ALF V1

Edmonton - The Alberta Federation of Labour selected 37-year old Gil McGowan as its new President today. McGowan won the Presidency unopposed. His election as President marks a generational shift in leadership for Alberta's labour movement. The AFL is holding its 44th Constitutional Convention in Edmonton this weekend.

"I am honoured to have earned the confidence of the AFL's affiliate unions," said McGowan. "We need to re-energize this movement and get worker's issues back on the agenda again in this province."

"The Alberta Tories are on notice. As of today, they can expect a new kind of labour movement in this province," says McGowan. "Be warned Ralph, the watchdog is back on duty!"

"My goal as President is to make the labour movement politically relevant again. I will increase our profile and step up our actions against anti-union employers and the government that slavishly serves their interests," says McGowan.

McGowan says his first priority will be to mobilize workers around the growing issues in Fort McMurray. "In an attempt to avoid paying fair wages and providing decent working conditions, oil sands contractors are turning to 'company unions' and telling tall tales about labour shortages. My plan is to head to Fort McMurray in the coming days and tell both those employers and the government that the labour movement is prepared to fight."

McGowan comes to the Presidency after 10 years as Director of Communications of the AFL. He is also an active member of the Strathcona Community league, leading many of the community's efforts related to development on Whyte Avenue. He is a member of the Communications Energy and Paperworkers Union.

Also Sunday, the AFL re-elected Kerry Barrett as Secretary-Treasurer. Barrett defeated Shona Stewart from CUPW for the position. Barrett, also 37, has served 4 years as Secretary-Treasurer, and the last year as interim President.

"The job of AFL is to tackle politics for the labour movement. It will be my goal to make sure that the Tories stand up and pay attention to the concerns of workers," concludes McGowan.

The AFL is Alberta's largest and oldest central labour body, representing 115,000 workers and their families.

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The Assault on Pensions in Canada: Foreclosing on the Future (May 2005)

Policy paper adopted at AFL 44th Constitutional Convention, May 12 - 15, 2005

Smoking in the Workplace (May 2005)

Policy statement presented at AFL 44th Constitutional Convention, May 12 - 15, 2005

Horizon Oil Sands Project (May 2005)

Policy paper adopted at AFL 44th Constitutional Convention, May 12 - 15, 2005

Forging our Future: The Alberta Federation of Labour 2005-2010 (May 2005)

Policy paper adopted at the 44th Constitution Convention, May 12 - 15, 2005

Gil McGowan, President of the Alberta Federation of Labour, Campaign Launch News Conference, May 2005

(In the spring of 2005, the AFL joined Public Interest Alberta in launching a province-wide campaign to pressure the Alberta government to support the long overdue national child care program being proposed by the then-Liberal federal government.)

Some of you might be wondering why a union leader is participating in this event.

When you think of unions, you probably don't think of finger-painting and story time.

But I'm here today for two reasons.

First, because I'm a father - and children and child care issues are near and dear to my heart.

But, more importantly, I'm here because child care has become a fundamental workplace issue.

In the labour movement, we respond to the challenges that confront people at work.

Those challenges have been different at different times in our history.

When the challenge was unsafe working conditions, unions fought for and won better health and safety protections.

When the challenge was the prospect of poverty in old age, unions fought for and won public and private pensions.

When the challenge was unequal access to health care, unions were at the forefront of the battle for Medicare.

Today, here in Alberta and across the country, the issue many working people are struggling with is the issue of child care.

To understand the scope of the problem, we have to look no further than the study that was released yesterday by researchers from the University of Toronto.

What the study shows is what most of us know from our own personal experiences - namely that the majority of parents have to work to ends meet.

And when they work, they need to make arrangements for the care of their children.

To put the situation in concrete terms, consider the numbers.

In 2003, there were about 219,000 kids in Alberta between the ages of 6 months and five years.

Of those kids, 117,000 had mothers who were in the paid workforce.

That means 54 percent of Alberta pre-schoolers have a mother who works. And that's just the average for the group - when you look at Alberta mothers whose youngest child is a little older - between 3 and 5 - then, 71 per cent are in the workforce.

Of course, not everyone is working full-time - but it comes pretty close. On average, kids of working parents in Alberta need some kind of care arrangement for 22 hours a week.

At this point we have to be clear about something. The vast majority of two-income families in this province are not working only because they want to - they are working because they have to.

Even here in prosperous Alberta, the reality is that most families need two incomes to maintain their hold on the middle class.

As a result, there is a large and demonstrated need for high-quality, accessible, affordable child care services in this province.

