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Media Release: March 8, 2004 Working women in Alberta have little to celebrate one hundred years after the founding of International Women’s Day. This province has the lowest minimum wage and the lowest rate of unionization in Canada. The vast majority of working women in Alberta work in the service sector, in low paid jobs, with no benefits. The vast majority of these jobs pay fifty cents above the minimum wage of $6 per hour. Worse yet low paid workers in Alberta are taxed by the government, which forces them to pay health care premiums. In the past decade the government as removed 71,000 Albertan’s from social assistance, freezing the social assistance rates well below the national poverty level forcing these workers into low paying jobs. The majority of those affected by the governments so called ’Work for Welfare’ program have been women. Worse yet, this same government has clawed back federal funding for those on AISH and federal child tax credit funding for low income Albertans. Daycare workers in Alberta, who must spend two years in training, end up working for minimum wage with no benefits, in an industry where unions are few and far between. In Fort McMurray the oil boom has not trickled down to these workers, who must pay sky high rents and food costs while trying to make ends meet. The majority of women workers in Alberta, have no onsite child care provided by the employer, living them with the burden of paying for daycare. But publicly funded day cares are few and far between, as the government promotes the privatized childcare by funding non-trained home based babysitting services, with federal funding that was earmarked for creating daycare services. It is time that working Alberta families got a break from this government, like its business pals have. It is time for a Living Wage for all working Albertans. A minimum of $10 per hour, reviewed annually for cost of living adjustments. Full benefits program; extend disability, dental, eye and hearing, extended hospitalization coverage, paid for jointly by the government and business. This Living Wage and benefits program to apply to both part time and full time workers in Alberta. Elimination of health care premiums, which is an unfair tax on all working Albertans. An end to government funded ’babysitting’ services, and the creation of daycare facilities in the community and work place, jointly funded by the government and business. Then Alberta working women and their families would have something to celebrate. Media Release: March, 2003 After asking Alberta workers, unions, employers and the public to make proposals for Labour legislation changes in the fall of 2002 the Alberta Government has ignored these and has gone ahead and drafted legislation in secret, that restricts workers rights to unionize and to strike. Focused on health care unions, Bill 27 removes the right to strike from all health care workers, as it has for nurses. It further reduces workers bargaining rights by declaring that they will have a union forced on them as the government reduces health care regions and centralizes them. It further takes away the right of the public to elect health boards, and makes these boards government appointees. The hassle of democracy, of the right to citizens to elect their own regional health boards impedes the government's ability to continue its push to reduce funding to health care regions in order to force the privatization of health services in Alberta. This is the real agenda behind Bill 27. This is an illegal and immoral act by the Tory party dictatorship in Alberta. It bodes ill for all workers, not just hospital or public sector workers. It shows we need a "Regime Change" in Alberta. Bill 27 is illegal. It contravenes the International Labour Organization (ILO) convention on free association and the right to strike, a United Nations convention, which Canada signed. Alberta has been declared a major violator of workers rights on par with third world dictatorships, by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). With Bill 27 the Alberta government is denying workers rights, it is denying our human rights. With its overwhelming majority in the legislature for over 32 years, the Tory government has no political opposition to stop it from steam rolling over workers rights in Alberta. This is a dictatorship, pure and simple. Of course it's a capitalist dictatorship, one that is elected every four years by a minority of Albertans. With its elected massive majority in the legislature it can smash public sector workers unions with impunity and privatize our public services. The Tory dictatorship in Alberta is supported by business and their media hacks like the Sun and the National Post. It's national voice is the right wing business politicians of the Canadian Alliance and the National Citizens Coalition (NCC). The first thing dictatorships do is smash unions. The Alberta Tory government is no different. Over the past 32 years it has declared many public sector workers as essential services and removed their right to strike. Bill 27 expands that power now, and will reduce the number of unions representing workers in health care. It removes the right to strike from support staff, and long term care and extended care workers, as well as paramedics. It won't be long before the Klein government will do the same to other public sector workers, like those in public and post secondary education. The recent strike by Alberta Teachers showed this government was intent on smashing the Alberta Teachers Association. Having lost that strike in arbitration, the government is now forcing school districts into deficits. Soon it will have the justification to eliminate more school boards and elected Trustees as it has done with Hospital Boards. The government is doing this to be able to privatize the entire public sector. This attack on our right to strike and organize is essentially one more tactic to prepare public services for privatization. This is CLASS WAR. The labour movement in Alberta needs to do more than to challenge this in the courts or through international trade agreements (like NAFTA). Our very right to exist is being attacked. Workers rights are being trampled for private gain of the Tories and their business backers. The only way workers have ever won their rights is by refusing to work for the boss. Our right to strike was won with blood, sweat and tears, not legislation or through elections. There is only one answer to Bill 27 the Klein Dictatorship's declaration of Class War: A PROVINCE WIDE GENERAL STRIKE BY ALL WORKERS Bill 27 is just another battle in the Class War, a war that the Bosses declared on us back in 1995. We almost had a General Strike then, but the labour movement failed to bring down the Government. Let's not make the same mistake now. CLASS WAR HAS BEEN DECLARED IT'S TIME TO FIGHT BACK IT'S TIME TO BRING DOWN THE BOSSES GOVERNMENT AND THEIR CAPITALIST DICTATORSHIP IN ALBERTA Media Release: March, 2003 The Alberta Government has dismissed a call by its own backbench members as well as city councils and social agencies across the province asking for an increase in the minimum wage. Currently Alberta has the lowest minimum wage in Canada, at $5.90 per hour. While Tory MLA's have awarded themselves wage increased of over 20% they expect workers in Alberta to live on starvation wages. Human Resources Minister Clint Dunford's arrogant dismissal of