Send us your labour convention resolutions!

With a federal election upon us and a handful of labour conventions on the horizon, how are delegates and rank-and-file members working to politicize their federations? Send us proposed resolutions by September 29 to share amongst the RankandFile.ca readership. Share your draft resolutions for union members across Canada to use. There are no shortage of issues for us to support:

• Fight for $15
• Save Canada Post
• Transforming the Temporary Foreign Worker Program
• Repealing C-377, C-525, C-59, etc.
• Improving CPP and Canada’s pension plans
• Tarsands, pipelines, and environmental justice
• Support for an inquiry into murdered and missing Indigenous women
• OHS enforcement

 

Check out the article by David Bush and Doug Nesbitt on “Workers, Unions, and the Election” for more ideas. Here are some examples:

2016: Year of the Whistleblower (Saskatchewan Federation of Labour)

The SFL will: declare 2016 The Year Of The Whistleblower and coordinate a forceful workplace and public campaign to promote the right of all workers to speak out in the public’s interest.

The SFL will: ask the Provincial Government to declare 2016 The Year Of The Whistleblower.

We want this Because: Saskatchewan has become a province where whistleblowers are threatened and harassed, as seen in recent high profile cases involving the health and post-secondary education sectors. The muzzling of frontline civil servants, scientists, educators, health care workers and other public employees threatens our democratic foundations. While the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) recognizes that academic freedom includes the right “to express freely one’s opinion about the institution, its administration, or the system in which one works”, this right to speak out is increasingly under threat not only in universities, but in all publicly-funded institutions.

Opposition to C-377 (Saskatchewan Federation of Labour)

The SFL will: support a legal challenge of Bill C-377 (An Act to Amend the Income Tax Act (Labour Organizations)) if the new federal government does not repeal this regressive legislation, and will work to provide legal, financial, administrative or other support to affiliates that are unable to comply with the terms of Bill C-377.

We want this Because: Bill C-377 was proclaimed in 2015 amidst widespread opposition in the Senate. The legislation was promoted and supported by anti-union organizations like LabourWatch and the Merit Contractors Association. The legislation has been opposed by privacy experts, representatives from the financial industry, provincial governments, legal experts, professional accounting associations, unions and the Houses of Labour. The legislation singles out labour organizations with unprecedented and costly financial and organizational transparency standards and implications. Similar legislation in the United States was designed to expose the political strategies and spending of labour organizations with the intent of publicly shaming these activities.