Author Archives: CanucksBanter

Top seven reasons unions matter to young people

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By Tria Donaldson   August 22, 2013   http://rabble.ca

Tria Donaldson is a youth activist with roots in the environmental movement, the labour movement, and Indigenous Rights. Tria is a senior Communications Officer at CUPE National, and on the board of rabble.ca.

Top seven reasons unions matter to young people

Young workers today face many challenges in the workplace.

Entering the workplace is the first challenge. The youth employment rate is almost double the national average, at 13.6 per cent. You hear stories all the time of new graduates who are unable to find work in their field. Unpaid internships and short term coop placements are the norm for many workers.

Job insecurity is rampant. Many young workers have to work two or three jobs to make ends meet. Part time and contract work is common.

Soaring housing prices, lack of affordable child care and crippling levels of student debt for graduates mean putting off starting a family for many, and struggling to make ends meet for others.

These were just some of the issues identified by young workers at the Canadian Union of Public Employees’ (CUPE) first ever young workers strategy session. The three day meeting brought together over 60 young people from all across Canada to have their voices heard and discuss getting young people involved in the labour movement.

There is a perception amongst union activists that young people today are apathetic and don’t care about unions, but the conversations over the three days show that young people get it and are ready to get involved.

The words below are taken directly from the young people from across Canada who participated in CUPE’s recent strategy session. They remind me of the vital work that trade unions do on behalf of all society.

1. Unions allow workers to become united and to mobilize and come together during times of collective agreements and negotiations. Unionization is important to raise the standard of living for its workers and for society and social programs.

2. Unions make life better for people everywhere. Even if you are not in a union, you enjoy things that have become the norm are there because unions have fought for that. Unions are there to raise everyone up — it should be a race to a top not a race to the bottom.

3. Unions help put fairness in the workplace. People know when they are not being treated fairly, and equate unions with fairness.

4. In a unionized workplace you have a voice and an advocate. Whether you are a worker with disability or from another group, you have voice.

5. A union is there to be strong and united and to be there for workers in their struggles.

6. We live in a global world. It is important that unions can do international solidarity work and stand up against human rights violations.

7. Unions are instrumental in fighting for workers right to safety in the workplace. It is new and young workers that are often hurt on the job, and unions push for their rights.

In a world where the role of unions is constantly questioned and attacked, these young workers spoke to the heart of the matter of why unions matter.

This meeting was part of CUPE’s ongoing work to engage young workers and honour the Year of the New and Young worker. For more information visit CUPE’s young worker webpage here.  

Trans-Pacific Partnership: Canadian groups demand end to secrecy

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By Council of Canadians    August 23, 2013

Trans-Pacific Partnership: Canadian groups demand end to secrecy

Ottawa – Ministers from the 12 Trans-Pacific Partnership countries, including International Trade Minister Ed Fast, should stop their secret negotiations and immediately make public the 26 chapters of the TPP when they meet in Brunei this week, say Canadian groups, citing precedent for transparency in previous trade negotiations of this size and scope.

“It is a scandal that a far-reaching deal like the TPP could be signed in the coming months without anyone across the 12 participating countries having seen or had a chance to challenge some of the many new restrictions an agreement will put on our ability to govern in the public interest. The only acceptable road forward for the TPP is for ministers to publish the text now before it’s too late,” says Stuart Trew, trade campaigner with the Council of Canadians, a national grassroots activist and social justice organization.

“The TPP looks more like a corporate power grab than a trade deal from what we’ve seen of it. It would impose a free-market dogma on governments and override domestic laws in a way that would be rejected if put forward through democratic legislative processes,” says Raul Burbano, program director at Common Frontiers, a network bringing together labour, human rights, environmental, and economic and social justice organizations.

The Council of Canadians and Common Frontiers point out that only two of the 26 chapters relate to trade as most people understand it. The other chapters involve restrictions on government’s ability to make health policy, the criminalization of everyday uses of the Internet, new limits on access to affordable medicines, prohibiting ‘buy local’ policies (e.g. local food), encouraging privatization, discouraging the creation of Crown corporations or new public utilities, and empowering corporations to sue governments before private tribunals outside the court system when they’re unhappy with environmental or other measures that lower profits.

The groups point out that there is a precedent for transparency in a trade negotiation of this size and scope. In July 2001, responding to public pressure about secrecy in the negotiations toward a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), North and Latin American ministers published the full text of the agreement in four languages. Former U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick called it an “important step” and an “unprecedented effort to make international trade and its economic and social benefits more understandable to the public.”

“What has changed in the past decade is that it would no longer be in the interests of countries to make the economic and social benefits of deals like the TPP understandable to the public,” says Trew.

The Council of Canadians and Common Frontiers have called for a week of action (August 22 to 31) to protest TPP secrecy in partnership with the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Universities Allied for Essential Medicines and OpenMedia.ca. More information: http://canadians.org/action-tpp.