even this modest call for low paid workers to share in the Alberta Advantage, shows this government cares more for its business buddies then for those who produce the wealth in this province, we the workers and our families. We need a Living Wage in Alberta, not a minimum wage, says the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) In Alberta the minimum wage is a guarantee of living below the poverty level. It forces workers to have to work longer, harder and in more than one job just to make ends meet. Clint Dunford's comments that very few workers in Alberta earn the minimum wage, and those that do are predominately students, reflects this governments arrogance. It is arrogance worthy of Marie Antoinette. Social Planning agencies have shown that workers in Edmonton would have to earn $10 per hour with a benefit package including health care, dental and extended health, and pharamacare plans to be able to live above the poverty level. This is the MINIMUM a worker needs to live in Alberta. While the province is booming, it's not a boom for us. It's a boom for business, especially big business. In the last provincial budget, business taxes were lower than even those paid by the lowest paid worker. As workers we are tired of living from hand to mouth, of having to work longer and harder just to get by. "I owe, I owe, so off to work I go" is nothing to be proud of, especially when the bosses are pocketing the profits of the boom, giving us the crumbs. Every business can afford to pay a living wage starting at $10 per hour and give workers benefits (coverage of health care premiums, a supplementary medical and dental plan). Media Release: December, 2002 K-BRO Edmonton and its Calgary plant, which are responsible for cleaning all of the hospital laundry in Alberta are now cleaning for B.C. hospitals while unionized workers get their walking papers. We Support BC Workers, We Oppose K-BRO profiteering from union busting, low wages and benefiting from taxpayer funding. K-BRO Linen Systems of Edmonton (formerly Stork Diaper Services Alberta Ltd.) is a private monopoly that provides hospital and institutional laundry service. K-BRO has directly benefited from Alberta's move to contract out and privatize health services since 1995. In 1995 Laundry workers in Calgary General Hospital, members of CUPE Local 8 went on a Wildcat strike to stop the contracting out of their jobs. This strike lasted ten weeks and resulted in a two-year delay in the contracting out of their work. K-BRO was waiting in the wings to steal their jobs and to profit off public funds. K-BRO had been contracted to provide laundry services to several Edmonton Hospitals prior to taking over all the hospital laundry services in Alberta. This company is a jewel in the crown of the privateers like the Tory Government and their pals in the National Citizens Coalition, the Alliance Party and the Fraser Institute. Unfortunately for everyone else this company has benefited from public funding for private profit. While the promoters of privatization and contracting out like to talk about saving money for government and creating a competitive market place, K-BRO is a prime example of exactly the opposite. It is a monopoly across Canada in institutional cleaning, it exploits lower paid workers in order to make a profit, and once it gains control of taxpayer funded laundry equipment in hospitals, it uses this to capitalize further construction and expansion of its laundry services. Once it has a monopoly over laundry services it begins to increase its charges. In Toronto in 1984 K-BRO was contracted to provide laundry services to the Homes for the Aged. As it had in Edmonton, K-BRO used its monopoly ownership of Toronto's central laundry service to make enough profit (by expanding its use of the city owned facility to contract out to other agencies for laundry services) to build its own facility that would compete with the city service. In 1998 K-BRO declared it wasn't making enough profit off the city operation, and went into direct competition with it. Thus the taxpayers of Toronto and Ontario paid for K-BRO to become a laundry Monopoly in Toronto. This is how these privateers do business, they use our labour for which they pay below union rates, and they use our taxes to make their profit, and they insure their profit by creating a monopoly that can charge whatever it wants. They directly benefit as a monopoly whenever government privatizes laundry services. As a monopoly laundry service they attracted the interest of venture capitalist Warren Buffet and his Berkshire Hathaway Group of Boston who bought majority shares in K-BRO in 1998. K-BRO has its headquarters in Edmonton, but it now promotes the privatization of laundry services in hospitals across Canada. K-BRO Is Not As Effective As Public Service Delivery of Laundry Services Studies in Alberta and BC have shown once they have a monopoly on laundry services they profit by paying low wages and once they have a monopoly on the services they increase their prices. Earlier this year MJN INC a British Columbia contract management and consulting company recommended that the Nanaimo Regional General Hospital terminate their contract and to purchase the plant and equipment for self-operation. Again a hospital district had to buy back its own laundry services after they were privatized. Despite K-BRO's obvious failure to provide as effective services as in-house public sector workers, they are being handed a monopoly in BC. The B.C. government has declared open season on unionized public sector workers, and is promoting the contracting out of their jobs. K-BRO and its monopoly is using this as a license to take over these jobs and ship their cleaning to Alberta until they can use low wages and taxpayer funding to build their own laundry operations. Hospital Workers in B.C. have been forced by the Government to take on K-BRO directly with blockades, pickets, and job action. The Government has arrested union leaders at their recent blockade of K-BRO in Chilliwack. The struggle workers faced in Alberta in 1995 is the same struggle that B.C. workers now face. STOP PUBLIC FUNDING FOR PRIVATE PROFIT STOP THE PROFITEERING ON LOW WAGE WORK DEFEND PUBLIC SERVICES K-BRO BENEFITS FROM UNION BUSTING Media Release: December, 2002 The Report of the Romanow Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada has left the barn door open to privateers who wish to profit from public health care. The report while condemning in principal private health delivery still allows for the contracting out and privatization of laundry, cleaning, food and other hospital support services. This is exactly the same recommendation made by Alberta's Mazankowski report on HealthCare and the Kirby Senate report. This means that monopoly contractors like K-Bro Linen services will be handed taxpayers money while unionized workers are given their walking papers. These workers, who provide support services are predominately women and new Canadians, working at hard labour low paying jobs. Even as unionized workers they are at the lower end of the wage scale. These services are some of the lower costs of hospital operations. The contracting out and privatization of their jobs means the services will be provided by companies like K-Bro who pay even lower wages. Hospitals still need food, laundry and cleaning services. These are essential to healthy patients and healthy hospitals. Contrary to the Romanow report and the assertions