid workers were jailed for 6 months and fined $5000 each (about a year’s pay) and their union was fined $70,600. Overall, 103 workers were sentenced to a total of 24 years and fined half a million dollars during a few days.

On April 21, the provincial government passed Bill 19. The new law forced unionized workers back to work and banned all fundamental trade union rights for two years. When the leaders of the Common Front – Loius Laberge, Marcel Pépin and Yvon Charbonneau – urged workers to defy the law, they were arrested, and each was sentenced to a year in jail.

“That’s the justice system,” said Brother Laberge, “while big corporations are fined $75 or $500 for polluting our rivers, killing people or breaking the law, we – the criminals – must got to jail for exercising a right – the right to strike.”

The profound unfairness of sending the three men to jail triggered popular outrage across Quebec’s working class. Over the month of May, work stoppages broke out across the province in public and private workplaces – construction and metal workers, miners, machinists, auto and textile workers, salespeople, print-shop employees, the staff of major news media, teachers and some hospital workers.

In towns like Sept-Îles, Thedford, Sorel and Joliette, the strike was profound, with people talking about the strikers “occupying” and “being in control of” workplaces. Radio and television stations were occupied by the union members, who broadcast their messages.

The massive scale of the public revolt forced the government to back down. The labour leaders were released from jail after serving four months and many of the Common Front’s demands were agreed to during negotiations. Employers across Quebec had also heard the message from their workers loud and clear and were reserved in their demands for years to come. This solidarity among Quebec’s working class would last for a generation and is one reason why union density in that province remains among the highest in the country.

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On March 27, no longer able to tolerate the unbearable living conditions in the work camps, the 8,000 “dynos and dirthands” walked out. The strike extended over 400 miles of territory, but the IWW established a “1,000-mile picket line” as Wobs (short for “Wobblies” as members of the IWW began to be called that year) picketed employment offices in Vancouver, Seattle, Tacoma, San Francisco, and Minneapolis to halt recruitment of scabs.

Meanwhile, the strike camps were so well run and disciplined that the press began calling the Yale camp in particular a “miniature socialist republic.” While not going that far, the west coast IWW weekly, Industrial Worker,  proudly pointed to this example of working class solidarity in which Canadians, Americans, Italians, Austrians, Swedes, Norwegians, French and other countrymen – one huge melting pot into which creed, colour, flag, religion, language and all other differences had been flung -were welded together in common effort.  Even “demon rum” was proscribed, which alone indicates the seriousness of the strikers.

Authorities arrested the strikers by the thousands for “unlawful assemblage” and vagrancy. Many were forcibly deported, forcibly at gunpoint. But the picket lines held.  In August they were joined by 3,000 construction workers on the Grand Trunk Pacific in BC and Alberta. The entire action, better known as the Fraser River Railway Strike, was popularized in song by Joe Hill‘s “Where the Fraser River Flows.” The strike also spawned the nickname Wobbly. A Chinese restaurant keeper who fed strikers reputedly mispronounced “IWW” in asking customers “Are you eye wobble wobble?” and the name stuck.

The CN strike lasted until the fall of 1912, when exhausted strikers settled for a few minor improvements: better sanitary conditions and a temporary end to the gypo system. The BC Grand Trunk strike was called off in January 1913 after the Dominion government promised to enforce sanitation laws. A greater gain was development of the “camp delegate” system in which the IWW secretary in town delegated a worker to represent him in the field – a method later refined into the permanent “Job Delegate” system of the roving Agricultural Workers.

Other unique features of the strike are worth mentioning. One, used again in the 20’s on the Northern Railway strike in Washington, was to “scab on the job”  by sending convert Wobs into scab camps to bring the workers out on strike. Another came in response to the “free” transportation offered scabs by the Railways on condition a man’s luggage was impounded until such time as his strike breaking wages repaid the fare. Large Wob contingents signed on, leaving the Railways with cheap suitcases stuffed with bricks and gunnysacks, and then deserted en route.

_{Excerpt (edited for language and to include hyperlinks) from THE IWW IN CANADA, by G. Jewell 1975, IWW General Administration/Chicago
http://www.spunk.org/texts/groups/iww/sp000476.txt}

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Trade unions, left-wing parties like the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and civil libertarians united to have the law repealed, eventually succeeding in 1936 following the sound defeat of Bennet’s Conservatives. However, the newly elected conservative Union Nationale government of Maurice Duplessis was quick to pick up where his federal predecessors had left off, and passed it’s own anti-communist law the following year.

The Padlock Act (Act Respecting Communistic Propaganda) empowered the attorney general to close (often with a padlock on the door) any building used for propagating “communism or bolshevism” for one year. A judge could order the lock removed if the owner could prove that the building had not been so used during the preceding year. Further, the Act empowered the attorney general to confiscate and destroy any printed matter propagating communism or bolshevism. Anyone printing, publishing or distributing such material could be imprisoned for up to a year, without appeal.

This meant the Premier could close down any house, apartment, or place of business without the necessity of formally laying charges or going to court. Duplessis said this was not necessary because “communism can be felt”.

Ultimately, the government took advantage of these new powers and used the law to persecute anyone whom it and the Premier disliked: Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jews, communists, trade union members and activists, and anyone else it suspected of “subversion”. It used the law to confiscate literature from the Montreal Jewish Cultural Center, Protestant missionary groups, and non-French ethnic clubs. It even sent police to raid the provincial headquarters of the CCF.

This abuse of power made the law a rallying point for civil libertarians. Opponents formed the Canadian Civil Liberties Union a month after it came into force, and it spent most of its efforts attempting to have the federal government disallow the law, or refer it to the Supreme Court for a ruling. Despite this, Mackenzie King and his federal Liberals knew that there was political support for the law in Quebec and did not want to harm its chances in the province.

For the labour movement, the law was a disaster. It outlawed closed shops and allowed the government to change collective agreements at will. In an effort to divide labour’s opposition, the government drove a wedge between international and Catholic trade unions. The Research Director of the Canadian Congress of Labour (and later the Canadian Labour Congress), Eugene Forsey, was a leading critic of the law.

The law remained in effect for 20 years until 1957 when the Supreme Court in 8 to 1 decision struck the law down as unconstitutional because it not only violated the constitutional right to free speech, but also because provincial governments did not have the power to legislate in the field of criminal law.

In the years since, Canada’s unions have stood up for fairness in defence of civil liberties and the rights of workers including, most recently, the Anti-terrorism Acts of 2001 (Bill C-36) and 2015 (Bill C-51). They have also played key roles in upholding the Charter rights of unions and workers, including the right to union activism, the right to bargain collectively and the right to strike. Unions have also succeeded in thwarting attempts by employers to use surveillance cameras, surveillance software, random drug tests and other unfair violations of worker rights.

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In 1960, work on the Hogg’s Hollow water main was in full swing. Built under the Don River to connect a pumping station with the water distribution on the other side, the work was done mostly by hand, in cramped and confined quarters 10 meters underground. It was also nearly a year behind schedule, the result of a failed contractor, faulty equipment and other delays. Pressure to finish the work resulted in corners being cut with disastrous consequences.

The underground workers that build tunnels for city water works and subways are known as “sandhogs”, and their working conditions were often more reminiscent of the 19th century than a modern, post-war Canadian city. 

Workers later testified that the tunnels lacked fire extinguishers and resuscitators, the timber supports were not strong enough, grout was not used on the floor of the tunnel to keep out sand and silt, and there were no extra air compressors. They didn’t even have flashlights. In spite of these issues, the site had been deemed to meet the safety standards of the day.

Late on Thursday March 17, hours after work should have stopped, a dozen workers were still underground welding steel plating in a compression chamber west of Yonge Street when a fire started and smoke began to fill the main tunnel. A valve that would have allowed the smoke to blow out of the tunnel would not open.

Firefighters arrived quickly, but were told to wait at least 30 minutes before watering the tunnel for fear it would collapse. While half of the workers had managed to escape down the tunnel to the east, the rest were trapped inside with riding temperatures, toxic smoke and rising levels of sand, silt and water. Two workers tried to get down to the trapped men and thought they heard at least three voices moaning, but were forced back by the intense heat. The next day Pasquale Allegrezza, Giovanni Carriglio, Giovanni Fusillo, and brothers Alessandro and Guido Mantella were dead – poisoned by carbon monoxide and drowned.

A coroner’s jury later ruled that the deaths were preventable, “the inevitable result of the failure to implement and enforce regulations.” The resulting media coverage, community outrage and demands from unions forced the Ontario government to call a Royal Commission, which led to new regulations on fire protection, worker safety in tunnels and the first overhaul of the province’s labour laws in nearly 40 years. It also spurred the organization of more construction workers and more immigrant workers into unions, so they could stand up for their rights, health and safety.

Disasters like the tragedy at Hogg’s Hollow, the Heron Road Bridge collapse in Ottawa, and the Westray Mine cave in years later all changed workplace health and safety laws by shining a light on the unsafe and, in the case of the five immigrant workers killed at Hogg’s Hollow, unfair conditions faced too often by many working people. In 1984, the Canadian Labour Congress established a National Day of Mourning for workers killed and injured on the job to keep pressure on employers and politicians.

Today, unions continue to stand up for fairness, safety and the health of workers with winning campaigns to ban asbestos, prevent workplace harassment and violence, win supports for workers experiencing domestic violence, and help working people struggling with mental illness. 

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The idea for a formal day of action belongs to Luise Zietz, who initially championed the cause at the 1910 International Women’s Conference in Copenhagen, organized to precede a general meeting of the Second International. Delegates from 17 countries agreed to promote equal rights and voting rights for women on an annual basis. On March 19^th, 1911, protests in Germany, Austria, Denmark and Switzerland marked the first truly international day. Over 1 million women and men rallied to demand the right to vote, the right to work, to vocational training and to end workplace discrimination.

During World War I, women in Europe protested on March 8^th, 1914, calling for an end to war and to express worker solidarity.  In 1917, Russian women called for a “Bread and Peace” strike on the last Sunday in February, which fell on March 8^th in the Gregorian calendar – an event that marks the start of the Russian Revolution.

The day was finally entrenched on March 8^th in 1975, when the United Nations declared International Women’s Year (IWY). In Canada, IWD and IWY have been platforms to demand equal citizenship, voting rights, pay equity, reproductive rights, Indigenous rights, childcare, equality and justice.

Today, unions work with community groups, national organizations and international partners to win a better deal for women and their families including: comprehensive pay equity, a national public childcare program, workplace support for victims of domestic violence, and ending the culture of discrimination and harassment.

Women and their unions are #donewaiting and working together for fairness from employers and governments.

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Work in canal construction was hard and done by hand using small tools, picks and shovels. There was little use of animals, so the rocks and soil the workers dug was hauled away by wheelbarrow. A canal “Navvie”, short term for navigator, worked 14 to 16 hour days, 6 days a week.

Working conditions were often deplorable. During construction of the Rideau Canal, around 1000 workers lost their lives to worksite injuries or disease. Some died during the blasting of rock, others drowned in rivers or swamps, but most died from diseases like “Ague” or “swamp fever”, a form of malaria carried by mosquitos. Today, the canal is dotted with monuments and memorials to the men and women who toiled and died along its length.

Workers were also vulnerable to exploitation. The money earned by workers was vulnerable as the men who hired them also acted as sellers of food, shelter, whiskey and tobacco – an early “company store”. In winter, there was often little other work available to support a family. Often, workers found themselves pitted against one another in a struggle for limited work – protestant workers vs catholic workers, French-speaking workers vs English-speaking workers – all to the advantage of employers.

However, some of the early struggles at Bytown managed to unite all workers. The March 2, 1829 riot was not the first time workers had risen up to protest poor pay and working conditions. Work on the Rideau Canal stopped three times in 1827 because of worker protests.

Throughout history, workers have found power when they came together and worked for the common good. In 1167 BC, there is recorded history of organized work-action during the building of the pyramids in Egypt. Angry about poor treatment and food rations, workers downed their tools until the Pharaoh conceded to their demands. Craft guilds formed in medieval Europe as a means for skilled workers to control the quality of their craft and the value of their labour. The trade and industrial unions of the 19th and 20th centuries transformed society, taking the working-class out of the world written about by Dickens and into the prosperity of the middle class.

Today, where workers have rights to unions, collective bargaining and to legally strike, it is rare for them to riot over working conditions. However, working people do still take to the streets when it is time to demand fairness – often with the help of the labour movement and union members. The “fight for 15 and fairness” and public campaigns to expand public pensions, pharmacare, and ban asbestos are recent examples of how unions help working people make a difference.

