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A century of fighting for workers' rights is explored in a display that opened this week at Bonnyville & District Museum (click here for a sample display).

"The labour movement has been a vital player in shaping the province of Alberta and this display will show some of the important work done by unions," says Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL), which celebrates its centennial this year.

"The AFL was created in 1912 by workers and farmers who saw the need for an organization that would protect their common interests and make their communities stronger. It's important, 100 years later, to remember the role unions played in building this province – and that Alberta was at the forefront of the national struggle for workers' rights," he says.

"That struggle continues as we see moves to drive down wages under the federal government's Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) program, to restrict Employment Insurance (EI) payments to laid-off workers and to keep people in the workplace until the age of 67 under proposed changes to Old Age Security (OAS) rules."

The display at the Bonnyville & District Museum at 4401 - 54th Avenue, Bonnyville, opened this week and runs until the end of August. It includes a display of 12 separate panels, each focusing on a separate theme in Alberta labour history.

It is one of a number of displays being staged around the province in conjunction with the centennial of the AFL, which today represents 145,000 workers. The site of other displays include the Royal Alberta Museum, Ft. McMurray Library, Hinton Municipal Library, the Provincial Archives, the Aviation Hall of Fame (Wetaskiwin), the Wetaskiwin & District Heritage Museum, the Canmore Museum & Geoscience Centre, the Red Deer Museum & Archives, the Olds Library, the Glenbow Institute, the Crowsnest Museum, the Galt Museum, the Medicine Hat Esplanade and the Medalta Museum in Medicine Hat (Clayworks Society).

The museum and library displays are part of a year-long, province-wide celebration of the AFL centennial. Juno-nominated folksinger Maria Dunn is part way through an extensive concert tour of the province, singing songs about labour and Alberta.

The highlight of the celebrations will be a Celebration in the Park on June 16, when thousands are expected to attend Fort Edmonton Park for a full day of events for adults and children.

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CONTACT:

• Gil McGowan, AFL president, 780-218-9888.

• Kirsti Tamblyn, Ground Zero Productions at 780-420-1400 [email protected]

New changes will tilt labour market in favour of low-wage employers

Changes to EI announced today pull back the curtain on Harper's low-wage agenda says the Alberta Federation of Labour.

"These changes will drive down wages eventually and inevitably force people into jobs they don't want at wages lower than their previous job" says AFL President Gil McGowan.

The Federation, which represents over 140,000 workers across the province, warns that this morning's announcement by Human Resources Minister Diane Finley will inevitably hurt all working families in the country, including here in Alberta.

"To add insult to injury, rather than talking to Canadians about his sweeping changes to EI, the government of Stephen Harper buried the new measures in the omnibus budget bill," says McGowan.

"The way these announcements were made shows the depth of secrecy and anti-labour sentiment espoused by the Conservative Government of Stephen Harper."

Under the new regulations – planned for early 2013 – there will be three new categories for unemployed workers. Each class of worker will be forced, by varying degrees, to consider jobs with lower and lower wages than they previously earned. For example, an Albertan who is a "frequent EI user,"' working in industrial construction and facing regular layoffs and contract work, would be forced to accept any work for which they are qualified for and take a pay cut up to 30 per cent less than their previous hourly wage.

McGowan underscores that new EI measures mark a drastic shift in how the labour market will operate in Canada. "These changes radically alter labour market pressures in favour of employers offering low wage jobs to Canadians."

"When the labour market functions as it should, employers strengthen and increase wages to attract workers. These new changes allow employers to simply sit back, wait, and keep wages low for Canadians. Eventually, an unemployed worker will be bullied into a low paying job," says Gil McGowan.

"These changes coupled with plans by the Federal Conservatives to get rid of the Fair Wages and Labour Act, and a ramping up of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, show that Canada is on a crash course towards labour austerity and conditions that are clearly in favour of employers, not workers."