of right wing think tanks like the Fraser Institute, cleaning and laundry services are essential services. Without them hospitals close down, the possible spread of infection is too great without these services. The cut-backs in cleaning services in hospitals over the past decade has proven this at the cost of our lives. The spread of super bugs and opportunistic infections such as staphacoccis is evidence that cutting back cleaning operations has a medical impact on our health and on hospital services. The spread of staphacoccis infections, which can kill, only occurs in a hospital setting, it is rare to find it elsewhere. See CUPE Backgrounder: Health support services vital to patient care The provision of laundry and food services has already been contracted out in Alberta and other provinces. The quality of food has declined, plans for fast frozen microwavable food has been a disaster in Alberta and Manitoba. These experiments in privatization have been failures, yet the right wing still promotes the myth that private for profit companies can provide public services. The fact is that public services provided by unionized workers are higher quality and more cost effective. To be held to ransom by companies who have a monopoly in services is not competition, its using taxpayer funding for private profit. And that profit is made on the backs of workers through low pay, cutting corners on supplies, food, etc. and a constant increase in the cost of these services. Privateers low ball their initial bid to take over these services. To get their foot in the door they take an initial loss. Once they control the services they take over the plant, in effect getting to buy the machinery and equipment, and with their monopoly they are in a position to increase prices. Short term pain for long term gain. While the privateer profits the wages and benefits paid to the workers in these companies remains low. By allowing for the contracting out of these services the Romanow Commission has failed workers in Canada. It leaves the door open for the full privatization of health care in Canada. These jobs and workers are the thin of the edge wedge. If their jobs are expendable, if their services can be contracted out to privateers what stops hospitals from contracting out other services, such as lab techs, radiologists etc. It opens the door to transnational corporations to take over or compete for these services, under NAFTA and other international free trade agreements. Aramark, Sodexho and other American based service contractors now provide food services in our hospitals and long term care facilities. They are an extension of the hotel industry, and rather then being competitive they actually are monopolizing the marketplace. Further expansion of contracting out will open up our public health care system to so called "international competition" by these monopolies. While declaring their is no room for private health care competing with the Canadian single payer plan, Romanow has allowed for exactly that by allowing for hospitals to privatize laundry, cleaning and food services. The Romanow Commission was to come up with a plan to reform Health Care in Canada, to address the ideological battle between those promoting privatization and those who believe in a public health care system. In siding with the privateers Romanow HAS left the door open for privatization, his public declarations to the contrary not withstanding. Romanow is the darling of the Social Democratic left and the labour movement in Canada, being a long time New Democrat and former Saskatchewan Premier. Truth speaks to power, let's look at his labour record. As Premier of Saskatchewan during the Saskatchewan Nurses Strike he declared the nurses an essential service and ordered them back to work. He smashed the strike. The use of back to work legislation and the declaration of nurses as an essential service is a violation of international labour law which declares that workers have right to free collective bargaining. He did not order the employer to bargain, since in effect his government was the employer, instead he used the big stick of anti-labour back to work legislation against the Saskatchewan Nurses Federation. How many times does Romanow have to prove he is no friend of labour. He has proven it in a big way with his Medicare recommendations. Once again a Social Democratic Leader of the New Democrats has shown the party is no friend of workers, only greedy for state power like the other political parties. Unions associated with the New Democrats should seriously consider why they are affiliated to a political party that when in power acts no differently than the other capitalist political parties. Romanow proves that the once in power the party and ideology are irrelevant, maintaining "law, order and good government" for capitalism is what political power is all about. His recommendations for Medicare prove that. Once again workers are sacrificed for the good of the capitalist system. He has given carte blanche to the Campbell government in B.C. to smash the public sector unions in hospitals, by allowing for the contracting out of jobs. He has, with a wink and a nod, approved after the fact, provincial governments such as Alberta, Ontario and Nova Scotia, which have already contracted out these services. The fight for the unionized public delivery of health care in Canada is not over. Workers must mobilize against the contracting out of any public health care jobs. This is not a sectoral battle, or one of over who has union jurisdiction over these workers, this is class war. Every health care job sacrificed is another nail in the coffin of our public health care system, a system each and everyone one of us relies on. Thus every struggle to save jobs in health care cries out for all of our solidarity, to mobilize mass support on the picket lines to save those jobs. In Alberta in 1995 unionized laundry workers in Calgary (mainly immigrant women) showed the way to resist the contracting out and privatization of health care. They walked out in a wildcat strike, to stop the contracting out of their jobs to K-Bro. The labour movement failed to mobilize a mass strike in their support. After ten days they won their strike but eventually lost their jobs to contracting out. That defeat has led to the slippery slope of privatization and contracting out that Romanow now recommends. That defeat meant that K-Bro now runs all the hospital laundry services in Alberta and is expanding into B.C. as the Campbell government attacks BC Hospital workers as Ralph Klein did in Alberta. The lesson is clear, the laundry workers showed how to battle against the privateers, to use our power as workers to walk off the job, regardless of contracts or the law. As workers we must support every strike against the privatization of health care in Canada. These are no longer just workplace issues, they are public strikes to save our public health care system. Any attempt to privatize these jobs must be met with mass mobilizations and a General Strike. Not one-hospital services job must be lost or we will lose our public health care system to the privateers! Media Release: December, 2002 A radical critique of Capitalism demands that we move beyond the pro and anti Kyoto debate. The fact is that Kyoto IS flawed. It is a "capitalist solution" to Climate Change and the ecological crisis we face. The Kyoto accord allows for nations and corporations to develop technological