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Unions were not legally recognized within the federal public service even in 1965, when another postal union, the Canadian Postal Employees Association, (the forerunner of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers), who represented inside workers went on a national ‘wildcat’ strike to protest poor working conditions and the lack of union recognition. 

The early 1960s was a time of militancy and organizing for workers in the federal public sector, driven by the authoritarian management style of civil service managers and the lack of staff input into their wages and working conditions. The cancellation of wage increases –twice – by the Conservative government of the day was the final straw for many. Postal workers turned to the recently formed Canadian Labour Congress, which trained hundreds of new organizers within their ranks. This training was put to good use in the coming years.

The election of a new minority Liberal government in 1963, which had promised to bring collective bargaining rights to federal employees gave hope and spurred on organizing efforts. The Civil Service Association of Canada and Civil Service Federation along with the Professional Institute called for collective bargaining rights. Postal workers also wanted the right to strike, but the Federation was content to have disputes go to arbitration.

The Liberals, meanwhile, dragged their feet until July 22, 1965 when postal workers started an illegal strike that forced the government into action. It introduced C-170, the Public Service Staff Relations Act later that year. While there was widespread support for giving bargaining rights to federal employees, there was sharp division over giving them the right to strike.

Organizing and advocacy on the part of workers won the day, bringing significant changes to labour relations between the federal government and, eventually, provincial and territorial governments and their workers. On February 23, 1967 Canada became just the third country, joining Sweden and France, to allow its public sector workers to go on strike.

Federal government employees responded by joining unions in record numbers. The Civil Service Association of Canada and Civil Service Federation joined forces to create the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC).  Between them, they had majority support in most job categories of the federal government, which allowed them for the first time to address many issues for their members.

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“What I found [at Asbestos]… was a Quebec I did not know, that of workers exploited by management, denounced by government, clubbed by police, and yet burning with a fervent militancy. I was later to describe the strike . . . as a “turning point in the entire religious, political, social and economic history of the province of Quebec.”

_{P. E. Trudeau, Approaches to Politics. 2010}

The conservative Union Nationale was the government of Quebec. The Premier, Maurice Duplessis, was known as “Le Chef,” ruling the province with a strong hand. Supporters benefited from patronage, those in opposition were punished.  His time in office has been called La Grande Noirceur (“The Great Darkness”).  He championed a rural Quebec working with the Catholic Church to protect the population from the evils of Communism and militant Unions that would jeopardise American industrial investment.

In 1937 his government enacted the “La loi du cadenas” / “Loi protégeant la province contre la propagande communiste”, (Act to protect the Province Against Communistic Propaganda or as it was known the ‘Padlock Law’). This act made it illegal to use a dwelling to propagate Communism or Bolshevism. A violation would allow the Attorney General to padlock the building for up to one year.  A person guilty of involvement in prohibited activities could be jailed for thirteen months.  (In the 1957 the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the law.) So when the miners struck their employers they also were taking on the right wing provincial government of Duplessis.

The miners wanted a wage of $1 per hour, union security, a pension, and action to check the spread of lung choking ‘silicosis’ caused by exposure to asbestos.  They did not have to wait long for premier to respond to their demands. On February 23 their strike was declared illegal and Duplessis dispatched a battalion of provincial police to the small town of Asbestos. For over two months calm in the community was preserved with almost a holiday atmosphere as people strolled about with music entertainment for the workers and their families but all that was soon to change.

Quebec supplied 85% of the world’s asbestos and the American Johns Manville Company began to hire replacement workers. The police supported them by intimidation and threatening the miners, breaking up their picket lines, even padlocking a church to prevent the miners from meeting there. The strikers fought back setting up roadblocks to prevent the “scabs” from entering the town.  On March 14 someone set off an explosion on the railway track leading into the plant and a company official was beaten by the workers.

Duplessis called the strikes “saboteurs” and “subversives.” At the picket lines the police attacked the strikers with tear gas and fired warning shots into the air. Strikers responded by dragging police from their cars and beat them. On May 6 a heavily armed provincial police force arrived arresting several strikers and beating them in the process. However now there was a photographer for Time magazine as a witness making the strike worldwide news and the brutality of the police the central issue. Journalist Gérard Pelletier labelled them “Hitler’s elite troops.”

The culture that had allowed the Union Nationale to rule with an iron fist was cracking. Young intellectuals like future Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau came from Montreal to the support of the miners. The traditionally conservative union movement of the “Canadian Catholic Confederation of Labour (CCCL),” originally set up by the church to keep workers away from communist and radical unions, was itself fighting back against their employers and the government. Workers cheered militant union leader Jean Marchand when he spoke. Even the traditionally conservative Catholic Church found it was in sympathy with the strikers raising support to sustain the miner’s families.

The strike end on July 1^st with Archbishop Roy mediating a settlement. While Quebec was starting its Quiet Revolution the workers would have to wait.  Many were not rehired, those that were continued to work in one of the most dangerous workplaces in the world. Trudeau, Marchand and Pelletier, would go on play profound roles in shaping the political developments of Quebec and Canada. As for asbestos the health and safety struggles of 1949 continue to play out as it has taken Canada until this year to start banning it proposing the prohibition of the use, sale, import and export of asbestos and products containing the hazardous material.

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The first commercially produced car in Canada, the Le Roy, went on sale in 1902. It was actually a close copy of the popular American “Oldsmobile”. Two years later, Henry Ford established Ford of Canada to produce his famous Model T’s. This was the beginning of the interdependent Canada-U.S. auto industry.

Prior to the Auto Pact, car and truck parts were made in the US and assembled in Canada. The Auto Pact resulted in the removal of tariffs between the two countries, meaning parts and vehicles could travel freely across the border. There were also job guarantees stipulating that automobile production in Canada would not fall below 1964 levels.

The goals of the pact were to increase efficiency and reduce production costs in Canada by producing a smaller range of vehicles and components than previously. The Pact also sought to lower vehicle prices for consumers. The main result was an invigorated Canadian car industry – and a stronger economy. More jobs were created, wages in the sector increased, and within a short time, the auto sector became Canada’s most important industry. However, importantly, the Canadian industry remained firmly in the hands of the American “Big Three” companies – Ford, General Motors and Chrysler.

Ultimately, “free trade” killed the Auto Pact. The deal was always about protecting jobs while improving trade, but today’s global trade regimes put the free movement of capital ahead of workers and communities. In 2001, the World Trade Organization (WTO) decreed that the Auto Pact was illegal and Canada’s auto industry has been in turmoil ever since.

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Written as a song for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and first used as a marching song at a hunger demonstration in Chicago, on the very day it was completed.

Later in life, Chaplin would express deep regret that his poem – which calls for workers to stand together and take over the world – had become the anthem for industrial unionism and social democratic/labour political parties. Still, countless singers and musicians have performed the song over the past century. Unions even composed variations of the original Solidarity Forever to reflect the changing face of their membership and new priorities.

The words have also been adapted to reflect the changing face and priorities of the labour movement.

———-

Solidarity Forever
Lyrics by Ralph Chaplin, 1915

When the union’s inspiration through the workers’ blood shall run,
There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun;
Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one,
But the union makes us strong.

Chorus:

Solidarity forever,
Solidarity forever,
Solidarity forever,
For the union makes us strong.

Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite,
Who would lash us into serfdom and would crush us with his might?
Is there anything left to us but to organize and fight?
For the union makes us strong.

Chorus

It is we who plowed the prairies; built the cities where they trade;
Dug the mines and built the workshops, endless miles of railroad laid;
Now we stand outcast and starving midst the wonders we have made;
But the union makes us strong.

Chorus

All the world that’s owned by idle drones is ours and ours alone.
We have laid the wide foundations; built it skyward stone by stone.
It is ours, not to slave in, but to master and to own.
While the union makes us strong.

Chorus

They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn,
But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn.
We can break their haughty power, gain our freedom when we learn
That the union makes us strong.

Chorus

In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold,
Greater than the might of armies, multiplied a thousand-fold.
We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old
For the union makes us strong.

——

A variation used in Canada:

We’re the women of the union in the forefront of the fight,
We fight for women’s issues, we fight for women’s rights,
We’re prepared to fight for freedom, we’re prepared to stand our ground,
Women make the union strong.

Chorus

Through our sisters and our brothers, we can make our union strong,
For respect and equal value we have done without too long,
We no longer have to tolerate injustices and wrongs,
For the union makes us strong.

Chorus

When racism in all of us is finally out and gone,
Then the union movement will be twice as powerful and strong,
For equality for everyone will move the cause along,
For the union makes us strong.

Chorus

—–

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They were compelled to flee Myanmar this past summer due to what the United Nations Office of Human Rights is now calling “brutal, well-organized, coordinated and systematic attacks.” These attacks were orchestrated by Myanmar security forces, says a newly-released UN report.

Canada’s unions are urging everyone to support the efforts of relief agencies, including Oxfam Canada. Oxfam Canada has established a strong presence on the ground, reaching 100,000 displaced people with desperately needed supplies, as well as providing clean drinking water, portable toilets, and sanitation facilities. The CLC has donated $10,000 towards its efforts.

“We cannot put a price tag on safety, security, and overall health and well-being,” says Hassan Yussuff, CLC President. “It is our collective and individual responsibility to help those who are far less fortunate by supporting aid organizations doing critical work to alleviate suffering around the world.”

Oxfam aims to reach 200,000 people with:

·      water tanks, water treatment plants, containers for clean drinking water;

·      portable toilets and sanitation facilities;

·      30 tons of flattened rice, 23 tons of sugar, and 23,000 fortified biscuit packs;

·      plastic sheets, and other essential Non-Food Items (NFIs).

Learn more from Oxfam Canada about how you can support this life-saving work.

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This brief history shows the rise and fall of UI/EI in Canada.

1918 – Faced with the integration of returning soldiers back into the workforce, the Employment Officers Co-ordination Act is introduced in which the federal government subsidized provincial employment offices. The federal government also created the department of Employment Services, mandated to provide employment data and advice.

In 1919, the Government of Canada signed a draft document which recommended public unemployment insurance at the first International Labour Conference. In the same year, the federal government also appointed a Royal Commission on Industrial Relations. The Commission recommended the implementation of a national scheme of social insurance for workers who lost their jobs through no fault of their own.

1930s – In response to high rates of unemployment caused by the Great Depression, various levels of government set up a system of “relief”. This was often limited to vouchers not cash and tied to providing labour to public works or in work camps. 

March 1935 – Failed first attempt – Employment and Social Insurance Act passed third reading in Prime Minister Bennett’s Conservative government.

June – July 1935 – Dire conditions in work camps on the West Coast prompt the On To Ottawa Trek, which ends in a police instigated riot in Regina on July 1^st. Relief camps are shut down, and the incident highlights the need for a social insurance system in Canada.

October 1935 – With Bennett’s government defeated, the Employment and Social Insurance Act is never implemented. It is deemed unconstitutional the following year, because employment falls under provincial jurisdiction.

Between 1935 and 1940 – Growing pressure from unions, social groups and the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF was the forerunner of the NDP) forced the Liberal government of W.L.M. King to take action. 

1940 – The effects of the depression so deeply marked Canadians that the provinces unanimously agreed to change the constitution. Prime Minister King finally gets British approval and unanimous provincial support to allow UI to fall under federal jurisdiction, and the Unemployment Insurance Act passes. Only 40% of labour force covered, as seasonal workers, public servants, and others excluded. Workers are required to show they are unemployed, available for suitable work, and have contributed to the program for 180 days over the past two years.  Benefits last between 6 to 52 weeks.

1955 – Under Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent, an extensive overhaul of program extends benefits to approximately 75 percent of the Canadian labour force and changes benefit duration to 15 – 36 weeks.

1971 – Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau passes a new Unemployment Insurance Act that covers 96% of wage/salary-earning workers. People need 8 weeks of work over past year to qualify, with a minimum of 20 hours per week. The maximum benefit duration is raised to 50 weeks, but calculated on a complicated formula based on labour force attachment, the national and regional unemployment rate. Benefits for illness, maternity, and retirement are added.

1977 – The Trudeau government simplifies the benefit duration formula, but adds a variable entrance requirement based on the unemployment rate in the region where someone lives. Workers who live in a low unemployment region must work twice as long to qualify for benefits as workers living in a high unemployment region.

1978 – Trudeau’s government increases the number of UI regions from 16 to 48.

1990 – Prime Minister Brian Mulroney ends federal (tax dollar) contributions to the program, making UI entirely financed by worker and employer contributions. The number of UI Regions is increased to 62 and a single benefit duration schedule is introduced based on weeks of insurable earnings and the regional unemployment rate.