And that's the problem - the need is not being met.

As a father and someone who advocates for working people, I look at the system we have in this province and I come away feeling deeply frustrated and, frankly, more than a little angry.

By almost any measure, we are the wealthiest province in country.

But as Bill pointed out, despite our wealth, we have the fewest available spaces in regulated child care facilities.

We spend the lowest amount on child and early education services. Quebec spends more than $4,800 for each regulated child care space; places like Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Ontario spend more than $2,000 - and we spend $816.

But it doesn't end there. To top things off, we are the only province where spending on early childhood services has actually declined over the past ten years.

To put it in a nutshell, we are at the bottom of the pack and moving backwards.

Largely as a result of under-funding, we have a system that can't really be called a system. It's a patch-work - one that is failing kids and failing parents.

The good news is that, there is a ray of hope.

After years of unfulfilled promises, the federal government has finally agreed to move forward with a national child care strategy - and they've set aside $7 billion to get the ball rolling.

The bad news is that our provincial government and their allies in the federal conservative party have, for reasons that can best be described as ideological, been throwing up roadblocks to Alberta's participation in the national program.

That's why we're all here today.

We want to encourage our province to do the right thing.

We want them to do what other provinces have done and agree to participate in the national childcare program.

We also want them to pull their heads out of the sand and realize that the "leave-it-to-Beaver" era is over and that most mothers simply can't afford to stay home full-time with their kids.

Most importantly, we want to make sure Alberta doesn't squander this historic opportunity to build a system that parents can have confidence in and that can provide the kind of quality care and early education that our kids need.

At this point I'd like to quickly address some of the arguments and suggestions put forward by those opposed to the national child care plan.

They say they want parents to have choice. And they point to the fact that only about 20 percent of Alberta parents put their kids in centre-based child care. They say that proves that Albertans don't really want the kind of care being proposed under the national program.

But the real reason Alberta parents aren't choosing centre-based care isn't that they oppose the idea - it's that they usually can't afford it.

It�s true we have some subsidies - but they don't cover the full cost and they are available to only a small group of low-income parents.

So if parents want to put their kids in quality programs, they have to pay between $600-700 per month per child. Frankly, especially for parents with more than one child, that's more than most of us can afford.

A choice that you can't afford is not really a choice at all. So if we want to give parents a real choice - then we have to properly fund high quality care, so it is affordable and accessible to all families regardless of income.

The second thing that opponents of the national program talk about is using tax breaks instead of direct public funding of child care centre to address the problem.

Rona Ambrose from the federal Conservative party for example, for example talks about tax incentives for businesses to set up on-site daycares and $2,000 a year tax breaks for families to encourage one parent to stay at home.

With all due respect to Ms. Ambrose, $2,000 isn't going to replace the income earned by one parent. I'd don't know were she lives, but for most of us $2,000 isn't going to pay the mortgage for a year. We'd be lucky if it covered the grocery bill for a few months.

As far as the idea of tax incentives for businesses go - most Albertans work in small workplaces with 50 employees or less.

I don't care how many incentives you give businesses that small, they're simply not going to be able to afford to establish their own childcare centre - and even if they do, they're likely to be nothing more than babysitting stations, not real centres for child development and learning.

The real solution is the one that research and experience has pointed us towards for years - and that is the creation of a system of quality, publicly supported child care centres that are affordable and accessible. Most Albertans currently don't have that option - but based on the demonstrated demand that's out there, I'm convinced that if we build it, they will come.

Before I wrap up, I just want to say a few words about a group of people who sometimes are overlooked in the debate on child care.

We talk about the kids, we talk about parents - but we also need to talk about the child care workers themselves.

In many ways, child care workers are the backbone, the life blood of a quality child care system. They are the people that bring quality child care and early childhood education programs to life.

But they are also the workers most likely to be under-paid and under-valued in our economy.

Here in Alberta in 2003, the average pay for early childhood educators with three years experience was a paltry $10.37 an hour.

That's about the same pay earned by landscape labourers and people who pump gas.

Among all the workers who need specialized training and certification to do their jobs, child care workers are the lowest paid, bar none.

If we ever hope to build a real child care system in this province, one that parents can have confidence in, one that focuses on developing kids' potential instead of simply warehousing them, then we're going to have to accept the idea that we need a public system; that we're going to have to fund it generously; and that we're going to have to offer decent pay so we can attract and retain high calibre workers.

With the proposal from the Federal government, we have an opportunity to do all those things. Today our message for the province government is clear - don't squander this historic opportunity. Don't cut Alberta kids out of the national child care program.