and capitalist/market driven solutions for green house gas emissions. It allows for the capitalist ideology of pollution credits which is one of its key market principles. Kyoto is flawed because it arises out of the sustainable development ideology that is capitalism's answer to the ecological crisis of development. It is the belief that capitalism can be sustainable, which is contradicted by the simple fact that capitalism needs to grow and accumulate in order to be sustained. There can be no limits to growth applied to the market, or else capitalism will go into a crisis. It is exactly this need to accumulate and grow that has created the ecological crisis. Sustainable development means many things to many people, in this case to capitalists it means growth, accumulation and profit that is ongoing. Any social or technological changes made, such as addressing the environmental impacts of resource extraction and manufacturing means that corporations will tinker with technology that cleans up their dirty businesses. The primary business of extraction and production will not essentially change it will just be more "environmentally friendly". Kyoto was drafted as the outcome of the UN Rio conference on the environment and sustainable development. It was the UN's way of addressing the ecological crisis of capitalism. It coincided with the development of international free trade agreements. Kyoto speaks in the same language as the free trade agreements. It allows corporations and their governments to come up with solutions to reduce green house gases in their own way at their own speed, as long as those emissions are reduced to 1990 levels. The accord and the whole sustainable development model is a corporatist model. Kyoto says we only wish to ameliorate the worst excesses of capitalist development, not eliminate it as the source of the environmental crisis. The debate pro and anti- Kyoto does not go to the root of the problem. Capitalism is the source of climate change. It is the modern historical source of environmental destruction and change since it is based on production for profit rather than for social use. Since the Industrial revolution and the creation of coal fired mass production, "the dark satanic mills", the environment has been seriously affected by the pollution of the technology and the products of capitalism.1 In the past 100 years, environmental degradation has been greater than in the previous thousand.2 This rapid acceleration of the ecological crisis has not just impacted the regions where production takes place, but the whole globe. So if Capitalism is the root cause of our environmental crisis why then are we discussing Kyoto? Kyoto reflects the attempt by governments, corporations and civil society (NGO's, environmentalists, and the labour movement) to ameliorate the worst environmental excesses of capitalism. Kyoto is defended as a reform limiting capitalist excess. Yet the labour movement is divided on this issue, as are politicians, scientists and corporations IT'S ALL ABOUT JOBS Capitalist production equals jobs. Change the nature of production and you impact the lives of working people who will defend their current means of livelihood, and who can blame them. This is the defensive aspect of class struggle. Since the Luddites smashed the factory machines in the 1820's, in favour of home-based production, the struggle of the working class has been to hold back the inevitable tide of change which capitalism brings. The Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL), the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), the Canadian Autoworkers (CAW) and the Communications Energy and Paperworkers (CEP) are promoting Kyoto in order to save jobs. The Alberta Building Trades Council, representing trades and construction unions, joined the Alberta Government in opposing Kyoto. They want to save jobs. The house of labour is not as divided as it may first appear. Unions pro and con see Kyoto as impacting on jobs. The AFL/CLC/CAW/CEP say that a transition fund must be set up to create economic security of workers impacted by Kyoto. The Building Trades say the same thing. Both the construction workers (building trades) and the gas plant workers (CEP) see Kyoto impacting on oil sands and energy plant expansion in Alberta. Neither is challenging the root cause of the environmental health problem of production in a capitalist system. The building trade unions taking a short-term view say that this will impact on their jobs by reducing oil sands expansion projects. In fact Kyoto favours retrofitting, which their members will do. The pro Kyoto unions talk about transition funding to replace lost jobs, and to create new ones. This does not challenge the fact that capitalist production is the source of our environmental crisis. Green technologies and green energy have been available for over thirty years, if they have not been developed its simply because they are currently capital intensive. Green energy and technologies can be adapted without challenging the capitalist system. In fact that is exactly what the Kyoto accord promotes. Supporters hope Kyoto will force capitalism to reform its nastier environmental practices and still make a profit. This contradiction is played out in society as a whole. The government of Alberta staying true to its neo-liberal pro privatization ideology backed by the free market think tanks like the Fraser Institute, and the Federal Canadian Alliance Party opposes Kyoto. The Federal Liberals, Bloc Quebecois and New Democrats support Kyoto. Some provinces support Kyoto others are leery, but Alberta is the most outspoken, as the voice of one dominant sector of the energy industry and right wing business interests. The Federal government is made out to be the straw dog enemy of Alberta, always an effective tool for pulling the wool over Albertans eyes. Comparisons are made between the National Energy Policy (NEP), hurting Alberta and Kyoto being its modern equivalent. In reality the NEP had nothing to do with the Alberta economic decline in the 1980's, except as a coincidence. The oil crisis of the 1970's and 1980's eventually meant that Alberta would also face a decline, even though we had a decade of boom due to this same oil crisis. Once again the capitalist cycle of boom and bust played itself out. Alberta politicians used the federal NEP as its scapegoat to distract workers being laid off during the bust. The free marketers first tried to claim that there was no Climate Change. Except they cannot explain away the current two-year drought in Australia, which is the worst in recorded history. When their scientists were found wanting, they claimed that Climate Change impacts were exaggerated. Except then they could not explain the brown cloud of pollution covering Asia and the pacific basin. Finally they have accepted Climate Change and global warming, but want to push for capital protection, pollution exchange credits, carbon sink credits, and other market models of sustainable development they have been pushing since the Reagan Thatcher era. The fact is that some capitalists will profit from Kyoto and some capitalists will be negatively impacted. Some jobs will disappear, some new jobs will be created. Some expansion of resource extraction will be temporarily curtailed, some new technologies will develop, as will new green energy resources. The Kyoto accord exits to ameliorate the worst effects of capitalism on the environment, its a stop