XPost: can.politics, ont.politics, bc.politics
XPost: sk.politics, man.politics
From: damnthetorpedoes@duck.com
On Fri, 09 Aug 2013 17:50:05 -0700, Con?RCon?
wrote:
>Take THAT, Stephen Harper and Cons !
>___________________________________________________
>
>
>The Globe and Mail - August 8, 2013
>
>
>
>CAW, CEP union merger suggests greater power in numbers
>
>
>
>The Canadian labour movement has suffered from decades of decline,
>particularly in the private sector, and an increasingly hostile
>environment. As Greg Keenan reports, two of the country's biggest
>unions believe that by merging under a new leader – Jerry Dias – the new
>union will gain power and influence
>
>When Ken Lewenza needed a break last fall during difficult contract
>talks with the Detroit Three auto companies, he would wander into an
>off-track betting parlour on Bay Street in downtown Toronto to bet on
>horse races. The Canadian Auto Workers president knew within a few
>minutes whether his bets had paid off.
>
>The outcome of his biggest wager – the merger of the CAW with the
>Communications Energy and Paper Workers Union of Canada to create a
>union called Unifor – won't be known for several years.
>
>But it represents the boldest move by the Canadian labour movement to
>reverse decades of decline and restore itself to a position of power and
>influence in the national debates about politics and the economy.
>
>"We have certainly been on defence," Mr. Lewenza acknowledged Thursday
>as he and CEP president Dave Coles announced their decisions to step
>aside and make way for a new generation of leadership.
>
>The theory behind the merger is simple: Size matters.
>
>A single union with 300,000 members that is national in scope will be
>better able to fight back against hostile governments and powerful
>corporations than two unions that were more regional in nature and did
>not represent all key sectors of the economy, argues Jerry Dias, tapped
>by Mr. Lewenza and Mr. Coles to take on the job of president of the new
>union.
>
>"Our combined efforts between the two unions are to make a bold
>statement that we're going to fight to maintain the middle class," the
>54-year-old Mr. Dias, who is a veteran CAW leader, said over breakfast
>in the same Toronto hotel where negotiations with the automakers took
>place last fall.
>
>To understand how size helps, he points to the current debate about
>whether the federal government should permit U.S. telecommunications
>giant Verizon Communications Inc. to compete in the cellphone market in
>Canada against domestic companies Bell Canada, Rogers Communications
>Inc. and Telus Corp., by taking advantage of what critics say are
>"loopholes" in the government's wireless policy.
>
>Some 20,000 members of the new union work at Bell. As Mr. Dias sees it,
>the merger means 300,000 union members lobbying the government, urging
>their MPs to take a stand against Verizon and standing up for their Bell
>brothers and sisters.
>
>"When you add a sector like the telecommunications sector within a
>broader union, it just gives you more say," he said.
>
>Mr. Lewenza believes unions can still be a force if they can convince
>the broader Canadian public that the interests of their members – decent
>wages, sufficient time off the job and sustainable pensions for retirees
>– are also those of Canadians as a whole.
>
>What Unifor and all other unions are facing, however, is a hostile
>climate among Canadians who believe they have outlived their usefulness
>and that the very gains that they made have hurt the country's
>competitive position.
>
>That is reflected in part in the percentage of Canadians in the private
>sector who are represented by a union. In 1997, 16.7 per cent of the
>labour force was made up of unionized private-sector workers. By last
>year, that had fallen to 13.4 per cent, even though the number of
>Canadians who belong to unions has grown.
>
>"You've got governments attacking collective bargaining and unions as
>institutions," said Charlotte Yates, dean of the Faculty of Social
>Sciences at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., and a veteran
>observer of Canada's labour movement. "Politicians in many instances
>have turned the tables to say it's because your neighbour has three
>weeks vacation that we have public debt."
>
>Nonetheless, Prof. Yates agrees that bigger is better when it comes time
>to battle a federal government that has intervened to end legal strikes
>and has introduced legislation to force unions to divulge how they are
>spending their members' money.
>
>She believes the merger came about in part because the Canadian Labour
>Congress, a national federation of unions, has not led the charge to
>present an alternative economic and social agenda, something that the
>CAW has long believed is necessary.
>
>As for Mr. Lewenza, he will not be spending his retirement at
>racetracks, the one interest he has outside the labour movement to which
>he has dedicated 41 of his 59 years. He plans to be an ambassador for
>Unifor.
>
>"I can guarantee you I'm not going on a rocking chair."
>_____________________________________________________________________
>
>Talk is that Mr Lewenza, well-liked and very gutsy, is going to enter
>politics.
You mean he will now 'publicly' enter politics. Union leaders in this
country have been involved in 'Back-Door' politics for decades.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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