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AFL President Gil McGowan will be available to the media at 1:30 pm at the CUPE Western Municipal Convention located at the Coast Edmonton Plaza Hotel located at 10155 105 Street in Edmonton. He can be reached by phone at 780-218-9888.

Backgrounder

With the Conservative government's changes to the Employment Insurance (EI) system, unemployed workers will be pressured into taking jobs with lower wages than they had when they were employed. This pressure increases the longer a worker is unemployed and will increase faster based on workers' history of EI claims.

The Conservatives now place claimants into three categories:

• Long-tenured workers: workers who received 35 or fewer weeks of regular or fishing EI over the last five years. These workers will be allowed to restrict their job searching to positions that pay 90 per cent of their previous earnings and are in their "usual" occupation.
• Frequent claimants: workers who had three or more regular and/or fishing claims and received over 60 weeks of regular and/or fishing benefits in the past five years.
• Occasional claimants: workers not captured under the two above definitions.

All workers will be forced to accept wages lower than those they earned while working the longer they receive EI benefits.

Studies show that workers with high levels of education take longer to look for and find a job when they are unemployed.

Under the Conservatives' changes to the EI system, workers with high levels of education could be forced into jobs that are below their skill set or usual wage range the longer they spend looking for suitable employment.

These changes will have major consequences to Canada's labour market. Employers now do not have to increase wages to attract workers. They can simply sit back and wait for unemployed workers to accept low-wage jobs.

The new Employment Insurance rules from the federal government have the Alberta Federation of Labour fuming.

The AFL says the changes will push wages down, and force workers to take less than what they're worth.

AFL President Gil McGowan says the Harper government is turning the system into the opposite of what it was designed to be.

"This is really fundamentally insulting to me as a representative for working people, because I know that the vast majority of those people on the system are there against their will, they've lost their jobs and just need some help. And that's what the system is supposed to be there for."

The changes are promising to be tough on those who have utilized it more than once.

inews880, Thurs May 24 2012

Daniel Aguirre becomes the seventh Colombian trade unionist killed this year, and the 61st since Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos took office in August 2010.

Colombia (07 May 2012) - The National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) is expressing sadness at the recent murder of Daniel Aguirre Piedrahita, the General Secretary of Colombia's Nation Union of Sugar Cane Cutters (SINALCORTEROS). Aguirre was assassinated on April 27 as he accompanied his wife, Helena to make a telephone call in their west-central Colombian neighbourhood.

The killers shot him twice in the head only 70 metres from his home. SINALCORTEROS issued a statement saying that the cold-blooded murder demonstrates the continued violence and persecution of trade union leaders in Colombia. It urged members and activists not to let this "reprehensibly violent action torpedo our union" and derail activities, but rather to "reaffirm our actions and our mission."

The Colombian government has condemned the killing. Deputy Minister of Labour David Luna Sanchez supported the Interior Ministry's Protection Unit director's call for an investigation.

Aguirre, 35, astalwart leader of sugar cane cutters, fought for trade union recognition from sugar mill employers who consider them self-employed independent contractors.

He led the strike that led to the creation of SINALCORTEROS, now an affiliate of the International Food and Agricultural Workers' Association (IUF). He led strikes of 18,000 sugar cane cutters in 2008 which, after two years, resulted in collective agreements and labour pacts that made organizing less cumbersome.

Recently, he had been pushing for revisions to Colombia's labour statutes to raise them to International Labor Organisation (ILO) standards. Aguirre was also known as a strong opponent of Free Trade Agreements with the U.S. and Canada.

Daniel Aguirre becomes the seventh Colombian trade unionist killed this year and the 61st since Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos took office in August 2010. He is survived by his wife and three daughters, ages 14, 10 and 4.

NUPGE, Tues May 22 2012

CALGARY — Overreliance on temporary foreign workers to remedy Alberta's labour shortages will hurt both domestic and imported workforces, local labour and immigration organizations said.