gap measure that does not challenge capitalist production. CAPITALISM KILLS Workers live in the communities, which are exposed to environmental pollution; they work in the plants producing this pollution. A recent study3 has shown that pollution from Hamilton steel mills increases the chance of people living in that city suffering genetic damage and an increase in cases of cancer. This fact is also known to the workers in the plant represented by the Steelworkers Union who have bargained for early retirement packages for coke-oven workers in the mills because their health is affected by this pollution. The pollution and environmental hazards of capitalist production are not just a health and safety issue for unions they are an issue for our communities. We must recognize that what is a health and safety issue in the plant is an environmental issue in society. The two are linked. We need to make every battle over health and safety an environmental battle, and every environmental battle a health and safety issue. We need to move beyond workplace-based health and safety and create a movement for Environmental Health. Capitalism is killing us for profit. IT'S NOT ABOUT JOBS: IT'S ABOUT OUR SURVIVAL This issue is not about jobs it's about our health, the health of our families and our planet. For workers to move beyond the just defending their jobs, pro or anti-Kyoto means that we must pose an alternative to the idea of sustainable capitalist development. The ecological crisis we face on a global scale is a result of capitalism. A kinder greener capitalism is not the answer. The free marketers are correct in defending their self-interest as capitalist apologists. They make no bones about it. They see the environmental crisis as a crisis of capitalism. It would do well for labour, social and environmental activists to realize this as well. You cannot challenge the environmental crisis of capitalism without challenging capitalism itself. It is not a matter of being either pro or anti Kyoto. Capitalism is not sustainable. The challenge we face is to replace capitalism with production for use, not profit. To abolish the wage system and replace it with a common ownership of production, to produce goods we need, under conditions that enhance our lives and our environment, not degrade them. Socialism, the democratic self-management of our industries and communities is our alternative to Kyoto and sustainable capitalism. Footnotes. Media Release: November 25, 2002 The victory of the Shaw Workers in winning their right to have a union has been a seven-month battle between David and Goliath. The Goliath in this case was the EDE and its refusal to bargain in good faith, in its efforts to smash the union. In the end the Shaw workers, mainly women, won. Over the seven-month battle the EDE was charged for labour relations infractions, and wasted millions of taxpayers dollars in their futile effort to deny these workers their democratic right to belong to a union. This strike has made this the City of Shame rather than a City of Champions. It has cost taxpayers millions, and part of the current tax increase we face will be used to pay off the EDE bills for union busting. The strike may be over but the battle isnt. The EDE represents the business class in this city, not the majority of working class taxpayers who pay for it. The EDE should be fired by City Council for their forcing these workers to go on strike and for wasting millions of dollars trying to break their union. The IWW Edmonton Branch calls on Edmonton unions, taxpayers, and citizens to call City Hall and demand they Fire the EDE and replace the management at the Shaw Convention Centre. We demand City Council fire the Board of the EDE and replace it with a board that includes ordinary citizens, workers and union members, rather than being the old boys network it currently is. We further demand that City Council review all its arms length corporations, including EPCOR and appoint employees, labour representatives, consumer advocates and environmentalists, to these boards. Without the voice of Edmonton workers on boards like the EDE and EPCOR, business will run roughshod over its workers and the citizens of this city. Edmonton Sun, March 23, 2002 While Premier Ralph Klein measures support from Tory members at the PC convention, he should know that just outside the hall he has very little, some lobby groups say. Hundreds from special interest groups and unions will be outside the Alberta Progressive Conservative party's annual meeting at the Shaw Conference Centre this weekend. "We have a one-party state. The Tories have got to go," said Walter Plawiuk, an Industrial Workers of the World delegate. The workers group, along with other organizations such as the Council of Canadians, met Tory supporters as they entered the conference centre last night. Plawiuk said his group is protesting the "government attacks on teachers and workers rights," referring to the implementation of arbitration legislation, known as Bill 12. The Alberta Federation of Labour will attend the convention today, handing out leaflets to remind Tories about the government's "hypocrisy" of passing a resolution last year calling for the elimination of health-care premiums, only to recently increase them. "We think rank and file party members should be upset with the government," said AFL spokesman Gil McGowan. The AFL will be joined by the United Nurses of Alberta who are upset with government policy on health care. "Clearly they're on the road to privatize," said UNA vice-president Bev Dick, who will be just outside the centre today. The Alberta Union of Provincial Employees and the Alberta Teachers' Association aren't officially sending delegates to protest at the convention. However, both expect members will rally on their own. John Carpay, Alberta director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, said he would've gladly paid the roughly $200 registration fee to attend the convention as an observer, but you have to be a Tory member to do that. Press Release March 20, 2002 We have an opportunity to moblize a mass protest against the Government attacks on teachers and workers rights, the Mazankowski move to privatize health care, attacks on environmental protection (suing over the Kyoto accord), claiming a phoney deficit, attacking the rights of municipalities to control large scale corportate farms,the upcoming G8 meeting, tuition increases, corporate tax breaks, privatization of public education, clawing back funding for childrens services, clawbacks on seniors benefits, tax and user fee increases on workers and the poor, etc. Meet Friday at 5pm at the Shaw Convention Centre to protest
against the
coronation of King Klein. Lets show the Alberta Government that
they do
not speak for the mass of Albertans but for the special
interests of
their corporate pals. The Friday Convention Schedule is: Leaflet handed out at the Candlelight Vigil for Public Education on March 17, 2002, at the Alberta Legislature Workers and citizens of Alberta should be outraged that the
Klein
Government has rammed through criminal legislation that outlaws
the
democratic right to strike by teachers, a right upheld by
Alberta courts
and by international labour laws. Not satisfied with forcing
the teachers
back to work and declaring their right to strike void, they
went even
further in determining what arbitrators can grant as a wage
settlement, and
voided any bargaining around working conditions.