1990 – 1996 – Successive Conservative and Liberal governments make a number of changes that reduce the benefit amount paid to recipients, reduce the duration of benefits, and increase the weeks needed to qualify in some regions.

1996 – Prime Minister Jean Chrétien’s government introduces major reforms, changing the program’s name to Employment Insurance (EI). The entrance requirement is increased substantially. In the lowest unemployment regions, for example, it increases by 240% from 20 weeks at 15 hours/week (300 hours) to 720 hours of work.

1996 – 2006 – Under successive Liberal governments, the reduced ability of unemployed workers to quality for EI benefits builds up a massive surplus of $57-billion. Rather than save the money for future employment needs, the money is taken out of the fund, and used to balance federal budgets that offer substantive tax cuts to corporations and the wealthy.

2008 – Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government establishes a new Board to govern Employment Insurance financing (Canadian Employment Insurance Financing Board), wipes out the $57B “borrowed” by the federal government and reboots the program with only $2B in EI fund. Unions take the government to court, asking for the $57B to be repaid, but the Supreme Court sides with federal government. Later that year, the Great Recession hits.

2012 – Harper’s government changes the definition of “suitable employment” so that all EI claimants are compelled to accept job offers at wages lower than their previous job – between 10% and 30% depending on previous EI usage and length of time on current claim. The appeals process is also changed from face-to-face hearings with a three member Board of Appeals to mostly written submissions decided by a single member of the Social Security Tribunal.

2013 – 2017 –  see “Resources”

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An official inquest into the disaster laid blame on the engineers, the use of green lumber and the lack of diagonal bracing on the wooden support forms, which caused them to collapse as concrete was being poured to form the bridge deck.

The consequences for those responsible – the Association of Professional Engineers of Ontario suspended two of its members, reprimanded a third, and the construction company, O.J. Gaffney Limited of Stratford, Ontario, was fined $5,000 (the maximum penalty under the Construction Safety Act). 

Ontario’s construction safety standards were rewritten following this incident.

In 1987, the Canadian Labour Congress placed its National Monument to Workers Killed and Injured Each Year at Work in Ottawa’s Vincent Massey Park, within sight of the bridge. It is here that the Canadian Labour Congress, the Ottawa & District Labour Council, and local unions hold their ceremony each year on April 28 to mark the National Day of Mourning for workers killed or injured on the job.

Occupational “accidents” and work-related diseases kill more than 2.3 million workers around the world each year. According to the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety:

“The most recent statistics from the Association of Workers’ Compensation Boards of Canada (AWCBC) tell us that in 2016, 904 workplace deaths were recorded in Canada. Among those dead were 5 young workers aged fifteen to nineteen years; and another 20 workers aged twenty to twenty-four years.

Add to these fatalities the 240,682 claims accepted for lost time due to a work-related injury or disease, including 7,562 from young workers aged fifteen to nineteen, and the fact that these statistics only include what is reported and accepted by the compensation boards, and it is safe to say that the total number of workers impacted is even higher.

What these numbers don’t show is just how many people are directly affected by these workplace tragedies. Each workers death impacts the loved ones, families, friends and coworkers they leave behind, changing all of their lives forever.”

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The Travellers, best known for their rendition of a Canadian version of “This Land Is Your Land” with lyrics that reference the unique Canadian geography was the closing act at the famous Mariposa festival 54 years ago.

Formed as a result of singalongs at Camp Naivelt, a Jewish socialist vacation community that is operated by the United Jewish Peoples’ Order located west of Toronto. For a generation the group sang across the country and at a number of union halls and labour conventions. As past member, Helen Grey put it “The Travellers were formed to bring the message of peace brotherhood and the importance of working people through song.”

Today there are many – too many singers and songwriters to mention. But while summer is still here, try listening or singing to some of our favorite labour songs listed here:

10 of the Best Union Songs of All Time (CBC)

Top Ten Labour Day Songs (The Nation)

Last Christmas on the Place (Healy & Juravich)

100 Years of Solidarity (UFCW-Canada)

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Summer is the time for Pride events and marches in Canada. But while these celebrations are now somewhat commonplace in many cities across the country, just over 45 years ago a small brave group of people marched on Parliament Hill to demand what was then referred to as “gay rights” in a manifesto entitled “We Demand”.

The labour movement in Canada has been, and continues to be, a strong ally and voice for LGBTQ2SI (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer, 2-spirited, Intersex) rights and in fighting homophobia and transphobia in Canada – in the workplace and beyond. This includes:

• Hosting committees and working groups to fight against homophobia, transphobia and harassment. Many unions have changed their own constitution to reflect this.
• Negotiating a range of clauses in collective agreements that protect the rights of LGBTQ2SI workers above and beyond the law.
• Bringing to court violations of LGBTQ2SI rights such as individual grievances and provisions such as marriage leave, leaves of absence, spousal benefits, and pensions plan benefits.
• Mobilizing and lobbying to change laws including the Canadian Human Rights Act, equal benefits, employment equity, equal marriage and gender identity and gender expression.
• Collaborating with civil society organizations, within Canada and internationally, to fight for LGBTQ2SI rights through awareness campaigns and active participation in events.

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Some of the work being done by unions and the labour movement:

• Canadian Labour Congress
• Public Service Alliance of Canada

​

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As Vice-President of the BC Federation of Labour, Ginger Goodwin led several strikes and was an outspoken opponent to the First World War, all of which brought him to the attention of government and military authorities.

Like many coal miners, Goodwin suffered lung problems and was initially classified as “unfit” for fighting overseas. However, following a strike he led for the 8-hour day at a smelter in Trail BC, his conscription status was changed to ‘fit for service in an overseas fighting unit’. 

With the help of townspeople, he traveled to Vancouver Island and went into hiding in the bush near Cumberland, where other war resisters received support from local community members. In a series of still-contested events, Goodwin was tracked down on July 27, 1918 and shot by a private constable employed by the Dominion Police (forerunner of the RCMP), just 4 days after an amnesty had been declared for draft evaders.

Goodwin’s body was taken through the streets in a procession that was a mile long before being interred at the Cumberland Municipal Cemetery. Less than a week later, on August 2, the Vancouver General Strike – the first general strike in Canadian history – took place, organized as a one-day political protest against Goodwin’s murder. Before his murder, Goodwin had called for a general strike in the event that any worker was drafted into military service against their will.

The strike was met with violence. Three hundred men ransacked the offices of the Vancouver Trades and Labour Council, many of them returned soldiers who had been mobilized and supplied with vehicles to storm the Labour Temple, located at 411 Dunsmuir Street.

In 2001 the newly-elected BC Liberal government removed the name Ginger Goodwin Way from the road that passes by the grave yard that holds his remains. The signs and the name were restored in June 2018 by BC’s NDP government. While the Ginger Goodwin Way signs on the inland Island Highway come and go, Goodwin is commemorated by Ginger Goodwin Creek (1982) and Mount Ginger Goodwin (1989), the unnamed mountain that he was shot and killed on. Each year the citizens of Cumberland hold a graveside memorial to pay tribute to him and what he fought for.

June 27, 2018 was official designated “Ginger Goodwin Day” by the BC provincial government to mark the centenial of his murder.

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Like today’s “Leap Manifesto”, the Regina Manifesto was met with a mix of disbelief, denial and doubt about its goal of changing Canada for the better. To the status quo, it was a fantasy; to determined socialists, it was milquetoast.

Adopted at the first national convention of Canada’s newest political party, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), the Regina Manifesto imagined a socialized economy, calling for a nationalized system of transportation, communications, electrical power and other services. It called for a National Labour Code that included the right for workers to organize unions, “insurance” to cover illness, accident, old age and unemployment and social programs such as publicly-funded health care.

National health care, old-age pensions, unemployment insurance, national labour standards, family allowances, and crown corporations for services including telecommunications, transportation and energy – the Regina Manifesto outlined economic and political reforms and proposed approaches to issues that still resonate and are in fact still key election issues today.

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In 1991, Moore was posted to the Canadian Embassy in Indonesia. When he applied for spousal benefits related to the move for his partner, Pierre Soucy, he was denied on the grounds that Soucy was not considered a spouse because he was the same gender as Moore.

In 1992, Akerstrom applied to change his benefit status from single to family to make his partner, Alexander Dias, his beneficiary for death benefits and his spouse under the Public Service Health Care Plan. He was denied because, under the terms of the plans, spouse was defined as a person of the opposite gender.

Both men filed complaints with the Canadian Human Rights Commission, which ruled in their favour, based on a 1992 ruling by the Ontario Court of Appeal (in the case of Haig v. Canada) that deemed discrimination based on sexual orientation to be prohibited under section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The ruling stated it was “crystal clear that the law is that denial of the extension of employment benefits to a same-sex partner which would otherwise be extended to opposite-sex common-law partners is discrimination on the prohibited ground of sexual orientation.” The federal government was found to have discriminated against Moore and Akerstrom, was ordered to stop using the definition of spouse and to compensate both men.

In another case, Egan v. Canada, the Supreme Court unanimously endorsed a lower court’s finding that sexual orientation is a prohibited ground of discrimination under s. 15 of the Charter.

The federal government was out of options. In May of 1996, legislation was passed to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act by including “sexual orientation” to its list of prohibited grounds of discrimination. That change came into force on July 15, giving all federal government workers the same rights to benefits.

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In the 1930s, “The Great Depression” had crippled the Canadian economy and resulted in massive unemployment. In response, the Federal Government created “relief camps” where thousands of men lived and worked at a rate of twenty cents per day.

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By 1935, people had had enough. In April that year, following a two-month protest in Vancouver over the dismal and unfair working conditions in the camps, more than a thousand unemployed workers boarded – or rather jumped on top of – railway box cars in what became to be known as the “On‑to‑Ottawa Trek.” Their goal: to meet as a group with the Conservative government of the day and demand better conditions and a fairer way to address unemployment.

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The Prime Minister eventually agreed to meet, but only with a handful of representatives, not all of the workers. While those representatives travelled to Ottawa, the hundreds of other trekkers “waited” in Regina (they were actually being held in place by the RCMP).

The meeting went badly, with the Prime Minister accusing the trekkers of being radicals leading an insurrection. When the workers’ representatives returned to Regina with news of their meeting, nearly 2000 people joined 300 trekkers as a show of protest and solidarity for workers’ rights. 

The police charged the crowd, setting off hours of hand-to-hand fighting throughout the city’s centre. People fought back with sticks and stones while police used tear gas and fired bullets above and into groups of people.

Damage to property was considerable and personal injuries were many; one trekker and a plainclothed policeman died while hundreds of injured local residents and trekkers were taken to hospitals or private homes. The police proceeded to arrest those in hospital, along with over 100 others.

The police claimed 39 injuries in addition to the dead police officer, but denied that any protesters had been killed in the melee. Hospital records were subsequently altered to conceal the actual cause of death.

Later that year, in reaction to public support for a better deal for the unemployed, the federal government passed the Employment and Social Insurance Act and the country’s first national unemployment plan.

Eventually, the government was defeated, and its hastily-crafted law struck down in the courts. But, the bold attempt at reform paved the way for the establishment of a national unemployment insurance program under the new government, led by W.L.M King, in 1940.

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Within weeks of the start of the war in August 1914, Canada’s parliament passed the War Measures Act. In 1916, the press censorship was introduced by an Order-In-Council. In total of the 253 publications banned during the war, 164 were in a language other than French or English. But it was the 1917 Russian Revolution, and its withdrawal from the war, that caused the Canadian government to crack down harder on any social dissent.

By Order-in-Council PC2384, the federal government outlawed political and labour groups, focusing on German, Russian, Ukrainian and Polish speakers. It banned freedom of association, assembly, and speech for many Canadians.

One of the labour groups banned was the radical Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), or as they were known “Wobblies”.  This industrial union organization had been founded in 1905 in Chicago and quickly spread across North America. By 1906, the first Canadian chapters had been formed in B.C.

The IWW espoused the idea that workers should all be in one union as opposed to the tradition of Trades. It organized all workers including women and workers of colour. It organized unskilled laborers, the poor, and recent immigrants, all who were often on the margins of society. The IWW believed in “revolutionary syndicalism” where, once organized, workers would initiate a general strike and replace capitalism with a society run by workers. The Wobblies also opposed the First World War and the price paid by working people and, as a result, became an enemy of Prime Minister Robert Borden and the Canadian government.

On September 24, 1918, Borden’s government made membership in the Industrial Workers of the World and thirteen other (primarily ethnic radical political organizations) illegal. The maximum sentence for membership in the IWW, or affiliation with the banned organizations, was five years to be served in one of 24 internment camps.