In yesterday's Throne Speech, the Alberta government announced plans to review the province's often controversial Employment Standards Code -- the law that sets minimum standards for things like overtime, vacations, minimum wage and hours of work.

But while many people agree that changes are long overdue, the Alberta Federation of Labour fears a review of the Code under the direction of the current government may simply make a bad situation worse.

"This is the same government that is seriously considering a tearing up its own Human Rights legislation in order to satisfy the whims of a few big oil companies that want the right to impose mandatory drug testing on their workers," says AFL president Kerry Barrett.

"What concerns us is that this review will end up being yet another example of the government bending over backward to satisfy the demands of employers. And, yet again, the interests of working people will be ignored in the process."

In particular, Barrett worries that the government may decide to change rules on overtime -- so that employers can require their employees to work longer hours without overtime pay.

"That's exactly what the government of Conservative Premier Mike Harris did in Ontario a five years ago when they introduced a 60-hour work week," says Barrett. "Unfortunately, this kind of change is probably exactly what the government means when they say the Code needs to be made more 'current and relevant.'"

The impact of watered-down rules on overtime will be particularly harmful here in Alberta, says Barrett, because Albertans work more hours and put in more overtime (both paid and unpaid) than workers in any other province.

"Extending the work week or giving employers other ways to weasel out of paying overtime will hit many working Albertans hard," says Barrett. "It has the potential to take a really big bite out of the budgets of thousands and thousands of families."

Instead of weakening Employment Standards protections, Barrett says the government should focus on beefing up enforcement of existing rules.

"The biggest problem with Employment Standards today is not the wording of the Code," says Barrett. "Instead, it's the fact that the onus is always on employees to complain. The government almost never launches its own investigations. And even when employers are found guilty of violations, they rarely face more than a stern warning and a slap on the wrist. That kind of weak-kneed approach to enforcement is what really has to change in this province."

For more information call

Kerry Barrett, AFL President @ (780) 720-8945 (cell)

Gil McGowan, AFL Communications @ (780) 483-3021 (work)

Kerry Barrett, President of the Alberta Federation of Labour, March 2005

We're here today because you're company - that company right there - is turning its back on you.

Some of you have already been laid off. Others have an axe hanging over your heads.

But, in either case, something important is being lost here.

What's being lost are not just thrown-way jobs. We're not talking about McJobs.

These are family-sustaining jobs.

These are jobs that put money into your pockets, but also put money into the broader Edmonton economy.

These are the kind of jobs that form the backbone communities like Edmonton.

And why are your jobs being cut?

Why are you - in some cases, after being with the company for more than 20 or 25 years - why are you now being discarded like post-it notes?

Is it because customers no longer want your services?

Is it because the economy has gone south?

Is it because your company is losing money?

As we all know, none of those things are the case.

Just this morning, I opened the paper, and in the business section there was an article saying that Finning racked up a profit of $20 million in the last quarter.

That's $20 million in just the last three months.

This is not a company that's struggling. This is not a company that can't afford to do well by its employees.

Instead, what we have here is a company that has made a conscious decision to turn its back on it own long-time workforce.

For the sake of squeezing out of few more cents of profit per share, they're leaving you out on the curb.

As you know, your work isn't being eliminated. And it's not being shipped overseas. It's staying right here in the Edmonton region.

Basically, they're closing you down and opening up across the street.

The big question is why. Is it really about efficiency, as the company says? Or is this really about breaking your union?

From our perspective, what's going on here is indefensible.

And you know what is just as big a crime?

The labour laws here in Alberta are so weak that Finning just might be able to get away with it.

That's why the AFL is here today.

We're here to help you shine a public spotlight on the bad corporate citizenship being shown by Finning.

And we're here to show that the Alberta government - by paving the way for this kind of thing - is actually an accomplice.

In conclusion, what I want all of you to know is that the AFL and the rest of the labour movement are behind you in this fight.

We all have a stake - because if Finning is able to get away with this kind of union-busting - then no working people in this province are safe.

That's why we're here for you today and that's why we'll continue being with you as you continue your fight.

Good luck and thank you.

Changing human rights legislation to allow random drug testing is shortsighted, ill-conceived and potentially dangerous, says the Alberta Federation of Labour. The AFL was responding to reports of a report, leaked to media late last week, which recommends changing human rights legislation to allow employers to impose random drug and alcohol testing in their workplaces.

"The drive to force random drug and alcohol testing is occurring without reason, thought or consideration of other options," says AFL President Kerry Barrett. "Employers have become intoxicated by the idea of a quick fix solution. I fear that the casualty in this stampede will be the basic human rights of workers."

