LABOUR DAY 1999

  • 1999 LABOUR DAY: A VIEW FROM THE LABOUR LEFT IN CANADA

  • FLIPSIDE LABOUR DAY SPECIAL REPORT
    A Feature by Flipside Alternative Daily As another labour day dawns, working people find themselves under increasing attack, in Canada and around the world. Today and every day, Flipside celebrates working people everywhere, and their labour unions. Unions represent the focal point in the fight against corporate hegemony, and may potentially help workers and their allies achieve social and economic justice.

  • The Canadian Origins of Labour Day

  • LABOUR'S TRUE LABOUR DAY

    Unions -- a reality check
    by Mark Leier
    Labour Day Editorial,
    National Post
    September 6, 1999

    It was a bad year for strikes. Thousands of workers took part in illegal strikes, and governments across the country threatened them with fines and jail sentences. Business complained bitterly about the impact on competition and profits, and leading newspapers across the country agreed. Their editorials insisted that "strike leaders have allowed the intoxication of power to go to their heads" and that "strikes by government officials and the employees of municipal authorities should be prohibited by law." A prominent government representative declared bluntly about one strike, "There is absolutely no reason that hardship should be imposed upon the whole community, just because three employers and their employees were unable to agree."
    If this sounds familiar, it shouldn't. I'm talking about 1919, not 1999. It was the year of the Winnipeg General Strike, and we lost more time to strikes and lockouts that year than any other in Canadian history.
    It is worth remembering that year, for it illustrates how much the Canadian labour movement has changed over 80 years, even if our perceptions haven't.
    Many still believe, for example, that the "average" union member is male, blue collar, and relatively uneducated. Today, nearly half the unionized workers in Canada are women. Union members tend have more education than non-union workers, and are more likely to be retail clerks and public employees than truck drivers and stevedores.
    Another misperception is that labour unions are more powerful today than they were in 1919. Yet the power of labour is a small thing compared to that of government and business. Unions don't control the police, make the laws, or put people in jail. Unions don't hire and fire thousands of workers, cut wages, decide what is produced where, or set prices.
    The only power unions have is the same economic power they had in 1919: the right to withdraw their labour to protest unfair conditions. Given the disparity between the net worth of corporate Canada and the labour movement, this is not the devastating weapon some believe it is. The total assets of the Canadian labour movement -- buildings, money, everything -- are about $5.5-billion. By comparison, Canada's richest 100 individuals are worth, conservatively, $106-billion, or 19 times more than the entire labour movement.
    A recent report on the top 1,000 companies in Canada reveals that the top five have assets of nearly $575-billion -- more than 104 times what the labour movement can muster.
    This economic power of business translates into political power, for one of the perks of wealth is access to government. As a result, the right to strike has been sharply curtailed over the years. How and when workers can go on strike is tightly defined by the law, while sympathy strikes, mass picketing, and secondary picketing are either illegal or highly restricted. Canadian businesses still use the law, the courts, and even the police to stall organizing drives and break strikes.
    Do we strike too much? We're told Canada loses more time to strikes than other OECD countries. The numbers are misleading, for each country counts strikes differently. If we do strike more, it is because we have to. Other OECD countries have better protection for workers: shorter work weeks, longer holidays, better unemployment insurance, better welfare, better pensions, better job training programs. In Canada, workers have to fight with employers to get what workers in other countries receive under the law.
    Even so, strikes in Canada have been declining over the last 50 years. We lost about 0.08% of working time to strikes and lock-outs in 1998. That's down considerably from 0.17% in 1988, 0.32% in 1978, 0.46 in 1968, and 0.24 in 1958. And it is all far from the record of 1919, when 0.6 % of working time was lost to strikes.
    In fact, we lose more time to illness, disability and personal or family responsibilities than to strikes: nearly a month for every day lost to a labour dispute. Making the workplace healthier and safer and curing the common cold would help the economy more than banning strikes.
    Thinking about 1919 also reminds us that some things have not changed in 80 years. The basic rules of the economy are still the same. Workers' incomes are still employers' expenses, and that is why the two continue to struggle over how the pie is divided. That is why employers fight labour as hard today as they did in 1919. It is still a struggle in which the employer has the edge. That is why unions are as necessary at the end of this century as they were at its beginning.
    Mark Leier is a labour historian at Simon Fraser University. His book Rebel Life: The Life And Times Of Robert Gosden, Revolutionary, Mystic, And Labour Spy, will be published later this year.

  • Celebrating a century of Labour parades But 1990s been a tough decade on the unions By Vanessa Lu and Valerie Lawton Toronto Star Staff Reporters
    Workers marching today in the last Labour Day parades of this century are celebrating the gains they've made over the last 100 years. But it's also time, some say, to look at what's been lost in the 1990s, and for the labour movement to come together to speak with a stronger voice to protect workers. ``Throughout the 1900s, we've made lots of progress,'' said Ken Georgetti, the country's top labour leader. Those steps forward include safer workplaces, better pensions, benefits and wages and anti-harassment policies. Georgetti sounds a lot less positive, however, when he starts talking about the 1990s.