The ideas of the Wobblies were harder to stop, however. When western Canadian workers formed an organization called the One Big Union (OBU) in 1919, its ideas were closely aligned with those of the IWW. Today every time “Solidarity Forever” is sung on a picket line or at a union convention the IWW spirit lives on because that was their song! 

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The issue of “union security” quickly became the issue in the labour dispute, because the union knew that it needed the financial security of an automatic dues checkoff system to effectively represent its members. Without it, the union steward was required to approach each worker to seek payment of union dues, and then hand out pins for them to wear to show they were members in good standing.

Negotiations stalled and, on September 12, the 11,000 workers at Ford’s Windsor plant went on strike. And the workers dug in. The thousands of soldiers who were returning to Canada and re-entering the workforce wanted a better world after sacrificing so much. They weren’t going to give up easily.

The strike closed the company’s powerhouse and shut off the heating system for the plant. As winter approached, the company grew desperate. It convinced the city and the province to mobilize hundreds of police officers to help break up the strike. In response, on November 5, 8,000 union workers from 25 plants walked off the job in solidarity with the Ford workers (and stayed out for a month without strike pay to support their families).

The next day, workers showed up with their cars and trucks and formed a blockade that stopped all traffic within 20 blocks of the Ford plant. It lasted for three days, effectively preventing a confrontation with the police force. The union’s show of strength forced the federal government to step forward with a proposal to end the strike by binding arbitration on the union membership and dues checkoff issues.

The arbitrator, Mr. Justice Ivan Rand, came up with a compromise. He provided for the dues checkoff, but not for the closed shop. All workers who benefited from the collective agreement had to pay dues to support it, but were not required to join the union. In return, the union would support all workers in enforcing the collective agreement and its benefits.

This uniquely Canadian compromise known as the “Rand Formula” eventually spread across the country, bringing with it union security and establishing the legitimacy of unions in workplaces from coast, to coast, to coast.

Since its enactment in 1946, the Rand Formula’s has come under attack many times, including a challenge based on the “freedom of expression” and “freedom of association” guarantees in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that went all the way to the Supreme Court (which unanimously ruled against the challenge).

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But, as is the case with most holidays, the origins of Labour Day come from the struggles of working people and the demand for fairness. In this case, it was the movement to establish a 9-hour work day (the standard was a 12-hour work day and a 6-day work week) and a strike by printers in Toronto in the spring of 1872 to get it.

It’s the same old story: the callous and violent response of the printers’ employers – police were called in, union leaders were jailed, livelihoods were destroyed, reputations ruined – turned public opinion against the status-quo. Sensing a political opportunity to win support among Canada’s growing industrial working class (just months ahead of a federal election), Prime Minister John A. Macdonald passed the Trade Union Act, which legalized and protected union activity in Canada.

The strike ended shortly afterward. While it didn’t achieve its goal of a 9-hour work day, its legacy was long-lasting. Unions – now legal – began to demand fair wages, working hours and safer workplaces. The political class recognized that working people, as voters, were interested in issues that impacted their lives. The parades held in support of the Nine Hour Movement and the printers’ strike became annual events Toronto and Ottawa.

In 1882, an American labour leader witnessed the annual May “labour day” festivities in Toronto which inspired him to organize the first American “labor day” on September 5 that same year. The popularity of the event spread across the country. By the time President Grover Cleveland declared the first Monday of September as an official federal holiday in 1894, 30 states were already celebrating Labor Day.

In Canada, pressure had been mounting to declare a national labour holiday. On July 23, 1894 the government of Prime Minister John Thompson passed a law making Labour Day official. A huge parade took place in Winnipeg that year and the tradition of a Labour Day celebration quickly spread across Canada.

Today, hundreds of communities across Canada and the United States hold picnics, parades, concerts and marches to mark the day. Unions also keep the tradition of using Labour Day to advance workers’ rights and advocate for changes to improve the lives of working people and their families.

In Canada, this year, that tradition continues with the call for a national, publicly-administered, universal prescription drug plan – Pharmacare – for every Canadian and in every province and territory.

Join the call for a universal prescription drug plan at aplanforeveryone.ca.

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“Annie Buller, married name Guralnick, political activist, union organizer (b in Ukraine 9 Dec 1895; d at Toronto 19 Jan 1973). Her Jewish parents immigrated to Montréal when she was a child. During WWI she became active in the Socialist Youth Movement, and after studying Marxism at the Rand School of Social Sciences, New York, established the Montréal Labour College with Becky Buhay and Bella Gauld. She joined the Communist Party of Canada in 1922 and devoted herself to full-time party organizing and managing party publications.

“In the early 1920s she went to Cape Breton to organize mine workers. After returning to Toronto, where her son Jim was born, she organized for the communist-led Industrial Needle Trades Workers Union in the early 1930s. While serving on the IUNTW executive board, she helped lead a general strike of Toronto dressmakers in 1931. That same year, she organized support for coal miners in Estevan, Sask. After a riot in which 3 strikers were killed by the RCMP (see Estevan Coal Miners Strike, 1931), Buller was jailed. While working as a business manager for the communist paper The Western Clarion in 1939, she was again arrested and interned until 1942.

“After the war she concentrated on party organizing, managing party publications such as the Tribune and National Affairs. She also participated in the party’s National Women’s Commission and the Housewives’ Association campaign to roll back prices. She retired from full-time party work in the late 1950s but remained politically active until her death.”

Source: http://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/annie-buller/

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Oppenheim’s poem was also associated with the 1912 Lawrence textile strike, often referred to as the “Bread and Roses” strike. Led by immigrant women workers, the strike developed new tactics that have become standard procedures in labour disputes, among them the moving picket line to get around loitering charges.

It received a new lease on life with the resurgence of the women’s movement in the late 1960s and the interest in the role played by women in trade union history. In 1974, Mimi Fariña composed the now familiar tune that has become a standard for women in the labour movement.

In Canada, the slogan was reborn as the theme of the “Bread and Roses March” and the “World March of Women” that it inspired.

The first Bread and Roses March, an initiative of the Fédération des femmes du Québec, began on 26 May 1995. Over the course of 10 days, more than 800 Québécoise demonstrators set off from Montréal, Longueuil and Rivière-du-Loup and converged on Québec City with nine demands of the government to combat poverty.

The theme song of the march, Du pain et des roses, composed by Hélène Pedneault and Marie-Claire Séguin remains an anthem of the labour movements of Quebec and Canada.
 

BREAD AND ROSES

As we go marching, marching, in the beauty of the day 
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray 
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses
For the people hear us singing, bread and roses, bread and roses.

As we come marching, marching, we battle too, for men, 
For they are in the struggle and together we shall win. 
Our days shall not be sweated from birth until life closes, 
Hearts starve as well as bodies, give us bread, but give us roses.

As we come marching, marching, un-numbered women dead 
Go crying through our singing their ancient call for bread, 
Small art and love and beauty their trudging spirits knew 
Yes, it is bread we. fight for, but we fight for roses, too.

As we go marching, marching, we’re standing proud and tall.
The rising of the women means the rising of us all.
No more the drudge and idler, ten that toil where one reposes,
But a sharing of life’s glories, bread and roses, bread and roses.

—–

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Alberta’s Conservative government eliminated tens of thousands of public sector jobs between 1993 and 1994 while cutting the wages and benefits of the workers who remained. The 1994 budget delivered a 20% cut in health care, a 21% cut in post secondary education and a 12.4% cut in K-12 education. Welfare rolls were cut in half over one year. Within two years, Alberta program spending declined by over 21%. Homelessness climbed 740% during the Klein years in office.

The labour movement, overwhelmed by the ferocity of the government’s attack on people to delivered essential services, was left struggling to respond. So, when the Klein-appointed Calgary Health Authority moved to further the province’s privatization agenda by contracting out the jobs of Calgary hospital laundry workers, it expected little resistance. They were wrong.

The workers had already taken a 28% cut in the previous round of bargaining in order to keep their jobs. They had given enough to “King Ralph” and were determined not to become pawns in the Conservative’s game plan to destroy the public sector.

The first to respond were 60 laundry workers at the Calgary General Hospital, members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees. When they learned that their jobs would be handed over to K-Bro Linens in Edmonton, they all called in sick. Workers at the Foothills Hospital where the laundry workers were members of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, followed suit the following day.

Within ten days, about 2,500 workers in six hospitals and nine nursing homes were on wildcat strikes and hundreds of other health care workers joined work-to-rule and other worker solidarity efforts. Trade unionists from outside the health sector as well as many members of the general public demonstrated solidarity with the strikers on their picket line and in public rallies.

Premier Klein watched in horror as his carefully orchestrated dismantling of public services in Alberta seemed to crumble. The Calgary Health Authority, under pressure from the government, offered the unions a delay in contracting out of 18 months, long enough for most of the affected workers to find other jobs. The “tough guy” government of Ralph Klein had blinked and it was a group of mainly immigrant women workers who had caused it to blink. 

The courage displayed by the laundry workers inspired a wave of strikes and job actions by other health care workers; licensed practical nurses and general support service workers repeatedly took part in some of the largest walk outs in Alberta’s history during the closing years of that decade.

While the laundry workers’ victory was a partial one, the events that they set in motion marked a victory for all Alberta working people. The cuts and privatizations largely stopped for several years and the government began reinvesting in public services however modestly.

“I would just like to add to that, and that is that after the laundry workers’ strike the Klein government was a different animal than before the laundry workers’ strike. Before that, as Tom said, they were ideologically driven, they refused to discuss. There was no discussion of any of their policies, they were simply enacted. After that they became much more of a kind of populist government. Yes, they still had their ideological conditioning, but they looked before they leapt. They compromised, they backed off of things. If it looked like people were ready to make a fight out of things, they backed off. They did not come in and take people on directly that way again I don’t think, and I think that was a victory for the labour movement.”

Jim Selby interview.

– – – – – – – – – –

Source: Alberta Labour History Institute

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Ontario’s teachers walked out in protest.

At the time, the protest was the largest work action by teachers in North American history, involving 126,000 teachers. Picket lines were set up across the province. Demonstrations took place at schools, on the streets, and at the offices of Members of Provincial Parliament (MPPs). Teachers and their unions organized mass rallies, including one on the front lawn of the legislature at Queen’s Park that drew thousands.

The government responded with a propaganda campaign, spending millions on television ads in an attempt to label the protest as an “illegal strike” and teacher unions as selfish “special interests” – but people were not buying it. One week into the protest, a poll found 63% of Ontarians wanted the government to scrap its reforms.

Harris’ attempt to have the protest declared an illegal strike by the courts also struck‑out when judges ruled that the teachers’ action was a legitimate protest. He responded by threatening back-to-work legislation to silence and punish the teachers instead.

After two weeks away from work, many teachers felt they had made their point and voted to end the strike.

No, they had not stopped the government’s plans to shift power away from local school boards, but they had won over public opinion. Talking with students, parents and media, the teachers and their unions exposed hidden aspects of the government’s agenda – plans to lay off teachers and cut education budgets that Harris himself had denied during the election campaign.

The solidarity shown by Ontario’s unions in support of the teachers and their protest also planted the seeds of future resistance to the ideologically driven austerity agenda that was at the heart of the Harris CSR.

Canada’s unions have a long history of standing up to the unfairness of government austerity, especially the ferocious and cult-like austerity seen in the 1990s under conservative-minded governments lead by Mike Harris in Ontario, Ralph Klein in Alberta and more recently under Liberal governments in British Columbia and Nova Scotia.

Funding tax cuts for wealthy investors and powerful interests by slashing public spending on health care, education, public infrastructure and social programs is an old corporate trick. So is undermining the unions, journalists, public institutions and social movements that stand up against them.

The 1997 Ontario teachers’ protest was a moment when people stood up and said enough. While it did not stop the government, it made them blink and it woke people up.

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At its peak, the FPU had more than 21,000 members in 206 councils across the island, representing a majority of Newfoundland’s fishers. It established the Fishermen’s Union Trading Company (UTC) that set up stores to buy fish and sell goods to fishermen at fair prices and free them from exploitation by the St. John’s merchant class. In 1916, it built Port Union, the only town in North America founded by a trade union.

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In 1912, the FPU adopted the Bonavista Platform, a manifesto that called for radical change in fishery policy, social policy and governance. Among its demands were co-operative marketing and regulation of the fishery, old age pensions, free education, a minimum wage, and democratic reforms aimed at lessening the influence of big money and the wealthy. The next year, it elected 8 members to the House of Assembly, including Coaker.