The government has used the big stick of state power to strip
teachers of
their rights, it is clear this government intends to smash the
teachers
bargaining organization the ATA. This is a lesson for all
workers, who are
unionized in Alberta, that we have no rights unless we take
them ourselves.
The Labour Relations board and the Minister are determined to
protect the
bosses by allowing scabs, forcing workers to limit their
picketing,
declaring strikes illegal and making groups of workers
"essential" services.
It is time for ALL WORKERS, organized or not, to PROTEST
against this
bosses government. When workers challenge the government in
court and they
succeed, as the Teachers did, the government merely changes the
rules of
the game. THIS IS CLASS WAR.
The attack on the Teachers and the ATA is an attack on all
unionized
workers in Alberta.
It is time we fought back.
The Industrial Workers of the World calls on workers and
citizens to
Protest at the upcoming Progressive Conservative Convention at
the Shaw
Convention Centre March 22-24. Along with the attacks on our
democratic
right to organize and strike, this government intends to
privatize
healthcare, education, social services, and all aspects of the
public
sector. In a boom economy the greedy fat cat capitalists demand
more and
more profits, and this government intends to feed them with low
paid
workers, temporary and non-union jobs and a fire sale on all
public sector
services.
It is Time for the Labour Movement to Act. IT IS TIME FOR A
GENERAL STRIKE!
Protests are not enough, we need to shut this province down,
and remind the
bosses and their puppets in the legislature that without us not
a single
dime of profit can be made. It is the workers who create all
wealth, not
the capitalists. It is workers who teach our children, not the
President
of Syncrude. It is workers who heal us not Private Insurance
Companies.
Let's send the bosses and Klein a message they will never
forget: Let's
shut this province down!
WE HAVE THE POWER! Vue Weekly January 24, 2002
Margaret Crangs relatives still debate what she actually did in Spain.
Crang, who in 1933 became the first woman elected to Edmontons city council, was
also one of the 1,500 or so Canadians who joined the resistance in the Spanish Civil War.
One of her nephews, Donald Crang, believes she also worked as a correspond
ent for the Toronto Star. Another mentions talk of her working as a nurse and
having an intimate relationship with Dr. Norman Bethune, who pioneered his mob
ile field hospital techniques alongside Crang on the bloody battlefields of
Spain. My mother used to say [Margaret] fired a shot, recalls Crangs nephew,
Robert Allin of Calgary. But it was always said with a twinkle in the eye.
Regardless of whether she wielded a notepad, a rifle or a nurses thermometer,
all of Crangs relatives share at least one memory: she risked her life overseas
because she felt compelled to join the fight against fascism. Its amazing that
they went over there and did what they did, Robert Allins wife Pat says about
international volunteers like Crang, who died in Victoria a decade ago. Margaret
was an amazing women. Shes someone people might want to find out more about.
Edmonton labour activist and historian Eugene Plawiuk knows a fair amount about Crang already,
but he also wants people to learn more about her life and the lives of the 150 to 200 other Albertans
who went to Spain. Plawiuk is a member of the Industrial Workers of the World-launched Alberta Spanish
Civil War Memorial Foundation, a new committee whose goal is creating some sort of memorial for the
provinces forgotten veterans of the war. The group is just getting started now, so details of its
plans have yet to take shape. But after memorials were erected in Toronto, Ottawa and Victoria over
the last couple of years for Canadians who served in Spain between 1936 and 1939, Plawiuk feels its
time something was done in Alberta.
They were the first broad-based, international, working-class, anti-fascist
army, he says about the largest global volunteer mobilization of the 20th century. What you had was a period of
high unemployment; a lot of people from very diverse backgrounds, from accountants to trade unionists, went.
The history of the Spanish Civil War is shared by a lot of people.
This Canuck kills fascists
That history has been captured in prose and film by many people, too. From George Orwells Homage to Catalonia
to Ernest Hemingways For Whom the Bell Tolls to Ken Loachs film Land and Freedom, the story of the thousands of people
who fought with the international brigades is well-documented. Volunteers with very little military training joined the
unsuccessful campaign to stop the military coup led by General Franco, who, with help from his pals Hitler and Mussolini,
overthrew Spains democratically elected government. Most of the Canadians who fought were part of the MacKenzie-Papineau
Battalion, named in honour of the 1837 rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada.