"Human rights are not something to be thrown aside just because they happen to be 'inconvenient' for employers," says Barrett. "Last time I checked, human rights laws were in place in part to prevent employers from running roughshod over their workers."

"This issue is not about intoxication on the job. That is a clear safety hazard and needs to be opposed. This issue is about what is the most effective way to prevent it - and random testing is not it."

Barrett points out there are two issues involved with random testing. First, Canada has a well-established "Duty to Accommodate" requirement for workers with disabilities.

Addiction to alcohol or drugs is considered a disability. This means employers need to assist workers with substance abuse problems to beat their addiction - rather than just fire them. "This is the best approach - it treats workers as full human beings, not just pieces of machinery to be disposed when needing repair."

Second, all workers have a right to a degree of privacy. Employers are only allowed to know information that is directly relevant to the workplace.

"What a person does on the weekend is none of the boss's business, and they need to keep their nose out of it."

This arrangement may frustrate some employers, but that is not a good enough reason to scrap longstanding rights, says Barrett.

"Employers have failed to make the case why the current regime needs to be changed," says Barrett. "Court decisions have established a reasonable balance between the rights of workers and the need to ensure a safe workplace. No one has demonstrated how random testing will make workplaces any safer."

Barrett points out that most experts believe that random testing is an ineffective method for addressing substance use. "It has too many flaws - from false positives, to evasion methods, to inability to prove intoxication."

The current legal structure gives employers the ability to manage their workplace, and to take action against unsafe work practices. This includes intoxication. "Employers don't need more powers to address substance use, they just need to start using the powers they already have."

"The U.S. has widespread pre-employment and random testing and it has not made their workplaces safer. Why are we going down a path that has proven ineffective?" Barrett asks.

For more information call:

Kerry Barrett, AFL President   at 720-8945 (cell) or 483-3021 (wk)
Jason Foster, AFL Director of Policy Analysis at 483-3021

EDMONTON - In his annual address to the province last night, Alberta Premier Ralph Klein promised to help low-paid workers by increasing the minimum wage.

But anything less than a jump to something close to $8 an hour would still leave Alberta at the bottom of the pack among "have" provinces, says the Alberta Federation of Labour.

"British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec all have minimum wages between $7.45 and $8 an hour," says AFL president Kerry Barrett. "As Canada's wealthiest province, having a minimum wage that falls below that range would, in our view, constitute a policy failure."

Barrett says the Alberta government has a long history of ignoring the interests of low-wage workers. At $5.90 an hour, Alberta has had the distinction of having one the lowest minimum wage in the country for years.

The provincial government has also shown a great reluctance to increase the minimum wage to compensate for increases in the cost of living.

"The minimum wage in Alberta was last increased in 1998. That's seven years without a raise," says Barrett.

"During that time, other provincial governments have raised their minimum wages multiple times. And the cost of living in Alberta has gone up by more than 20 percent. That means we would need a minimum wage of slightly more than $7 an hour just to return to where we were in 1998. So pardon us for not applauding the Premier's promise. It's really not as generous as he wants people to believe."

The difference between Alberta's minimum wage and minimums in other provinces is even starker when you compare it to average provincial hourly wages rates. In most provinces, the minimum wage is about 40 per cent of the average hourly wage rate. But in Alberta, minimum wage workers earn only 31 per cent of the average, the lowest in the country.

"The bottom line is that Alberta is a wealthy province that can afford to pay more," says Barrett. "The fact that we've remained at the bottom of the pile for so long is an indictment of the government and a glaring example for its disregard for people at the lower end of the economic ladder."

If Premier Klein really wants to earn applause, Barrett says he should raise the minimum wage to something over $8 an hour. He should also agree to a mechanism for annual inflation adjustments so the real value of the minimum was is not constantly being eroded. And he should consider a "living wage" procurement policy that would require all contractors doing work with public agencies to pay their employees well.

"He's always talking about Alberta being number. Given our prosperity, there's no reason why we shouldn't be number one in this area as well," says Barrett.

"And contrary to what the government says when it downplays the number of low-wage workers in this province, this would have a big impact. According to their own figures, there are more than 140,000 people in the province working for less than $8 an hour. That's about 8 per cent of the total work force. So a boost in the minimum wage to $8 an hour would help a lot of people. Our only question is: what is this government waiting for?"

For more information call:

Kerry Barrett, AFL President   at 780-720-8945 (cell)  or
Gil McGowan, AFL Communications Director at  780-483-3021 (work)