Over the next decade, Coaker and his party wielded influence over successive governments, with Coaker becoming Fisheries Minister in 1917. But extraordinary wartime conditions and the opposition of fish exporters prevented much of the FPU’s platform from being enacted. Powerful anti-union sentiment following the end of the First World War took the wind out of Coaker’s sails. He became less energetic in politics and more interested in managing the Union’s businesses.

The FPU faded away as a political force by the end of the 1920s and ended entirely with the suspension of responsible government in 1934. It carried on as a service organization for its members, running businesses and activities on behalf of fishers and loggers. It survived until 1977, when it fell into receivership and its last stores were sold.

While some like to portray the FPU as a failure, those with a sense of history know that it made Newfoundland a better place to live and work, and improved the lives of working families like no other political movement before, or since.

Today, the FPU’s legacy rests in the hands of the province’s unions and labour councils, and with the leadership of the Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Labour. 

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For decades, the labour movement and women’s organizations have pushed for improvements to the federal pay equity system, calling for a shift from a complaints-based approach toward proactive legislation.  This was a key demand of the Canadian Women’s March 2000, when thousands of women, trade unions and national women’s organizations mobilized for a comprehensive strategy to end poverty and violence against women.

In 2001, a federal Pay Equity Task Force was appointed, and after an extensive and exhaustive process, made over a hundred important recommendations to address the gender wage gap in Canada. Their 2004 report also recognized that wage discrimination exists for people with disabilities, Indigenous workers and racialized workers.

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Canada’s unions have been hard at work to ensure the Task Force recommendations are put in place. They condemned the current Liberal government’s decision to delay any action on pay equity until 2018, despite the lofty campaign promises and publicly stating that having a gender wage gap in Canada today is unacceptable. After two years in power, they have also failed to eliminate the Conservative’s Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act, legislation takes away the right of women federal public servants to equal pay for work of equal value.

Only two provinces – Ontario and Quebec – have proactive pay equity laws covering both public and private sector workers. Under these laws, employers must take active steps to identify and eliminate wage discrimination. Several provinces have no pay equity legislation at all. Unions push for proactive pay equity laws in all jurisdictions to make sure that workers in both the public and private sectors have their rights respected.

Collective bargaining and pay equity measures significantly reduce the wage gap for women. That’s because together, women and their unions negotiate pay that reflects their skills, education and responsibilities. And that fair pay puts more into women’s pockets to spend on their families and in their communities.

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This spring the Canadian Labour Congress introduced an online resource centre with tools and information for workers dealing with mental health issues at work.

“One in five people in Canada experience a mental health problem or illness every year, and in too many cases, these issues are caused or exacerbated by workplace stress,” said CLC President Hassan Yussuff.

“Canada’s unions are committed to continuing to work with the government, employers and workers to address the systemic issues that create unhealthy work environments. We have to work together to find solutions that create and maintain safe and healthy workplaces,” he said.

Yussuff added that just as unions fight to protect workers’ physical safety and well being at work, they also support a worker’s right to a psychologically safe and supportive work environment.

“You wouldn’t ask a worker with a repetitive strain injury to keep performing the action that injured them. So why would a worker be expected to continue to put their mental health at risk by subjecting themselves to unhealthy working conditions?” he asked.

The Mental Health Risk Index released by Ipsos in April this year found that the number of Canadians considered “high risk” for mental health illness increased to 41% from 35% in 2016. The risk is even higher for women, and low-income and young workers.

Several tools exist to help employers and unions ensure workplaces foster mental health. The 2013 National Standard of Canada for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace, for example, provides guidelines, tools and resources for promoting mental health and preventing psychological harm at work.

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What is “decent work”?

• Access for all workers to quality jobs, dignity, equality, and safe working conditions.

• Putting workers at the centre of development and giving them a voice in what they do.

This year’s global focus is on struggles to win living minimum wages and a pay raise for all workers.

The Canadian Labour Congress has outlined steps Canada needs to take in a letter to Prime Minister Trudeau, outlining several steps the federal government can take to ensure better access to decent work at home and abroad.

“We need federal leadership on decent work, not just so that we improve work for Canadians, but so we can set an example for other countries too,” said CLC President Hassan Yussuff.

What our federal government can do

• Ensure the creation of high-quality jobs needed by millions of unemployed, underemployed, and precariously-employed workers in Canada.

• Promote and uphold collective bargaining rights at home and abroad.

• Restore the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour, indexing it to wage growth, and bring back full employment as a primary policy target.

• Create public employment programs for regions and populations with high unemployment or a high concentration of low-wage workers. That should include job creation programs for youth, Indigenous and Northern communities, newcomers to Canada, Alberta and the Atlantic provinces;

• Commit to long-term funding for high-quality, public, universal, affordable child care;

• Adopt strong, proactive pay equity legislation incorporating the recommendations of the 2004 Pay Equity Task Force;

• Use all available tools to eliminate discrimination in hiring, promotion, and pay, including strengthening the Employment Equity Act and the Federal Contractors Program;

• Introduce paid sick leave and paid leave for victims of domestic violence for workers in the federal jurisdiction, and encourage provinces and territories to follow suit;

• End the systematic violation of migrant workers’ rights by abolishing tied work permits and implementing a proactive compliance assessment and enforcement regime;

• Promote fairness by tightening regulations on hours of work and scheduling;

• Increase staffing, training and resources for federal employment standards and health and safety inspectors; and

• Improve the Wage Earner Protection Program to better protect wages when employers go bankrupt or simply disappear.

Canada’s unions are also asking the federal government to promote decent work in global supply chains and the extractive sectors by:

• Appointing a human rights ombudsperson to investigate how Canadian companies’ foreign operations impact human rights;

• Introducing national due diligence legislation with a monitoring mechanism and an enforcement procedure for large companies.

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“We are pleased that the NDP under its new leader Jagmeet Singh is continuing to make pharmacare such a priority, and we hope all political parties respond by making this much needed program a reality as soon as possible,” said Canadian Labour Congress President Hassan Yussuff.

Last week, the Parliamentary Budget Officer issued a report using the Quebec government’s public prescription drug plan formulary to estimate universal pharmacare would yield annual savings of $4.2 billion.

A second report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and Canadian Doctors for Medicare used a more efficient model to estimate net annual savings of $11 billion.

Canada is the only developed country in the world with a universal health care program that doesn’t include a universal prescription drug plan. Instead, our multiple-payer system has resulted in the second highest prescription drug costs in the world next to the United States. That’s left 3.5 million Canadians unable to afford their prescriptions.

This Labour Day, on the heels of a successful bid to expand the Canada Pension Plan, Canada’s unions launched a campaign calling for a national pharmacare plan.

“We are proud that we’ve won health insurance coverage for many of our members, but we believe all Canadians should have prescription drug coverage, regardless of their income, age or where they work or live,” said Yussuff.

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Each year, the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) and Families of Sisters in Spirit (FSIS) organize vigils to remember the missing and murdered indigenous women in this country. Family members, Indigenous community members, and concerned citizens gather together to stand together in solidarity, raise awareness, demand action, and provide support to those who have lost love ones.

Between 1980 and 2012, the RCMP reported close to 1,200 cases of missing or murdered Indigenous women and girls across Canada (although many working on the front lines believe the number is much higher). While they make up only 4% of Canada’s female population, Indigenous women and girls make up over 16% of female homicides and 11% of missing women.

What began with eleven vigils in 2006 has grown to over 200 vigils today, in communities across Canada, including a vigil on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.

In response to calls from Indigenous families, communities and organizations, including unions and the Canadian Labour Congress, the Government of Canada launched an independent National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in September 2016.

In response, the CLC stated:

“We must ensure the inquiry addresses the root causes of violence against Indigenous women, such as racism, sexism and misogyny so that it truly does result in justice and meaningful change.

Canada’s unions will stand in solidarity with Indigenous women, girls and their communities both as the inquiry is underway and beyond to help ensure our country truly addresses the root causes of violence against Indigenous women.

We will also continue to urge the government to implement strategies that include clean water, affordable housing, accessible education and poverty reduction in Inuit, First Nations and Métis communities.” (news release, 02-21-2017)

NWAC has created a quarterly report card about the inquiry to encourage transparency and to measure its progress.

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“On the first ballot, Jagmeet has won the support of over half of the NDP’s membership, both from the party’s base, and those who’ve signed up because they’re excited to see a bold new vision,” said CLC President Hassan Yussuff.

“We’re looking forward to working with Jagmeet to advance the goals of working people across Canada,” he added.

Singh won 53.8 percent of the more than 60,000 votes cast in the leadership contest today.

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The report uses the Quebec government’s public prescription drug plan formulary – one critiqued by experts as inefficient and expensive – to nonetheless estimate that a single-payer universal prescription drug plan would save Canada $4.2 billion annually.

“Even using the worst-case scenario, the PBO says Canada would save billions a year,” said Canadian Labour Congress President Hassan Yussuff. “It’s clear that we can’t afford to wait any longer for a universal prescription drug plan for all Canadians.”

A report issued earlier this week by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and Canadian Doctors for Medicare uses a more efficient model and estimates savings of more than $30 billion annually.

Canada is the only developed country in the world with a universal health care program that doesn’t include a universal prescription drug plan. Instead, our multiple-payer system has resulted in the second highest prescription drug costs in the world next to the United States.

• About 8.4 million working Canadians don’t have prescription drug coverage.
• The less you earn at work, the less likely you are to have prescription drug coverage.
• Women and young workers are less likely to have the coverage they need.
• Even those with drug plans are paying ever-increasing co-payments and deductibles.

This Labour Day, Canada’s unions launched a campaign calling for pharmacare.

“We are proud that we’ve won health insurance coverage for many of our members, but we believe anyone with a health card should have coverage for the medicines they need, regardless of their income, age or where they work or live,” said Yussuff.

“We know that Canada’s provincial and territorial leaders recognize the need for a pharmacare plan too, so we are asking the federal government to commit to coordinating with them to make this a reality as soon as possible,” he added.

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“Today’s tax rules make it possible for someone earning $300,000 to save more on their taxes than the average Canadian worker makes in a year, and that is fundamentally unfair,” said CLC president Hassan Yussuff.

Current tax rules allow wealthy Canadians, especially self-employed professionals, many of whom are lawyers, doctors, dentists and accountants, to pay less in personal income taxes by setting up CCPCs – Canadian-controlled private corporations. The federal government wants to address three ways CCPCs are used to avoid higher tax rates:

• Income “sprinkling”: High-wage earners who own CCPCs can split – or “sprinkle” – their income among lower-income family members, paying them salaries or dividends (even though they often don’t actually work for the company) to take advantage of their lower tax rates. This is not something other working families can do.
• Exploiting capital gains: High-income earners who own CCPCs can pay themselves in capital gains – only 50 percent of which are taxed at the personal tax rate – instead of dividends, which face higher taxes.
• “Passive” investing: CCPCs offer the wealthiest Canadians another tax advantage others don’t have access to: more capital for their investment portfolio. Many CCPC owners are parking income in their business so it’s taxed at the lower business rate, leaving them more capital to invest in “passive” investments like mutual funds. But lower tax rates for businesses are meant to encourage reinvestment and job creation, not to help the wealthiest Canadians make more out of their retirement portfolios.

“This kind of tax avoidance is costing the federal government as much as $500 million a year,” said Yussuff. “Taxes pay for the vital services that we all rely on, from physical security and food safety, to health care and education and disaster relief, and Canadians expect everyone to pay their fair share.”

Further reforms are needed

These measures are an important first step, said Yussuff, but he hopes more are in the works to make Canada’s tax system truly fair.

“We need to ensure that the the top one percent and corporations pay their fair share too, which means a more aggressive clamp-down on tax havens and corporate tax dodging,” he said.

That would include:

• Eliminating regressive and ineffective tax loopholes by cancelling stock option deductions, fully including capital gains in taxable income, and cancelling the flow-through shares deduction.
• Taxing foreign e-commerce companies to level the playing field for Canadian providers.
• Increasing taxes on banks and finance, which have received windfall profits from corporate income tax cuts over the last decade and a half.
• Introducing wealth taxes and making income taxes more progressive.

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“Today, 3.5 million Canadians can’t afford to fill their prescriptions,” said CLC President Hassan Yussuff. “Nobody should have to choose between paying for groceries or the medication they need,” he added.

Currently one in five people pay out of pocket for their medication, either because they don’t have a prescription drug plan, or because they have a plan that doesn’t cover the full cost of the medications they need.

“Canada’s unions are proud that we’ve won health insurance coverage for many of our members. But we believe anyone with a health card should have coverage for the medication they need,” said Yussuff.