Despite that link to a domestic struggle
for freedom, the Canadian government didnt support citizens who went to Spain. In fact, the Liberal government of the day
passed the Foreign Enlistment Act in 1936, decreeing any Canadian who fought in a foreign war to be a criminal. (None of
the Mac-Paps ever faced criminal chargesmore than half were killed while in Europe.) They didnt get any support from
their government, Memorial Foundation chair Tommie Gallie, a visual artist in Edmonton, says about the men and women
who ignored Ottawas command. But they werent mercenaries. They werent soldiers of fortune. They had some ideology
in their heads and they took a stand.
The government of Canada has never come out strongly in support of that
stand. In the fall of 1997, when surviving World War II merchant marines were embroiled in an ultimately successful fight
for federal compensation, NDP MP Nelson Riis introduced a Private Members Bill in the House of Commons seeking official
veterans status (a mostly symbolic act) for the MacKenzie-Papineau Battalion. We owe it to these individuals, Hansard
quotes Riis as saying. There are probably no more than 40 left in all of Canada. Therefore the cost is infinitesimal.
I think it would be appropriate to seek some method of saying thanks to the people who led the way in our Canadian fight
against fascism and their fight for freedom and democracy.
Im just a bill
Private Members Bills need
overwhelming support to pass, however, and Riis faced opposition. My first difficulty is the tendency to revisit history
and through todays sensibilities try to apply retroactive judgments about who fought on the right side and who fought on
the wrong side, Quebec Liberal MP Robert Bertrand said in parliamentary debate. I would not in any way want to encourage
Canadians to feel that they have some sanction to take part in the conflicts in places such as Afghanistan, Algeria or Angola,
added Edmonton Reform MP Peter Goldring, then the official oppositions defence critic.
Interestingly, the connection
to current events in Afghanistan struck a chord with most people interviewed for this story. Gallie said the need to recognize
Mac-Pap veterans is more pressing now because of what Canadian soldiers are doing these days, while both of Crangs nephews,
neither of whom sees any strong rationale for a memorial, mentioned John Walker, the American citizen caught fighting with the
Taliban. They felt they had to go, Gordon Crang said about his aunt, but they werent defending our democracy.
Reached over the phone at his office in Vancouver, where hes worked as the president of a company that builds affordable Third World
housing since being defeated in the last election, Riis says the spring 1998 defeat of his bill (only NDP and Bloc Qubcois
MPs voted for it and it lost 171-66) was shocking. The people who spoke in opposition, he recalls, I think they were feeling
sheepish. Most of the people said, Its a good idea, but... There were a lot of but speeches.
Riis is fully supportive
of efforts to create memorials for Canadian veterans of the Spanish Civil War. Someday, he believes, Ottawa will come around
and make some sort of official statement on top of the statues and plaques it has already symbolically endorsed.
Eventually, he says, well be more thoughtful and compassionate.
A five-year plan
Edmonton could have a memorial in five years, says Gallie, depending on fundraising results. But he doesnt think it will be on the legislative
grounds, like the boulder from Spain adorned with a bronze plaque that sits outside the government building in Victoria.
City property is a better bet here, he saysespecially considering the support people like Margaret Crang received from
Edmontons city council and the Edmonton Public School Board, groups that were stocked with labour representatives in the
1930s, according to Plawiuk.
If and when a memorial is dedicated in Edmonton, there will no doubt be speeches.
And some of the remarks may echo the comments Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson made last October at the unveiling
of Ottawas tribute: Canadians do things for many reasons. We have a free society in which we give each other room to
make decisions, to express ourselves, to have different political points of view. And the Mac-Paps decided that this
cause was important enough for them to face the anger of their own government; to face the consternation of many
of their fellow citizens at that time and for decades to come; and to face a life afterwards in which very few people
would take the least interest in the kind of idealism that had sent them to Spain in the first place. Press Release July 23, 2001
Temporary/Casual Quality Control Technicians working for
Statistics
Canada on the Census are organizing an information picket over
SWEAT SHOP
working conditions in their plant.
Workers are housed in an airless windowless office complex, and
are
expected to work seven days a week, ten hours a day without
overtime pay.
Many have not yet been paid for their work. At least one worker
had to
wait 53 days before getting paid. Workers claim the conditions
in the
plant contravene Federal and Provincial Labour laws.
When the casual workers organized to demand their right to
overtime pay
and better working conditions at least one organizer was fired.
Other
workers are being disciplined by being put on call back for
work, after
being promised employment until the end of July. The majority
of these
workers are students working for the summer.
The casual workers are organizing an information to demand fair
treatment, not sweatshop treatment from Stats-Canada.
Press Release May 22, 2001 A private members bill was introduced onto the government order
papers by
Tony Abbott (PC-Drayton Valley-Calmar). Motion 532 urges the
government "to
ensure employees are not forced to join labour unions in order
to secure
employment in either the private or public sector." This kind
of anti-union
legislation is ironically known as Right To Work.
The Industrial Workers of the World, Edmonton General
Membership Branch,
calls on the labour movement to come together to oppose this
disreputable
attempt by the Alberta Government to introduce right to work
legislation
through the back door.
While a private members bill is not the same as a government
motion, in
1995 a private members bill led to a full government inquiry
into Right to
Work. That inquiry dismissed any idea of implementing Right To
Work laws in
Alberta.
This motion should prompt all Unions and labour activists in
the province
to join together in Solidarity to oppose any attempt to
introduce Right To
Work laws in Alberta.
Alberta has the worst labour legislation in Canada and has been
identified
as being in violation of international labour standards by the
International Labour Organization and the International
Confederation of
Free Trade Unions.
