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Here in Saskatchewan, especially in the oil industry, we have to count ourselves as being very, very privileged. We have language in our contract and letters that gives us a lot of protection from some of the evils that people in the rest of the country are experiencing today. We work for a company that is making barrelsful of money. We have a government that is resisting the outside forces of globalization and is labour-friendly. And we have, I think, a workforce that is ready to stick together and stand up for its rights in any situation. But not everyone is so privileged.

I discovered that we in Saskatchewan are very insulated from the happenings in other parts of the country and the world. Our mass media in this province is controlled by two companies. We hear and read what they want. It is almost impossible to get an independent viewpoint locally. Nationally, there are a few more choices, but if you don’t actively seek out opinions from other sources, most available news is not much different than our local vanilla news. The Internet can be a good tool for finding news with an objective viewpoint; however, it can also be as misleading in the other direction as the standard media. Some good sites I would recommend for alternative and labour related news are rabble.ca and labourstart.org. Our own website at cep594.sasktelwebsite.net (webmaster Abe Mejia) has links to labour news and social issues and the national website at cep.ca also has many stories with a labour slant.

Of course, as trade unionists, we must always be vigilant in ensuring that our rights, as spelled out in our contract and labour legislation, are never abused, but there is also an onus on us as upper-range wage earners to watch out for those in our community who are not as fortunate as us. Globalization, privatization, Public-Private Partnerships (P3s), Free Trade, and post-9/11 security measures imposed by the U.S. (both inside it’s own borders and it’s trading partners’-i.e. Canada) are a scary brew designed to gradually erode our standard of living.

Globalization is preached about in our media as the answer to lowering the prices of most of our consumer goods while reducing poverty in poorer countries. Privatization and P3s have been presented by their proponents as vehicles for offering once public services (road building, health care, education, etc.) at lower cost and tax savings.
Free Trade has been touted as a job creator like none we have ever seen, but now the U.S. is tying the right to trade with security measures that parallel their own.

The evidence, however, points to an outcome much less desirable. Globalization has proved to be a polite term for job exportation. Less than a month after announcing layoffs of 14,000 in North America, IBM proudly reported in the Asian press the hiring of the same number in India. Great for India, but for the world as a whole, the average standard of living went down a notch. Will IBM lower their prices accordingly? Not likely.

Public-Private Partnerships are a deal between a government and a private company to deliver a once-public service at a supposedly lower price and with less government involvement. Simple arithmetic says there has to be a flaw in this idea or massive waste in the original, public arrangement. A private company has to deliver a profit to its shareholders. They say they can do this by being more efficient than the public operation. What actually happens is that workers are laid off and those that are left are working harder and with fewer benefits. Hospitals in B.C. have gone a step further when the private partner that took over food services and cleaning services in hospitals on Vancouver Island cut wages from an average $18 down to $9 per hour with complicity from the government and a membership-raiding, scab ‘union’. Good for the company, bad for the workers. This did not lead to better service and, in fact there is much evidence to the contrary, which I have personally witnessed. Standard of living down another notch.

A second negative point of P3s is creeping privatization. After housecleaning and food services go private, what the heck, let’s allow lab services next. Then surgery. Without even noticing, our healthcare system is no longer universal and free to all. Now profit comes first and the system is more expensive and less efficient than ever before. We should all know the lie of Free Trade. The U.S. government has shown time and time again that the rules they agreed to only apply if it is to their advantage. Proof? Softwood lumber and BSE. What they really want is unrestricted access to our energy and fresh water supplies and would have no qualms about using the insane rules in NAFTA to get them. Free Trade really has nothing to do with freedom and little to do with trade. What it really is is a way for the U.S. big business interests to take what they want from their neighbours without having to roll out the tanks and look even worse on the world stage. We should be taking the cue from countries in South America which are rejecting the Free Trade Area of the Americas pact and go back to honest, fair trade deals of the past which did not have national sovereignty tied to the right to trade.

In the post-9/11 paranoia, the U.S. wants to impose its values, fears and security measures on other countries, especially Canada, in exchange for trade. This has led to the illegal detention of many men in Canada because of racial profiling. There are presently five men of Arab descent in Canadian prisons who have been there for up to four years, without being charged with any crime or told of any evidence against them. We have all heard of the Maher Arar case and the U.S. involvement in it. If we don’t speak up against these injustices, the next people they come for might be trade unionists. It happened in Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany because trade unionists speak up for people’s rights, be they union people or not. It’s still happening today in South America, especially Colombia, where being a trade unionist is a dangerous game. Since 1987, mainly paramilitary forces, in collaboration with the Colombian army, have murdered 3,000 trade unionists.

Other topics addressed at the Convention were less cloak-and-dagger but on a smaller scale, just as important:

The erosion of apprenticeship training. Some jurisdictions want to split trades into smaller sub-trades or have the tradesman specialize only in a certain area of a trade. The reason for this is lower training costs and less mobility for the worker. What it translates to is lower wages (because the tradesman is less-skilled) and less opportunity for the worker.