Canada has the second highest prescription drug costs in the world next to the United States, and is also the only developed country in the world with a universal health care program that doesn’t include a universal prescription drug plan. 

A strong majority of Canadians want universal prescription drug coverage. A 2015 Angus Reid poll found that 91 percent of Canadians believe our public health care system should include a universal prescription drug plan.

“This is why we’re working to win a universal prescription drug plan that covers everyone in Canada, regardless of their income, age or where they work or live,” said Yussuff.

Visit aplanforeveryone.ca to learn more. 

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As I watched the devastating events unfold, and how the so-called leader of the free world responded, my thoughts immediately turned to my daughter, to her future, and then to what this means for racialized communities everywhere.

And then I saw a chilling interview that made me wonder how Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka felt about her father’s choice to defend the white supremacists who stormed Charlottesville.

Vice News correspondent Elle Reeve interviewed one of the heavily armed neo-nazis – Christopher Cantwell – as he prepared to march. In the interview, Cantwell blasts Trump for not being racist enough because – as Cantwell puts it – he had given his daughter to a Jew.

“I don’t think you could feel about race like I do, and watch that Kushner bastard walk around with that beautiful girl,” Cantwell tells Reeve, referring to Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor.

With one sentence, Cantwell illustrated the indisputable link between misogyny, racism, xenophobia and fascism – a link so perfectly personified in Donald Trump, and one that may explain why Ivanka Trump has been so silent.

True to his character, her father spent the week resisting calls to condemn the fascists, instead repeatedly expressing solidarity for Cantwell’s cohorts.

There were “good people,” Trump insisted, among those who marched through Charlottesville brandishing military grade weapons, torches and nazi symbols chanting “white lives matter”, “Jews will not replace us,” and one of Hitler’s favourites, “blood and soil,” violently attacking counter protesters along the way. Under pressure, Trump would only condemn violence “on many sides.”

As for what the fascists were protesting – the removal of confederate statues celebrating another era’s fascists who sought to break up the United States in defense of slavery?

“We should cherish our history,” Trump proclaimed to reporters. “The beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!” he later tweeted.

His choice to react as he did was roundly applauded by today’s fascists and their supporters.

“He said he loves us all. Also refused to answer a question about white nationalists supporting him. No condemnation at all. When asked to condemn, he just walked out of the room. Really, really good. God bless him,” one Trump supporter wrote in a comment on the Daily Stormer, an American neo-nazi and white supremacist web site.

It is all horrifying and disgusting. But none of us should be surprised.

Campaigning for the presidency Trump refused to distance himself from former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, an honoured guest at the fascist rally last week. And as president, he has repeatedly fomented hate with his anti-immigrant, misogynistic, racist rants, dangerously normalizing tolerance of the intolerable.

There were Canadians among the white supremacists in Charlottesville. Two of them – Montreal’s Shawn Beauvais-MacDonald and Vincent Belanger-Mercure – have been outed after appearing in the Vice News documentary, enthusiastically shaking Cantwell’s hand, telling him they’d driven 12 hours to be there.

Not that they’d need to leave Canada to find murderous hate. We need only think back to the murder of Muslim worshippers in a Quebec City mosque in January, or to the growing number of hate crimes perpetrated against Muslims, Jews and racialized communities reported this year. Or look ahead to fascist Unite the Right rallies being planned in cities across Canada, starting with Vancouver this weekend, and in Toronto, the multicultural capital of the world, in September.

Donald Trump has failed the test of moral leadership, but we must not. Every local, regional and national labour leader, political leader, business and community leader has a responsibility to ensure that today’s fascists are denied the support they need to survive. We must all commit to challenging the racism that is still too prevalent in our homes, workplaces and communities. And we must all publicly and unconditionally condemn fascism, and those who refuse to condemn it.

Because what happened in Charlottesville can happen anywhere.

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With a president who has himself promoted hate, and now champions rather than condemns the perpetrators of the violence in Charlottesville, the United States has a very frightening challenge ahead. 

That challenge must also be faced here in Canada. Some of the neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville were from Canada, and support for the hatred they espouse is growing here too. From the treatment of Indigenous peoples to the murder of Muslim worshipers in Quebec to the countless other examples of hatred being experienced by racialized and vulnerable individuals, we must recognize that we too face an enormous challenge in combatting racism, Islamophobia, xenophobia and hate across our own nation.

The CLC calls on labour, community, political and business leaders, regardless of partisanship, to work together in solidarity to take on this challenge, and to help stamp out the hate, discrimination, and oppression being visited upon minorities and vulnerable persons here in Canada.

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The miners wanted set daily working hours, better working conditions, the end of the company store monopoly, and a wage increase. The mining company refused to recognize either their union or their demands, so the workers went on strike on September 7.

To gain public support for their cause, the miners and their union organized a solidarity parade in the nearby town of Estevan. The mayor and town council quickly declared the march illegal and called in the RCMP to reinforce the local police.

On September 29, several hundred coal miners gathered, along with their families, for the parade. Waving the Union Jack and carrying banners that read “We will not work for starvation wages”, “We want houses, not piano boxes” and “Down with the company store”, they slowly drove from Bienfait into Estevan. They were met by a line of police, backed by the RCMP and a firetruck. Words were exchanged and a scuffle broke out. The police fired, at first to frighten the marchers, but they soon turned their weapons toward the crowd that included women and children. Within minutes, three of the striking miners were dead with more people injured.

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The next morning 90 RCMP descended on the homes of the miners, arresting 13 strikers on charges of rioting. Others were arrested in the days that followed. A number of workers, including the leaders of the unions, were put on trial and sentenced to hard labour. The police who killed the three men were never charged.

The riot, police violence and murder of three men – Peter Markunas, Nick Nargan and Julian Gryshko – hardened public opinion and only grew support for the labour movement across the Prairies.

By October 6, the mine owners finally agreed to implement an eight-hour day, a minimum wage of $4 a day, reduce the rent for miners’ houses and end the company store monopoly – but they would not recognize the union (and didn’t until the Second World War).

Today, in the northwest corner of the Bienfait cemetery, there stands a single grave that holds the remains of the three murdered strikers. The tombstone reads “Least We Forget. Murdered in Estevan Sept 29 1931 by RCMP”. Over the years it has been vandalized by removing “RCMP” which was always repainted by those who remember their history.

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Inflation was on the rise along with that unemployment. The Canadian dollar lost its value and drastic increases in the price of oil, caused by Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) export quotas, resulted in price shocks that hit consumers hard. Over the 1970s, the price for a barrel of oil jumped from $3 to $40, an increase of over 1300%.

To compensate, workers demanded higher wages while businesses accelerated plans to cut costs while raising prices to satisfy their need for profit. Unemployment and prices continued to rise, while the economy sputtered – a phenomenon economists and politicians labeled “stagflation”.

During the 1974 federal election campaign, the Conservative Party campaigned on a platform to impose legal caps on wages and prices. Seeking re‑election, the Liberal Party, led by Pierre Trudeau, openly ridiculed the idea and presented itself to Canadians as an anti-control party. Working people, fearing the loss of jobs and income, flocked to the Liberals, returning them to power with a majority government.

Just one year later, Trudeau broke his promise. Canadians were outraged.

Wage caps were imposed on workplaces with 500 or more employees, on all federal workers, and on most other public-sector employees. While inflation stood at nearly 11% in 1975, Trudeau’s law limited wage increases over the next three years to 8%, then 6%, and finally 4%. The attack on inflation was, in fact, an attack on workers’ wages as negotiated pay increases and collective agreements were rolled back.

The labour unrest caused by Trudeau’s betrayal resulted in over 11.6 million work days lost to strikes and lockouts in 1976 alone. The CLC, under the leadership of Joe Morris, called for a National Day of Protest on October 14^th that resulted in the largest labour protest in the country’s history. Over a million Canadians took part – walking off the job, marching in the streets, and voicing their opposition to Trudeau’s unfairness.

Despite the sacrifice imposed on millions of Canadian workers, their families and their communities, inflation had declined by just 1.7% when wage-and-price controls ended in 1978. Trudeau’s Liberals were defeated in the next federal election.

Today, Canada’s unions continue to push back against unfairness. Government austerity – cuts to programs and services, wage and hiring freezes, privatization, the selling of public assets, etc. – shifts the burden onto those who can least afford to pay. “From each according to their means, to each according to their needs” remains the golden rule.

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Years later, Douglas became active in the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), a political party formed in reaction to the social and economic conditions of the early 20^th century that culminated in the Great Depression. He was elected to the House of Commons in 1935, where he served before going on to lead the CCF to election victory in Saskatchewan in 1944. As Premier of Saskatchewan, Douglas led North America’s first social-democratic government.

Over the next two decades, Douglas oversaw the formation of social programs that continue today. He established the publicly-owned Saskatchewan Power Corporation , Canada’s first public automobile insurance program, and a number of Crown Corporations to deliver essential services. He passed laws that allowed government workers to unionize and adopted a Saskatchewan Bill of Rights 18 months before the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

But he is most remembered for establishing Canada’s first publicly run Medicare system in Saskatchewan in 1961. In doing so he became the father of universal health care in Canada.

In 1962, Douglas left Saskatchewan politics to become the first leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada (NDP), created by a merger of the CCF and the labour movement, led by the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC). He served as the party’s leader until 1971 and retired from elected politics in 1979.

In 1981 Douglas was appointed to the Order of Canada and in 1985 was awarded the Saskatchewan Order of Merit. He died on February 24, 1986 in Ottawa. In a 2004, CBC viewers voted to crown Tommy Douglas the “Greatest Canadian“.

Happy Birthday Tommy! And thanks for making sure all Canadian’s have affordable healthcare!

This is a great legacy for Canada and one many of us are proud of. But there is still work to do. The work of leaders like Tommy Douglas, groups like the Canadian Health Coalition, political parties like the NDP, and Canadian workers through their unions and the labour movement continues with today’s drive to win a universal prescription drug plan that covers all Canadians regardless of their income, age, or where they live. 

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“We urge the Winnipeg Airport Authority to do the right thing and return to the bargaining table immediately,” said CLC president Hassan Yussuff.

The Winnipeg Airport Authority (WAA) walked away from negotiations after tabling its final offer at 6:00 pm Sunday, several hours before the 3:00 am strike deadline. The 150 workers currently on strike are represented by the Union of Canadian Transportation Employees Local 50600, a component of the Public Service Alliance of Canada.

“The airport authority has yet to table a fair offer that addresses issues like outside contracting of bargaining unit work. These workers are simply fighting for what is fair,” added Yussuff.

Workers have stated that their intention is not to disrupt passengers. While they are asking for people to make alternate travel arrangements, or use another airport if possible, they will not restrict passengers coming into the Winnipeg airport.

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Between 1980 and 2012, the RCMP reported close to 1,200 cases of missing or murdered Indigenous women and girls across Canada (although many working on the front lines believe the number is much higher). While they make up only 4% of Canada’s female population, Indigenous women and girls make up over 16% of female homicides and 11% of missing women.

What began with eleven vigils in 2006 has grown to over 200 vigils today, in communities across Canada, including a vigil on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.

In response to calls from Indigenous families, communities and organizations, including unions and the Canadian Labour Congress, the Government of Canada launched an independent National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in September 2016.

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In response, the CLC stated:

“We must ensure the inquiry addresses the root causes of violence against Indigenous women, such as racism, sexism and misogyny so that it truly does result in justice and meaningful change.

Canada’s unions will stand in solidarity with Indigenous women, girls and their communities both as the inquiry is underway and beyond to help ensure our country truly addresses the root causes of violence against Indigenous women.

We will also continue to urge the government to implement strategies that include clean water, affordable housing, accessible education and poverty reduction in Inuit, First Nations and Métis communities.”
(news release, 02-21-2017)

NWAC has created a quarterly report card about the inquiry to encourage transparency and to measure its progress.

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“What we call Canada today was inhabited by hundreds of diverse societies long before the arrival of Europeans, but our colonial history has entrenched inequalities that have been compounded by hundreds of years of racism, exploitation, injustice and systemic discrimination,” said CLC President, Hassan Yussuff.

“We have a long way to go to re-build relationships with Canada’s Indigenous communities so we can better support their ongoing struggle for justice through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls,” said Yussuff.

Indigenous communities are struggling to receive basic necessities like clean drinking water, education, and health care. These communities are further devastated by the continued rise of suicides in young people.

“It’s shameful that many Indigenous families live without basic services, like clean drinking water, educational facilities and mental health support,” said Yussuff. “We cannot continue to look away from conditions that would never be acceptable for other communities. It is time for Canada to invest in concrete measures to elevate the standards in Indigenous communities in this country.”