The federal government introduced several changes to its temporary foreign worker program last month, including measures that would allow employers to pay wages up to 15 per cent below the average in their region. Demand for workers as industries in Alberta continue to expand should lead to higher wages, but the province's largest union organization said the federal government's moves will do the opposite.

"They're using workers as pawns to drive down wages and conditions at a time when wages and conditions should be going up in Alberta's hot labour market," said Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour.

The program allows employers to pay temporary workers up to 15 per cent less for high-skill occupations and up to five per cent below average wages for low-skill jobs. The wages are determined using Statistics Canada data; low-skill workers can't be paid less than the local minimum wage.

Ottawa said the wage rules offer "flexibility" to employers and does not permit them to pay a foreign worker less than a Canadian doing the same job in the same region.

"Under the old wage structure, employers were required to pay temporary foreign workers at least the average wage for an occupation in a specific region, regardless of what they were paying their Canadian employees. In many cases, this resulted in employers paying temporary foreign workers more than Canadians," a spokesperson from Human Resources and Skills Development Canada said in an e-mailed statement.

While McGowan has specific criticisms of the wage rules, his union's aim is to see the temporary foreign worker program abolished.

Rather than investing the time and expense of training apprentices, industries that rely heavily on tradespeople can bring in foreign workers instead, McGowan said, adding that short-term fix could lead to a long-term, structural shortage of skilled tradespeople if Canadian workers opt for other occupations because of a lack of jobs in industries employing temporary foreign labour.

"There's no doubt employers in places like Alberta are having a hard time finding the workers they need," he said, "but it's become the first choice (for employers), rather than the last resort. Policy-makers should be looking first at finding ways of opening doors for unemployed workers here in Canada."

In 2011, Citizenship and Immigration Canada recorded 190,769 temporary workers entering the country; 25,542 in Alberta. An annual measurement on Dec. 1 counted a total of 300,111 TFWs in Canada; 58,228 in Alberta.

Under the program, workers can stay for four years and aren't provided with an opportunity to settle in Canada when their term is over.

An advocate for new Canadians said a long-term strategy would yield better results for employers and be more fair to workers coming to Canada.

"They ignore the fact that some of these positions people are being hired for are permanent jobs, so why are they not addressing that through an immigration policy?" said Fariborz Birjandian, executive director of the Calgary Catholic Immigration Society.

Calgary Herald, Tues May 22 2012
Byline: Jason Van Rassel

Pipe trade students build sign to show collaboration between GBLT community and construction industry.

Pipe trade students at SAIT built something that's the first of its kind at the trade school – a sign to show the collaboration between people in the gay-lesbian-bisexual and transgender community and the construction industry.

Students have built two large portable displays at the request of the Alberta Federation of Labour.

Keith Purdy is the co-chair of the AFL's pride and solidarity committee.

In 2005, he and his husband Rick were the first gay couple to marry legally in Calgary.

He said he's eager to help anyone else from the GLBT community to overcome workplace discrimination.

"Here will be a large timeline of the achievements of the gay and lesbian community throughout the years," Purdy said, describing the sign which is built in the shape of a small house.

Joe van Weenen, academic chair of pipe trades at SAIT, said it is a win-win situation for the union and the school.

"We like to present an atmosphere of inclusion," van Weenen said.

The structure will now be used in parades and festivals all throughout the province.

The United Steelworkers Canada (USW) union is marking the 20th anniversary of the fatal Westray mine explosion by renewing its call for increased enforcement of Bill C-45, federal legislation which amended the Criminal Code of Canada in 2004 to impose criminal negligence liability on organizations and their representatives.

Ken Neumann, the USW's national director, says that the union is putting together information packages on the legislation and plans to meet with attorney generals in each province and territory, who are responsible for upholding the Criminal Code. Peter MacKay, the MP for Central Nova, is taking the issue up with the Attorney General of Canada, he adds.

"What we are trying to do is start a campaign which is going to increase the education, the training and also the political will necessary in each of the provinces and territories to ensure that the legislation is used and prosecutions proceed," Neumann says.