First Nations Inclusion. The labour movement needs to actively involve First Nations people in training for employment skills and membership in the labour movement. Our aging work force will soon need an infusion of new young workers to take our place and training First Nations people will help to alleviate some of that shortfall.

Wal-Mart. Without calling for an outright boycott of the most profitable, greedy, and labour un-friendly corporation in the world, the Convention asked people to talk to Wal-Mart workers when in their store about the advantages of Unionization. With worker turnover rates of 50-100%, I personally think a boycott is the better way to go.

Legislated Pension Guarantees. This is a problem that many workers have endured recently. What happens is a company borrows money out of the worker’s pension plan and subsequently goes bankrupt. The worker’s are now not only out of jobs, but their pension is gone as well. Legislated guarantees would put worker’s rights first, ahead of all other creditors.

Elimination of Post-Secondary Tuition. This sounds like a pipe dream, but the countries with the hottest economies in Europe have been doing this for a number years and it has greatly contributed to their success.

Rights for Retirees. Some innovative contracts are enshrining retiree rights into them. What this means is that any new gains in pension or retirement benefits will also apply to current retirees. At first thought, this sounds ludicrous, but when you think about it, why shouldn’t retirees benefit from new contracts? There shouldn’t be a line drawn at a point in a person’s life where his past contributions to a company no longer count. Time is one long, unbroken line where the past always affects the future. The progress of improving pensions and working conditions is also an unbroken line. So why, when a worker retires, should his contributions of the past stop counting?

The Union Label. Someday I’d like to drive up to the pumps at my local Co-op station and read “Union Made by the Members of CEP Local 594, Regina, Saskatchewan.” Why not? And why not a Union billboard on 9th Avenue North?

International Labour Organization Principles. Canada has agreed to ILO (a United Nations arm) principles on the international stage, but have followed through with legislation back home on very few.

‘No Sweat’ Clothing. You’ve likely heard of child labour and sweat shop working conditions, but it is still very hard to differentiate between the sweatshop t-shirt and a sweat-free one. Reading a label for country of origin is no guarantee of its pedigree. There are humane factories in Bangladesh and there are sweatshops even in Canada. There are factories here that simply sew on ‘Made in Canada’ labels on sweatshop goods from other countries. This is a very difficult industry to police and very easy for manufacturers to move on to set up shop elsewhere when they are feeling heat from local authorities, if they ever do.

Rights of Migrant Workers, Immigrants and Refugees. People in these positions are vulnerable to abuse and misuse by employers because of language and cultural barriers. Besides just being wrong, poorly paid foreign workers erode our own standard of living by pulling wages down in a wage-competitive market. These people should be paid no less and receive the same benefits as anyone else working in Canada. All studies support the notion that we will soon be reaching a skills shortage and the importing of workers is already a reality in major centres. It will only become more widespread in the future.

National Child Care Program. This goal is a very important one for most young families in Canada and is very close to becoming reality, but governments need a final push to deliver the kind of system that is high quality and affordable.

There were a few other topics debated, but these were the ones that I found worth noting. We also had some high-calibre guest speakers. Maude Barlow, the National Voluntary Chairperson of the Council of Canadians spoke about Globalization and its threat to Canadian sovereignty. Bromley Armstrong, a founding member of the Canadian Labour Congress, received the CLC Award for Outstanding Service to Humanity and spoke on the early days of organizing a national labour movement in Canada. Jack Layton, Leader of the NDP of Canada, proudly talked of the NDP’s contribution to the recent budget by turning $4.6 billion in corporate tax cuts into money spent on social programs instead. Roberta Jamieson, of the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation spoke on the inequities facing First Nations people trying to enter the workforce. Stephen Lewis, UN Special Envoy to Africa on HIV/AIDS gave an impassioned speech on the atrocities in Africa, which could be so easily fixed with a small amount of political will and a relatively small amount of money. Mamounata Cisse, President of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, Adams Oshiomhole of the Nigeria Labour Congress, and John J. Sweeney, President of the American Federation of Labour all spoke of the need for international solidarity and the gains that can be made when all workers stick together to promote a labour vision of Globalization where all people are treated with respect, and wars are a thing of the past. The low point of the Convention for me came with a speech by Gilles Duceppe, Leader of the Bloc Quebecois. Amidst all our talk of solidarity and working toward a better society, Mr. Duceppe delivered from the podium his vision of how a separate Quebec would be better for both English Canada and French Canada. To me, this was a blunder by the organizers of the convention. But he was introduced as a friend of labour and a politician who truly works toward social justice, a rare commodity these days. And we were on his turf.

As I said at the outset, we in Saskatchewan are very insulated from what is going on in the rest of the world. It’s very easy to get caught up in our own situations, not realizing how outside factors are slowly, creepingly affecting our standard of living. I urge everyone who cares about a particular issue to write to your MLA, MP, the Prime Minister and the Minister in charge of your issue and let them know your thoughts. With the G8 Summit upon us, more globalization issues will be coming forth. I hope you are concerned about this as much as I am and let your feelings be known to those in power.

In Solidarity

Rick McConnell