Canada’s unions have been active in the call for justice for Canada’s First peoples. They made the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls a priority, launching petitions and actively lobbying government to take action. Unions also supported the Native Women’s Association of Canada and the Sisters in Spirit project, by encouraging union members to attend annual vigils, and assisting Indigenous women to bring their voices to UN bodies to raise international awareness.

When the federal government finally launched the long-awaited inquiry in August 2016, union representatives stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) and other allies to respond to the terms of reference.

Canada’s unions also recognize that the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women is linked to the intergenerational legacy of residential schools, as outlined in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission final report.

The federal government today announced its intention to rename National Aboriginal Day to National Indigenous Peoples Day in order to better reflect the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

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There is no question that Muslims around the world today feel the chill and vulnerability that results from being the target of violence directed at their faith. That is the definition of terror.

This incident must serve as a potent reminder of our collective obligation to always challenge racism, Islamophobia and prejudice of any kind wherever and whenever we see it. After all, hate is the enemy of humanity.

Our hearts are with you, the community of the Finsbury Park Mosque, the people of London and the entire United Kingdom, as you mourn the loss of the innocent victims to this tragedy.

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“Our affiliates and labour activists across the country have organized and campaigned against these bills from the beginning, and this is their victory to celebrate,” said CLC President Hassan Yussuff. 

“Prime Minister Justin Trudeau then promised that, if elected, he would repeal these bills and we are happy he has kept that promise,” he added.

The former Conservative government argued Bill C-377 was about union transparency, but experts from across the spectrum agreed it was really about red tape that would have forced unions, their suppliers, and other businesses they work with to spend millions of dollars and thousands of hours producing and processing expense reports to be reviewed and filed – all at taxpayer expense.

Bill C-525 would have made it more difficult for workers in federally-regulated workplaces to join a union. It was opposed by labour relations experts, but was nonetheless passed into law by the Conservatives in December 2014.

Bill C-377 was opposed by everyone from the NHL Players’ Association to Conservative and Liberal senators, constitutional experts, Canada’s Privacy Commissioner, the Canadian Bar Association, the insurance and mutual fund industry, seven provinces, and a long and diverse list of others in the business, financial, professional, legal, labour, and academic communities, private and public, federal and provincial. Despite that opposition, the Conservatives used their Senate majority to pass the bill on June 30, 2015.

“By passing Bill C-4, the federal government has demonstrated it understands the importance of fair labour relations, and the critical role unions play advancing rights for all Canadian workers,” said Yussuff. 

“I want to thank everyone who opposed these bills over the years, in addition to both former minister MaryAnn Mihychuk for introducing Bill C-4 in January last year, and current labour minister Patty Hajdu for her Senate testimony in support of the bill. We are also grateful to Senator Diane Bellemare for shepherding it through the Red Chamber,” he added.

Legislative timeline

December 5, 2011: Bill C-377 is introduced in the House of Commons

March 26, 2011: Order papers are prorogued because federal election is called

May 2, 2011: Conservatives win false majority government

March 14, 2012: The reintroduced Bill C-377 is referred to the House of Commons finance committee.

October 25, 2012: CLC testifies on Bill C-377 at House finance committee

December 12, 2012: Bill C-377 passes in the House and referred to the Senate

June 5, 2013: Bill C-525 is introduced in the House

June 26, 2013: Senate passes Bill C-377 with amendment. The amended bill is sent back to the House for consideration

October 16, 2013: Bill C-525 is reintroduced in the House

October 17, 2013: Conservatives ignore Senate amendment to Bill C-377 and refer it back to the Senate 

January 29, 2014: Bill C-525 is referred to HRSDC committee in the House. CLC and PSAC testify in February 2014.

April 9, 2014: Bill C-525 passes in the House and is referred to the Senate

December 16, 2014: Bill C-525 passes in the Senate and receives Royal Assent

June 30, 2015: Despite opposition by a minority of senators, Bill C-377 passes in the Senate and receives Royal Assent in the House. Reporting requirements would apply to labour organizations as early as December 31, 2015.

October 19, 2015: Liberals win a false majority in the federal election

December 21, 2015: The Minister of National Revenue announces she is waiving the Conservatives’ anti-union Bill C-377’s reporting requirements for unions and labour trusts.

January 28, 2016: Bill C-4 is introduced in the House.

March 7, 2016: Bill C-4 is referred to the House HUMA committee. The CLC testifies before the committee in May 2016.

October 19, 2016: Bill C-4 passes in the House and is referred to the Senate the next day.

December 15, 2016: Bill C-4 is referred to Senate committee. CLC testifies before the committee on February 1, 2017.

April 18, 2017: Senate passes amendments to Bill C-4, effectively negating important aspects of the Bill, and refers the amended Bill back to the House for consideration. 

May 17, 2017: The House overwhelmingly rejects the Senate’s amendments to Bill C-4, sending the original back to the Senate. 

June 14, 2017: Bill C-4 is passed by the Senate.

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The Convention reinforces the right to collective bargaining and protects all workers from anti-union discrimination, including being forced to give up union membership in order to get a job, or job termination for participating in union activities.

“This is a long overdue and important step forward for Canadian labour relations and sends a strong message to the world,” said CLC president Hassan Yussuff. “By signing this convention, Canada is finally recognizing the crucial role that strong unions and collective bargaining rights play in reducing inequality and building stronger, fair and inclusive economies.”

Today’s ratification of Convention 98 means Canada has ratified all eight considered by ILO to be the minimum “enabling rights” people need to defend and improve their rights and conditions at work, and to work in freedom and dignity.

Canada’s unions have been working for ratification for decades, but since 1949 and until now, successive Canadian governments have refused. Canada is the 165th country to ratify. The United States, Mexico, and 20 other countries have yet to ratify.

“By ratifying Co98, Canada is committing not just to respect collective bargaining rights, but to promote and uphold them abroad and at home,” said Yussuff. “This means encouraging and supporting provincial and territorial governments to find negotiated solutions to disputes rather than overriding collective bargaining rights with draconian measures like back-to-work legislation,” he added.

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The Framework sets out guiding principles and commits the federal government to funding over time, and will be accompanied by separate bilateral agreements for each of the provinces and territories.

“We are happy to see the federal government committing to building a system based on principles, to investing in regulated care, and to addressing the crisis in care for the most vulnerable families,” said CLC President Hassan Yussuff.  “We also need to ensure that the agreement commits to building a system that provides child care for all families who need it.”

Yussuff says unions have been encouraged by recent provincial commitments to providing universal care, and are disappointed it wasn’t emphasized in today’s agreement.

Despite recent cutbacks, Quebec’s system has long been an inspiration to others. Recent announcements in Alberta and Ontario demonstrate a willingness among provincial governments to work towards a universal system, and British Columbia’s government-in-waiting has committed to making $10-a-day child care a priority.

“We will continue to press to see universality as a component of bilateral agreements. The goal must be providing early learning and child care for all families who need it,” he added.

Yussuff said unions would also continue to work towards ensuring bilateral agreements contain clear commitments to public and not-for-profit delivery of child care.

“We must ensure all governments invest in public and not-for-profit care, because this is a key component of ensuring quality,” he said.

The multilateral framework sets out principles that must guide service delivery by provinces and territories. Those are affordability, accessibility, quality, flexibility, and inclusivity.

The Framework also stipulates that provinces and territories must:

• Invest in regulated care for children under six;
• Focus on the families most in need, including low-income, lone parent, Indigenous families, those living in underserved communities, working non-standard hours, or with children with varying abilities;
• Ensure reporting and performance measurement; and
• Ensure spending does not replace existing early learning and child care programs, but rather work to expand the system.

“Today’s signing is a step forward for families, women, and the economy.  Unions are ready to work with governments to ensure we establish a truly universal, high quality, affordable, and inclusive system of child care across the country. That’s what families so desperately need,” said Yussuff.

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June 12^th marks the World Day Against Child Labour and one year since the Canadian government ratified the International Labour Organization’s Minimum Age Convention. Ratifying countries are required to set a minimum employment age of 15 years and protect young workers from hazardous work.

“Most Canadians would be surprised to hear that most provinces and territories still have work to do to meet our obligations under this international treaty,” said CLC President Hassan Yussuff.

Some provinces stipulate a lower minimum employment age than required by the treaty. In British Columbia, for example, the minimum age is 12. The Northwest Territories, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island and the Yukon don’t stipulate a minimum employment age at all.

Conditions for employing children also vary greatly by province and territory. Some require written consent from a parent or guardian, and others bar specific industries from employing children, such as construction or logging. But the scope is too narrow, and many industries aren’t named.

“It is young and new workers who are most likely to be injured on the job, so we must work together and make it a priority to tackle these inconsistencies,” said Yussuff.

Statistics from the Association of Workers’ Compensation Boards of Canada reveal that in 2015 alone, four young workers aged 15 to 19 years died on the job, and more than 8,000 in the same age range reported suffering work-related injuries or disease.

Yussuff says the Alberta government has shown important leadership with The Fair and Family-friendly Workplaces Act, taking effect in January 2018. The legislation prohibits work (with the exception of artistic endeavours) for children under 13, and provides a list of “light work” jobs youth under 16 can take on without a permit.

“We need to see the same kind of leadership across the country,” said Yussuff. “All provinces and territories must follow Alberta’s example and make this a priority, so we can keep young workers and children safe.”

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Le gouvernement de l’Ontario a annoncé un Cadre stratégique renouvelé pour la petite enfance et les services de garde d’enfants qui comprend un engagement à rendre les services de garde à l’enfance plus accessibles et à rendre leur prix plus abordable pour toutes les familles, notamment par l’investissement dans de nouvelles places en garderie et l’expansion du secteur sans but lucratif.

Le gouvernement fédéral est censé publier sous peu le détail de son Cadre national sur l’apprentissage et la garde des jeunes enfants. Le budget fédéral de cette année prévoit une affectation de 7 milliards de dollars en 10 ans pour l’apprentissage et la garde des jeunes enfants.

« Nous sommes particulièrement heureux de voir le gouvernement de l’Ontario donner la priorité à l’accès universel et nous espérons que le cadre fédéral assurera la même approche aux familles de toutes les provinces et des trois territoires », a déclaré Hassan Yussuff, président du CTC.

Le cadre du gouvernement de l’Ontario comprend bon nombre d’éléments que le CTC et ses alliés jugent indispensables à tout système d’apprentissage et de garde des jeunes enfants, y compris les suivants :

• Donner à toutes les familles qui en ont besoin l’accès à des services de qualité fournis par des organismes publics ou sans but lucratif;
• Rendre les prix des services de garde à l’enfance plus abordables;
• Voir à ce que le personnel des garderies ait des salaires et des conditions de travail décents;
• S’assurer que le système des services de garde à l’enfance soit inclusif pour les enfants ayant des besoins spéciaux.

Le CTC et ses alliés ont incité le gouvernement fédéral à annoncer un cadre qui ouvre la voie à la création d’un système bien conçu de services de garde à l’enfance qui permet de tenir compte de la diversité des besoins plutôt que d’adopter une approche unique.

« Il s’agit d’établir des régimes inclusifs fournissant des services de qualité à prix abordable dans l’ensemble du Canada », a déclaré M. Yussuff. « Nous devons en outre adopter une stratégie de mise en valeur de la main-d’œuvre portant sur les salaires, les conditions de travail, le recrutement et la formation. »

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The Ontario government has announced a renewed Early Years and Child Care Policy Framework that pledges to make child care more accessible and affordable to all families, including a plan to invest in new child care spaces and a pledge to grow the non-profit sector.

The federal government is expected to release details about its own National Early Learning and Child Care Framework soon. This year’s federal budget pledged $7 billion over 10 years for early learning and child care.

“We are especially pleased to see that the Ontario government make universal access a priority and we hope the federal government’s framework will ensure the same approach for families in all provinces and territories,” said CLC President, Hassan Yussuff.

The Ontario government’s framework included many of the elements the CLC and its allies say are crucial to any child care and early childhood education system, specifically:

• Access to high quality, public and not-for-profit child care for all families who need it;
• Making child care more affordable;
• Ensuring that child care workers have decent wages and working conditions; and
• Ensuring the child care system is inclusive of children with special needs.

The CLC and its allies have called on the federal government to announce a framework that paves the way for a well-designed child care system that takes into account the diversity of needs: not a one-size-fits-all approach.

“The goal must be affordable, inclusive, high-quality child care systems across Canada,” said Yussuff. “We also need a workforce development strategy that addresses wages and working conditions, as well as recruiting and training.”