"I think that once they get serious with it, you are in fact going to see the accident rate and fatality rate decrease. You can write the best legislation in the world, but if you are not going to enforce it, it is worthless."

To date, Quebec is the only province to successfully convict under Bill C-45.

In a letter to Alberta's newly appointed Minister of Justice and Solicitor General, Jonathan Denis, Alberta Federation of Labour president Gil McGowan says that "every worker who is killed or seriously injured due to criminal negligence deserves to have their death investigated through the lens of C-45."

"I would also encourage you to direct police forces around the province to establish dedicated units to investigate worker deaths alongside investigators from the provincial government's occupational health and safety branch," McGowan writes. "Without dedicated units trained in the use of Bill C-45 provisions, I'm convinced that this important and powerful tool will never be used effectively as a deterrent to criminal negligence on the part of employers."

The announcement of the campaign in Ottawa on May 8 included MacKay, whose riding is home to the site of the former Westray coal mine and who was instrumental in gaining all-party support for Bill C-45. The 20th anniversary is being commemorated in Stellarton, Nova Scotia with a series of events, including an early morning vigil and an evening memorial service.

"On Parliament Hill, I am joining with others in a display of unity to mourn the loss of these men and to speak to an overhaul in legislation surrounding workplace conditions," MacKay adds in a press release. "I was proud to be a part of the 'Westray Bill,' or Bill C-45. The basic premise of this bill is safe mining is good business."

In the early morning hours of May 9, 1992 in Plymouth, Nova Scotia, an entire shift of 26 miners died when a spark ignited a pocket of methane gas inside the mine, causing a massive explosion. Although rescue efforts continued for a week after the explosion, there were no survivors and the bodies of 11 miners were never recovered.

Bill C-45 implementation guide released

The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) is marking the 20th anniversary by releasing a guide for investigating corporate negligence in the workplace. "The intentions of Parliament and the language of the amendments is clear, but the enforcement is lax and that has to change," says CLC secretary-treasurer Hassan Yussuff. "If an employer willfully neglects health safety knowing that someone can be injured or killed, they should be held criminally responsible. Our guide shows how that can be done."

The 20-page guide, available at www.canadianlabour.ca/sites/default/files/death-and-injury-at-work-en.pdf, includes background information on the accident, tips for police investigating corporate negligence, differences between Bill C-45 amendments and occupational health and safety legislation, and relevant Criminal Code provisions, among others.

"We believe that Parliament, back in 2004, did make the right decision," Neumann says. "The issue is now that the laws aren't enforced. I don't like this job of telling loved ones that their spouse isn't coming home from work."

OHS Canada, Tues May 15 2012

With proposed EI changes, more Canadians will be forced into the kind of bad jobs

Flaherty says don't exist, says AFL

Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's shocking comment that there are "no bad jobs" in Canada demonstrates that the Harper Conservatives have willingly become the heavies for employers who want to force unemployed Canadians to accept low-wage or otherwise undesirable jobs, says the president of Alberta's largest labour organization.

"When they had a minority government, the Harper Conservatives would at least pretend they were interested in the little guy," says AFL president Gil McGowan.

"But now that they have their long-sought-after majority, the Conservatives are showing their true colours. They don't really work for all Canadians – they work for their friends in business. And if those friends say 'squeeze the little guy,' then they'll squeeze the little guy."

McGowan says that if employers are looking for workers in the service sector or in remote locations like the oil sands, then they should make those jobs more attractive to workers by offering higher wages, access to training or better travel allowances. Instead, they're turning to a compliant federal government to coerce people into taking jobs they don't want.

"Minister Flaherty and other federal Conservatives are forgetting why the Employment Insurance system was set up in the first place," says McGowan.

