Tom Dufresne addresses the Canadian Labor Congress convention
by Tom Price
The Canadian Labour Congress, Canada’s union federation, met in Montreal, Quebec June 13-17 and reaffirmed the solidarity of Canada’s many unions and three million union workers. At the gathering the CLC celebrated its nearly 50 years of history and made plans for the future.
The CLC retained Ken Georgetti as its President and upheld its commitment to its smaller unions by electing ILWU Canada President Tom Dufresne as one of its vice presidents. A caucus of 28 smaller unions chose him along with three other VPs to represent their interests on the CLC Executive Council. Dufresne was accompanied at the meeting by ILWU Canada Third Vice President Al Le Monnier.
"ILWU Canada will continue to play an activist role within the CLC," Dufresne said.
The CLC represents unions, provincial labor federations and 137 district labor councils. It ensures that Canada’s workers have the support of the entire labor movement as they confront employers or governments increasingly hostile to their interests.
This year’s triennial convention pledged commitments to political action, coalition building, media campaigns and international solidarity. The CLC will support its members by conducting training for campaign coordinators and union organizers. Members will be trained in communications and preparation of briefs for public hearings and governmental bodies.
The CLC will fight for Canada’s highly regarded public health care. Medicare, funded by federal and provincial revenue, is under attack from corporate forces and right-wing politicians who want to under-fund it and turn it over to private corporations.
Canadians fought long and hard for national health care and the labor movement was in the thick of it. The convention pledged to fight against increasingly right-wing provincial governments and a national government that’s leaning toward American-style private health care.
The convention committed the CLC to fight for labor rights, child care, occupational safety, quality jobs, environmental protection, disability rights, public education, pay equity, pension protection, aboriginal rights and for adequate funding for cities and public control of utilities. It also pledged to work against a neo-liberal, corporate view of North American integration where transnational corporations would have more rights than people.
The CLC has the advantage of its unity to keep the labor movement strong. Canada, thanks to labor’s vigilant organizing, has one of the highest union densities in the world, with 31 percent of its workers belonging to unions.
But political troubles persist. British Columbia’s premier, Gordon Campbell, has attacked public worker wages, working conditions and pensions. He doesn’t believe they have the right to organize at all, and his actions have won the condemnation of the International Labor Organization. Canada’s Prime Minister, Paul Martin, comes from a family that owns a steamship line that has run afoul of labor in the past. The CLC will take on the task of uniting workers in all areas, ethnicities and languages under one organization and turn that into political and economic power.
The CLC’s Executive Council issued a statement against corporate integration with the U.S. It condemned the loss of civil liberties under a national security state and Canada’s integration into the U.S. Defense Dept.’s "Star Wars" plan. Trade deals like NAFTA and the WTO are not benefiting workers and the CLC wants to see them canceled. New agreements must support worker rights and fair trade. The CLC also wants the elimination of neo-liberal policies that diminish national sovereignty and open the country for corporate control.
The convention passed policy papers against privatization. In the face of trade agreements sanctifying the "investor rights" of foreign companies, the CLC warns that Canada’s vast resources could be up for grabs by multi-national corporations. Canada’s health care system, social security and pensions could also present a gold mine for private corporations. NAFTA and WTO rules could allow them to be privatized.
As part of its inclusionary policies, the CLC allows individual locals to make proposals to the body. ILWU Canada’s longshore Local 500 proposed a resolution to set up a committee to recommend how to finally implement a resolution passed at its founding convention in 1956 that called for the establishment of "an alternate political force based on the needs of workers, farmers and similar groups…interested in basic social reforms and reconstruction through our parliamentary system of governments."
In another resolution, Local 500 proposed that all candidates supported by labor should also support the CLC’s legislative program.
CLC members, including ILWU Canada, can rely on the CLC for support from the worksite to the halls of Parliament whenever their issues are on the line.
"The CLC continues to support the ILWU in opposing unfair background checks and screening of dockers," Dufresne said.