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On the last day of the spring legislature sitting last week, the Manitoba Progressive Conservative government rammed through wage freeze legislation that affects the rights of public sector workers in the province, including those working in health care, public education, social services, and Crown corporation staff.

“Instead of good faith negotiations, Manitoba has chosen heavy-handed legislation that denies 120,000 public sector workers the right to collectively bargain wages for years,” said Canadian Labour Congress President Hassan Yussuff.

This legislation is only one piece in a series of attacks on workers and their families. The Manitoba government also introduced legislation to restructure health care bargaining units, giving an appointed and unaccountable commissioner sweeping powers to supersede even the provincial Labour Board.

“Manitoba’s unions developed an alternative proposal to bargain through a health care union council, which would increase efficiency while still allowing workers to keep the union they choose. But again, the Pallister government has chosen to dictate rather than talk,” said Yussuff.

Yussuff pointed to a Supreme Court ruling in 2015 that found the BC government had violated the guarantee of freedom of association under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms when it passed legislation infringing on BC teachers’ bargaining rights.

“Premier Pallister must heed the Canada’s Supreme Court’s ruling, which strongly reaffirmed that government must negotiate in good faith and respect the collective bargaining process instead of trying to unilaterally strip collective agreement protections,” said Yussuff.

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“Alberta took an incredible step a year ago when they announced they would raise the provincial minimum wage to $15 an hour — helping nearly 300,000 Albertans who currently struggle to make ends meet. There’s no doubt that bold move helped pave the way for the improvements we’re seeing in Ontario,” noted Canadian Labour Congress President, Hassan Yussuff.

Albertans have already seen the first step up in their minimum wage, which will raise again this October to $13.60 an hour. Yussuff dismissed fair wage opponents’ arguments against a $15 minimum wage, saying higher minimum wages reduce employee turnover, increase productivity and boost workers’ local spending ability.

“Experts have been studying minimum wage increases for decades. When you look at their research and the impacts of minimum wage increases in Alberta and several US jurisdictions, the evidence is clear: a higher minimum wage is good for workers and it’s good for businesses,” said Yussuff.

Along with minimum wages that allow full-time workers to stay above the poverty line, unions have long advocated safer, fairer working conditions for everyone in our changing economy. Last week, Alberta introduced legislation that supports this goal: Bill 17: The Fair and Family-Friendly Workplaces Act, which includes a number of amendments to outdated provincial labour and employment standards legislation.

Among other changes, Bill 17 will make it easier for Alberta workers to exercise their right to join a union, support unions’ right to bargain collectively, and ensure workers who are sick, caring for a family member or experiencing domestic violence have access to job-protected time off. It will also repeal an offensive section of the Employment Standards Act that allowed people with disabilities to be employed at less than minimum wage.

This week, Ontario announced its own set of changes, including equal pay protections for part-time workers and improvements to shift scheduling and time off — both vacation and personal leaves for workers experiencing a family emergency.

“We’re very happy to see these changes happening to make it easier for workers to make ends meet, to balance work and family responsibilities, and to organize a union in their workplace,” said Yussuff.

Yussuff said the CLC is looking forward to working with the Alberta and Ontario governments on further improvements to ensure fairness for workers and their families. He also urged other provinces to take up the challenge of modernizing their own labour and employment legislation.

“Unpredictable hours, lack of access to sick or vacation time, barriers to unionization, wages so low that full-time workers are living in poverty: these are urgent, widespread issues. Alberta and Ontario have taken up that challenge, and now it’s time for the rest of the country to do the same,” Yussuff said.

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As part of its ongoing monitoring and assessment of developments in the enduring conflict in the Middle East, the Canadian Labour Congress reaffirms its support of a peace-building process between Israel and Palestine through the establishment of two sovereign nations. The CLC joins those who support the vision of two nations co-existing in peace and security, within safe borders, free from occupation.

There is international consensus that direct negotiations between Israel and Palestine are the only viable avenue to resolution of the conflict. At the Paris Peace Conference in mid-January this year, more than 70 countries, including Canada, warned that the two-state solution is under threat and encouraged both sides in the conflict to resume talks.

Unfortunately, there is serious concern that any immediate resumption of direct talks has been jeopardized by Israeli government policies that have been found to be in contravention of international law. These include aggressive settlement expansion and demolition of Palestinian homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the fragmentation and economic isolation of Palestinian communities in the West Bank, the blockade of Gaza, and the endurance of the separation wall. Ongoing eruptions of violence against civilians by either side have further derailed diplomatic efforts.

The new U.S. administration’s endorsement of the settlements and intentions to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem also imperil the likelihood of renewed talks.

In the context of attacks on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, the CLC will continue to defend freedom of speech and the right to legitimate protest.

Despite the challenges, the Government of Canada still has a significant role to play to advance a just and peaceful two-state solution in the Middle East.

The CLC appreciates that the government has reinstated funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), cancelled under the Harper government in 2010.

The CLC supports the recognition of the State of Palestine and notes that 137 member states of the United Nations have already recognized Palestinian statehood.

If Canada is truly committed to a two-state solution, the government must acknowledge the current stalemate and go beyond a diplomatic status quo to unequivocally recognize the State of Palestine.

The CLC reaffirms the principles adopted in its 2011 Statement on Israel-Palestine (attached) outlining support for the many UN Security Council Resolutions, which have recognized the 1967 borders of Israel and Palestine, called for an end to the occupation and illegal settlements and are aimed at a fundamental achievement of a just and lasting peace.

Background: In 2011 the CLC adopted the statement on Israel-Palestine, approved by the Executive Council in March and adopted by the CLC National Council in November. The statement outlined support for UN Security Council Resolution 242, which recognizes the 1967 borders of Israel and Palestine, and Resolution 338, which is aimed at a fundamental achievement of a just and lasting peace.

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Canadian Labour Congress President, Hassan Yussuff, added that the rest of the world must continue to play an active role in fighting climate change and transitioning workers to good, green jobs.

“While President Trump’s decision on Paris represents a set-back to united action on climate change, it doesn’t change the fact that the rest of the world is moving forward. Canadian government, civil society and industry recognize the need to adapt to a low-carbon economy,” said Yussuff.

“Canada should continue to face the challenges of climate change head on, knowing that in the long run, this makes us more competitive within North America and globally,” Yussuff added.

To read the full ITUC statement, visit: https://www.ituc-csi.org/ituc-response-to-us-announcement

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“The forestry sector is one of Canada’s key economic drivers and these unfair and unjustified U.S. duties threaten more than 25,000 good jobs in nearly every region of our country,” said CLC President Hassan Yussuff.

“The CLC is pleased that the government is acting quickly and taking concrete steps to help affected workers, communities and companies,” he added.

In particular, the CLC welcomes the following steps announced today:

• Reducing lay-offs by extending the maximum period for Work Sharing agreements from 38 weeks to 76 weeks;
• Expanding access to retraining and skills development programs to help workers transition to new jobs;
• Wage insurance or “Targeted Earnings Supplements” for workers who find new jobs that pay less;
• Federal loans and loan guarantees from the Business Development Bank of Canada and Export Development Canada to help forestry companies in the short and medium term; and
• Investments to diversify export markets overseas and promote the diversification of the forest products sector in Canada.

Yussuff said he was pleased to see the federal government adopt some of the measures proposed by the CLC and its member unions, and was hopeful there was more to come.

“Today’s announcement is a good first step for addressing a dispute that could drag on for years. We look forward to working with the government to build on this relief package to ensure no workers are left behind as the situation evolves,” he said.

“We’d like to see an extension of Employment Insurance benefits for workers in hardest-hit regions, a move that made an enormous difference to workers and communities affected by falling oil prices in 2015 and 2016,” he added.

Yussuff said the CLC believes that a negotiated settlement is in the best interests of both Canada and the United States, and that he looks forward to supporting efforts to negotiate a new Softwood Lumber Agreement which gives Canada fair access to the U.S. market.

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“We hope more municipalities will take this step to support people who have very few options and who are just trying to keep themselves and their families safe,” said CLC President Hassan Yussuff.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says the world is experiencing the higher than ever levels of displacement. The agency says that at the end of 2015, at least 65.3 million people had been forced from their homes, compared to 59.5 million a year earlier. In 2015, the most recent year for which statistics are available, 24 people were forced out of their homes every minute of every day. Nearly half are children.

“Canada has the means to help people escape the terrible conditions they’re fleeing, so we should do everything we can to offer them a safe place to live. Canadian municipalities have an important role to play,” he said.

Municipalities have a very unique role to play because many of the services provided have a vital impact on the lives and well-being of residents. A municipality that adopts sanctuary city designation provides residents without full immigration status and/or without full status documents from the federal government access to municipal services without fear of detection, detention or deportation. Such services include libraries, recreational programs, child care, emergency shelters, food banks, public health, transportation, and police services.

Yussuff emphasized that a sanctuary city designation is only effective and meaningful when accompanied with strong municipal policy implementation, training for municipal management and staff, as well as a public education campaign.

“Public education is an important part of the sanctuary city designation, because migrants are often subjected to racist attitudes and even violence as a result of prejudice, Islamophobia, and anti-immigrant sentiment,” said Yussuff.

“But these designations will put Canada on the right side of history and will mean that Canadian municipalities are taking an active stand against racism and xenophobia,” he added.

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While Pride is a time to celebrate, it is also a time for reflection and activism. Pride originated in response to the police crackdown on LGBTQ2SI spaces like the 1981 bath house raids in Toronto.

“It is important for us to continue to challenge ongoing discrimination and the challenges faced by members of the LGBTQ2SI community,” said CLC President Hassan Yussuff.

There are still many countries where homosexuality is illegal and subject to extreme punishment and even execution. In Chechnya, for example, gay men are being detained in concentration camps, tortured and in some cases killed, and families are being pressured to kill their gay sons.

Rainbow Railroad, a Canadian organization that helps LGBTQ2SI people who face physical violence, imprisonment, or death, has been working with Russian LGBTQ2SI organizations to bring Chechnyans to Canada as refugees. At this May’s CLC Convention, delegates gave unanimous support for a resolution calling on the Canadian government to actively support these efforts and to condemn Chechnya’s actions.

Canada has its own dark history of state-sanctioned discrimination and much work needs to be done to make reparations. Canada has yet to formally apologize for a decades-long national security campaign that targeted public service workers and members of the RCMP and military perceived to be homosexuals. Many were questioned, outed, and fired.

“These individuals and their families have waited decades for justice. It is long past time not just to apologize to those whose lives and careers were destroyed, but to secure pardons and provide compensation for the harm inflicted upon them,” said Yussuff.

“We encourage everyone to be loud and proud at parades and pride events across the country and we will celebrate the ways Canada’s unions have helped advance LGBTQ2S1 rights. But we also commit to continuing our work to achieve more fairness and justice for these communities in Canada and abroad,” Yussuff added.

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“Raising the minimum wage to $15 will support millions of Ontario workers – thirty percent of the province – who are currently earning less than that and struggling to afford basic necessities like rent, transportation, and groceries,” said Canadian Labour Congress President Hassan Yussuff.

Unions also celebrated the announced changes to the Employment Standards Act to make it easier for workers to balance work and family commitments, and make ends meet, including:

• Equal pay for equal work protections for part-time workers;
• Fairer rules for scheduling, including a new regulation that will require employers to pay an employee for three hours of work if their shift is cancelled with less than 48 hours’ notice;
• Access to 10 days of Personal Emergency Leave per year (two paid); and
• Three weeks of paid vacation (up from two) after five years with one employer.

“The Ontario economy is strong and these changes will only make it stronger by supporting workers and their families to make ends meet, decreasing turnover, and increasing productivity,” said Yussuff.

However, Yussuff said there are still areas for improvement. For example, unions had pushed for shifts to be scheduled two weeks in advance, access to paid vacation to start sooner, and better paid time off for workers experiencing domestic violence.

Unions had also hoped the changes would go further to reform the province’s Labour Relations Act. Today’s announcement commits to extending card-check certification to three particularly vulnerable sectors – the temporary help agency industry, the building services sector, and home care and community services – but still leaves other workers open to employer intimidation during a union certification drive.

“There is still work to do, but we’re pleased with the changes announced today and hope this begins a process of further improvements for Ontario workers and their families,” Yussuff said.

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In these volatile times, it is more important than ever that we stand in solidarity to counter the hate and division which breeds senseless acts of terror.

Our hearts are with you, the people of Manchester and of the United Kingdom, as you mourn the loss of innocent victims to this tragedy.

Hassan Yussuff
President, Canadian Labour Congress

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