"It's not welfare. It's an insurance system that workers and employers pay for themselves. It's designed to provide enough income so that Canadians don't fall into poverty when they lose their jobs. And, perhaps most importantly, it's designed to give Canadians some breathing room so they can find a job that actually fits their skill set, as opposed to grabbing the first crappy job that comes along. All of this makes sense for both individuals and the broader economy."

McGowan points out that recent international studies show conclusively that more generous unemployment benefits actually enhance overall economic productivity by encouraging a better fit between workers and jobs (click here for OECD study). Canadian studies also show that the EI system is not discouraging worker mobility in Canada (click here for Mowat study).

"The Harper Conservatives are catering to the narrow self-interests of a few employers, especially employers here in Alberta," says McGowan. "But it's the wrong diagnosis and the wrong prescription. This kind of mean-spirited, low-road approach is going to hurt tens of thousands of Canadians who, through no fault of their own, have lost their jobs. And it's going to hurt the broader Canadian economy over the long run."

"The Conservatives like to portray themselves as competent managers of the economy," McGowan concludes. "But how is it competent to actively encourage a mismatch between jobs and skills? How is it competent to drive down wages and undermine the middle class? The truth is that the Conservatives are not competent. They're mean, they're bullies and they're not willing to let pesky facts get in the way of ideology. They're all those things, but competence and compassion are clearly not among their virtues."

A good summary of what the proposed changes to the EI system look like and what they would mean for Canadians has been prepared by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA). To view the analysis, follow this link.

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MEDIA:

For more information call:

Gil McGowan, President @ 780-218-9888 (cell) or 780-483-3021 (office)

AFL joins national coalition of labour, religious and immigrant groups in condemning Harper government's new approach to TFWs

New rules allowing employers to fast track Temporary Foreign Workers (TFWs) and pay them less than Canadians will have far-reaching and profoundly negative effects on the Canadian labour market, says the president of Alberta's largest union organization.

"With these changes, the federal government is allowing employers to use TFWs as pawns to drive down wages and conditions of work, even at a time when our hot economy here in Alberta suggests that they should be going up," says Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour.

"This is bad news for foreign workers because they'll get an even worse deal than they've already been getting. And it's horrible news for Canadians because it means that employers will start saying 'don't complain and don't demand more because if you do, we'll replace you with foreign workers.'"

McGowan's comments came in support of a joint statement made today in Ottawa by a number of national labour, religious and immigrant settlement organizations.

The statement, delivered by Hussan Yussuf, Secretary Treasurer of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), says that allowing employers to pay TFWs as much as 15 per cent less than the prevailing wage rate paid to Canadians for similar work will pit Canadians against foreign workers and, in the process, create a "permanent underclass" of TFWs.

McGowan says that Canadians would probably be alarmed to learn that 30 per cent of all the jobs created in Canada between 2007 and 2011 were filled by TFWs – even as 1.4 million Canadians are looking for work and the unemployment rate remains stubbornly high in many regions of the country.

"Even before these new changes, the TFW program had become a first choice rather than a tool of last resort for far too many employers," says McGowan. "With fast-tracking and even lower wages for TFWs, the situation is just going to get worse, much worse."

Taken together with punitive new changes to the Employment Insurance (EI) system, McGowan says the Harper Conservatives are clearly trying to "discipline" Canadians and force them into accepting lower-wage jobs and jobs in locations far from their homes.

"The Harper crowd is using the mechanisms of the federal government to assist employers who want workers but are not willing to pay more or offer training to get them," says McGowan. "It's an appalling and illegitimate misuse of government power. Government is supposed to be by and for the people. But this is an example of government against the people."

McGowan reiterated the AFL's call for the TFW Program to be scrapped entirely.

"The TFW program is NOT immigration. It's an exploitative guest-worker program that flies in the face of Canadian values and traditions," says McGowan.

"If we need workers from abroad – and strong arguments can be made that we do – then we should bring them into the country as citizens or potential citizens. As citizens they would not be as vulnerable to exploitation and abuse as TFWs. And as citizens they would strengthen the labour market, not undermine it."