Clearly we need laws to protect workers not legislative attacks
on workers
rights to belong to a union.
The IWW is committed to defeating any Right To Work
legislation, beginning
with Motion 532, and calls on the labour movement in Alberta to
join us in
this effort.
Press Release July, 1999 The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) will be holding an information meeting for
Whyte Avenue workers on Sunday, August 1, between 11am and 2pm at Room 402-10324-82 (Whyte) Ave.
The IWW has been postering and leafleting Whyte Avenue since January, encouraging
service workers in the area to unionize.
"We have had a good response to our information campaign," says Greg King, Edmonton
Branch Secretary. "We are holding this information meeting for Whyte Avenue workers
who are interested in learning more about their basic employment rights and why its in
their best interest to unionize."
The Wobblies, as they are popularly known, have focused their union information drive in
this area because of the diversity of service businesses on Whyte Avenue that employ
young workers.
"Many young workers do not know their basic rights let alone their right to join a union,"
says King.
Labour News, monthly newspaper of the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL), May 1999
Founded in 1905 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), or Wobblies as they are
popularly known, was the first Industrial union in North America. Following in the
tradition of the Knights of Labour the wobblies were steadfastly opposed to craft unionism
and the business union tradition of Samuel Gompers. The wobblies organized across craft
lines in the mining and lumber industries. They organized women as well as men, black and
Chinese workers as well as white workers. Their greatest success was with traveling
workers, especially in the mining and lumber industry and the unemployed. In the United States and Canada the wobs were extremely popular and influential in
developing the first resource based unions in the western states and provinces. In Alberta
the wobs organized the mine workers in Drumheller and Medicine Hat. After World War I they
were subjected to a series of anti-red/anti-communist laws in both countries. Standing up
for free speech had long been a wobbly tradition, in fact they originated the free speech
fight, standing on street corners extolling workers to join the union AND overthrow the
capitalist system. Often they stood directly across from the Salvation Army band and
preachers, hence the famous wobbly song written by Joe Hill; You’ll Get Pie In The
Sky When You Die. In the early twenties the Wobblies in Edmonton, though still banned, organized the
first unemployed workers union to protest post war conditions. The promoters of the One
Big Union and the General Strikes of 1919 were influenced by the IWW if they weren’t
members. Later the Committee for Industrial Organizing (CIO) would model themselves on the
industrial unionism of the wobs. The revolutionary unionism of the wobblies as expressed in their preamble was two fold;
the employing class and the working class had nothing in common and the aim of
revolutionary unionism was to abolish the wage system. The later demand had been around
since the beginning of unionism in North America and had also been the demand of the
Knights of Labour. Though banned and subjected to constant government oppression and continued conflict
with the AFL-CIO the wobblies continued to organize the unorganized and marginal workers. By the late fifties and early sixties with the success of the post war economy and the
rise of large scale industrial and business unionism, the wobblies receded and were often
thought to be an anachronism from the past. In the late sixties and early seventies the wobblies were given renewed life when young
working class and student radicals joined the wobblies. In the early seventies Edmonton as
well as other cities across Canada saw a revival of the IWW. Unfortunately after a short burst of activity the wobs in Canada once again became
inactive except for individual members. A couple of the best known of these is Tom Wayman
the working class poet and Mark Leier a Labour Historian. Over the past five years the wobblies have grown in strength focusing on organizing the
unorganized especially young workers, as well as organizing dual card memberships in some
trades unions such as the ILWU, Carpenters and IBEW on the West Coast. The recent organizing drive to unionize Borders Books was started by IWW members who
then worked with the UFCW to get union certification for Borders workers. The organization
of the young workers at the Cheesecake Factory in Victoria, B.C. into the CAW was helped
by workers who already were members of the IWW. The Edmonton Branch was formed last fall. Its members are predominately young people
under thirty. A few ‘old timers’ from the seventies who are active in the labour
movement have also reactivated their memberships. The Edmonton Branch is looking at organizing the unorganized, especially young people.
They launched a UNIONIZE WHYTE campaign in January, postering Whyte Avenue, in the heart
of Old Strathcona. This area is rife with retail stores, restaurants and bars, popular for
employing young people at minimum wages and working conditions and popular with those same
young people as an area to hang out in. The poster campaign is a propaganda effort which has already drawn the attention of
businesses on Whyte. Its an outreach program that the Edmonton branch hopes will be able
to draw out unorganized workers to a pubic meeting on unionizing that they will be holding
in the spring. The branch has also made presentations on unions and organizing to meetings and
‘raves’ organized by university and high school students in Edmonton. The branch sees its purpose as building initial union contacts and drives and working
with the appropriate sectoral unions that are affiliated with the house of labour to gain
certification. Currently the branch is organizing a union drive in the food services
sector. The other activity is to promote a radical rank and file perspective on struggles. This
includes distribution of the monthly wobbly paper: Industrial Worker on picket lines and
around protests and job actions. Unlike unions which are job or trades based, the wobblies will sign up anyone who is
not a ‘boss’. Once you are member you are member where ever you are employed.
This makes every wob a potential organizer on the job, talking union where ever they work
or volunteer. There is a revival across Canada with branches in Victoria, Winnipeg, Ottawa and
Toronto. The annual convention is held on the labour day weekend and this year, for the
first time ever, it will be held in Winnipeg. It seems appropriate to have the convention
in that city on the 80th Anniversary of the General Strike that was so
influenced by IWW and the One Big Union (OBU). |
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