  • Alberta Workers Deserve a Fair Share Corporate welfare for energy industry can no longer be justified says Alberta New Democrats
  • Organized labour continues to make an important contribution to Alberta society In the new "globalized" world, workers need unions more than ever, says AFL
  • Edmonton unions show their thanks Thousands attend Labour Day barbecue
    For pipefitter Gary Peters, Monday's 10th annual Labour Day barbecue at Giovanni Caboto Park was an opportunity to give thanks for 40 years of working. Thousands of people, many of them inner-city residents without jobs, stood in lineups 200-deep all day Monday as 5,000 burgers, 3,000 hotdogs, 6,000 drinks and 9,000 oranges were served by bus drivers, plumbers, letter carriers and truckers. There was no irony in the thousands of jobless who had gathered on a day to celebrate labour, said retired Edmonton bus driver Ernest Bastide, now president of the Amalgamated Transit Union. "The labour movement has always been involved in social-justice issues. We're trying to improve the lot of the nation," Bastide said. "We're not doing a good job taking care of the working class and the poor in a province as rich as ours. But we do a good job taking care of Syncrude and other large corporations," he said.

  • Let's Celebrate Unions this Labour Day by Judy Rebick
    Monday is Labour Day and we in Canada have a lot to celebrate. Canadian unions are more progressive on women's issues than any unions in the world. They are enormously supportive of community organizations and have been at the centre of the struggle against the attempts of the Right to destroy the welfare state. Their very existence makes a huge difference to the average working women and man in this country.

  • Labour Day 1999
    Toronto, Sept. 6, 1999 ___Across Canada workers turned out to mark the accomplishments of the labour movement in the annual Labour Day Parades. In Toronto close to 30 thousand workers marched through the downtown to the Canadian National Exhibition. They brought with them a message of solidarity and a concern for their future.
    CAW Report with Real Audio and Real Video Downloads

  • 1999 Labour Day message from CAW President Buzz Hargrove

  • Georgetti on Labour Day: Make it right again
    "From the perspective of Labour Day 1999, I think it's clear that the cheerleaders of globalization got it wrong," said the new President of the CLC, Ken Georgetti. "After a decade of privatization, deregulation, and free trade, the facts are they haven't delivered the prosperity-for-all they promised. They haven't even delivered real economic growth. Fortunately, leaders from labour, human rights organizations, religious, environmental, and seniors' groups are beginning to get it right.

  • CLC organizes STOMPING CHAOS - Solidarity youth-culture festival

  • Labour movement on youth drive
    Playing host at youth festivals is not part of the usual job description for presidents of the Canadian Labour Congress. But that's what Ken Georgetti is doing in Toronto this weekend in an effort to bolster union ranks, which have been aging and static in Canada for many years.

  • OFL: Labour In The New Millenium

  • CUPE National President Sends Message of Support to City of Toronto Workers at Labour Day Parade

  • CUPE: Unions More Relevant Than Ever By Judy Darcy National President Canadian Union of Public Employees

  • CUPE National President, Judy Darcy will be addressing members of Local 416 at the Toronto and York Region Labour Day Parade on Monday.

  • OPSEU Labour Day Message

  • SEIU'S KEN BROWN TO DELIVER LABOUR DAY MESSAGE TO THE ONTARIO HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION MONDAY IN WATERLOO.

  • "THE FILMON DECADE IS THE LOST DECADE FOR WORKERS": CUPE MANITOBA PRESIDENT PAUL MOIST�S LABOUR DAY MESSAGE

  • Labour Day a time to celebrate our achievements By Jim Sinclair President, B.C. Federation of Labour

  • United Church of Canada Moderator Marks Labour Day With Thoughts On Work And Wages

  • Construction trades call for strong action on environment and affordable housing
    The Toronto-Central Ontario Construction Trades Council is marking the final Labour Day of the century with a call for immediate action on two key issues - protecting the environment and providing affordable housing. Governments at all levels are being asked to focus on solutions that would deal with the pressing need to address these problems.

  • Ottawa Distict Labour Council Labour Day Page

  • Labour Day report: Our productivity still far behind U.S. Catching up, but a long way yet to go

  • Americans work longest hours, ILO survey finds

  • Minister Bradshaw pays tribute to Canadian Workers
    o mark Labour Day 1999, the Honourable Claudette Bradshaw, Minister of Labour, today paid tribute to the contribution that Canadian workers make to the economic and social well being of the country.

  • Larry Zolf Labour Day Commentary: Mackenzie King, King of the Hill

    WORKING TV
    BURMA GENERAL STRIKE & LABOUR DAY 1999

    LABOUR DAY GLOBAL: BURMA GENERAL STRIKE SOLIDARITY
    - Burmese workers organized a General Strike yesterday, on Thursday September 9, 1999. This is a very dangerous act in a country that has been ruled by a brutal and oppressive military junta since 1962. News of the strike is not yet available, as the military routinely jails citizens for "unauthorized" use of fax machines, computer modems and photocopies. Nonetheless, the Vancouver Burmese community organized a rally on Labour day, to build support for the "9-9-99" action. This week, we report on the rally and feature video on the slave labour and child labour the Burmese are forced to endure, courtesy of AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL.

    LABOUR DAY LOCAL: FAMILY PICNIC -
    highlights from the annual UNION LABEL COMMITTEE Labour Day picnic at Confederation Park in Burnaby.

    Next week: news from the Burma (if possible) and Labor/Enviro Forum.

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