As a for arguments that the changes are needed to address labour shortages in the oil sands, McGowan says the solution is to set a more reasonable pace of development.

"When the government approves more than 60 major projects at once, no one should be surprised that some employers have a hard time finding the right workers at the right time. But the solution is not to open the floodgates for TFWs. That's just going to discourage companies from taking on apprentices and training the next generation of tradespeople. Instead, the real solution is to follow the advice of former Premier Peter Lougheed and simply set a more manageable pace for development. More should also be done to train unemployed Canadians to fill trades jobs."

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MEDIA:

For more information call:

Gil McGowan, President @ 780-218-9888 (cell) or 780-483-3021 (office)

Barely two months after a British Columbia Supreme Court judge certified a $10-million class-action lawsuit on behalf of more than 70 temporary foreign workers alleging flagrant violations of pay and working conditions, the Conservative government told Canadian employers that they can start paying short-term foreign workers 15 per cent less than they pay Canadian workers.

If the federal government felt any qualms about giving employers carte blanche to create a two-tier workforce, it wasn't obvious. Its attitude: Canada is facing a labour shortage. This is a way to fix it.

But groups that work with temporary foreign workers, especially workers at the low-skill end of the scale, fear that Canada has shifted from being a land that welcomes immigrants as equals to a nation that rents its workers from among the world's poor and sends them home when we're done with them.

Unlike immigrants, temporary foreign workers, especially low-skill workers, have no hope of permanent residency in Canada. They usually cannot bring family members with them. And they have less protection against workplace abuses than do Canadian workers. In February, Quebec's Human Rights Commission ruled that temporary foreign workers in the province are discriminated against: They are not covered by the labour-standards law or worker health and safety provisions.

The more than 70 workers in B.C.'s class-action suit allege that the owners of Denny's restaurants failed to pay them full weekly wages and overtime pay as contracted and also did not reimburse them promised travel, recruitment and processing fees.

For many employers facing worker shortages, the temporary foreign worker program is a godsend, especially now that they can pay the workers less. There's a fast turnaround in answering employer demands - as quickly as 10 days - and the employee has no choice but to stay with the employer who brought him or her into the country. If workers leave one job for another, they will generally be forced to leave the country.

Glen Hodgson, chief economist with the Conference Board of Canada, isn't opposed to the idea of temporary foreign workers being treated differently from Canadian workers.

"The temporary foreign worker program is a short-term fix," Hodgson said. "It does provide some instant relief, even though it isn't the structural solution we as a country with an aging workforce need."

Temporary foreign workers accounted for almost one in three new jobs created in Canada between 2007 and 2011, according to Jim Stanford, economist with the Canadian Auto Workers, Canada's largest private-sector union. The number of temporary foreign workers reached more than 300,000 by 2011.

Three years ago, the Alberta Federation of Labour warned that the temporary foreign worker program was becoming a permanent part of Canada's labour market.

The temporary foreign-worker program was instituted in 1973 to allow employers to bring in, to meet short-term needs, scientists, academics and engineers whose skills were not available in Canada. But according to the Alberta labour federation, highly skilled foreign workers were laid off and sent home after the 2008 global economic meltdown, and employers instead began using the program to bring in low-skilled workers.

This shift has been tracked by researchers Delphine Nakache and Paula Kinoshita. In their 2010 paper published by the Institute for Research in Public Policy, they warned of possible consequences that could undermine the country's social fabric.

Low-skill workers come from the developing world, mainly Central and South America and Asia, and tend to be visible minorities and not speak English, they said, whereas the majority of highly skilled workers tend to be from the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States, are not visible minorities and are English-speaking.

The division between the two groups continues, the researchers said, with the skilled "welcome to settle permanently [while] the lower skilled are expected to leave when their work permits expire."

France and Germany have been down this road. Canada should be very leery of following them.

Victoria Times-Colonist, Sat May 12 2012
Byline: Janet Bagnall