ALF V1

Gil McGowan, President of the Alberta Federation of Labour, April 12, 2006

When it comes to politics in Alberta, there really have been only two issues that have dominated public attention over the last few months.

The first, of course, has been the Premier and his plans for retirement.

The second is the Third Way.

Like most other Albertans, I have strong feelings about Premier Klein's leadership.

But for our purposes today, I'll bite my lip about what I think of the Premier and focus instead on his policies for health care.

We've all seen or heard the news. For more than two years now, Premier Klein, has been telling us that the sky is falling.

He's been telling us we can no longer afford Medicare. And he's been telling us that privatization is at least part of the solution.

In many ways, this may be one of the most important political debates this province has ever had. From our perspective, the very future of our health care system is at stake.

With that in mind, over the next twenty minutes or so, I'd like to do four things.

First, I'll talk about what's actually being proposed when we talk about the third way.

Second, I'll talk about why we in the labour movement think at least some of those proposals will take us down a dangerous path.

Third, I'll talk about how those proposals, if implemented, might affect individuals, businesses and the economy.

And finally, I'll talk about what I think Albertans, from all walks of life, can and should do to protect Medicare.

So what is the Third Way?

For several years now, Premier Klein has been promising something big. He has even suggested that's he's willing to violate the Canada Health Act.

Until recently, it's just been talk. But, he has finally moved from rhetoric to action.

At the end of February, the Premier and his health minister, Iris Evans, released something called The Health Policy Framework.

It's not legislation - it's really just a skeleton of ideas. But the government has made it clear that this document will form the basis of new legislation that we could see as early as the middle of April.

It's the first time they've actually spelled out what the Third Way will involve. In a sense, they've finally put their cards on the table ... and that's a positive thing.

The other positive thing is that there are actually a number of policy directions contained in the Framework that almost everyone involved in the health care debate can agree on.

It's no secret that we in the labour movement are big defenders of Medicare. We helped create it and we still believe it's worth fighting for.

But even we can take issue with some of the proposals.

For example, we support the suggestion that there should be more teamwork between health professionals; we support the suggestion that we should experiment with replacing the fee-for-service approach to paying doctors with salaries; and we support the suggestion that there should be a greater emphasis on wellness and prevention.

If these kinds of reforms were the sum total of the Framework, I probably wouldn't be here today. And the government probably wouldn't be facing a rising tide of public opposition.

Unfortunately, the good in this document is far out weighed by the bad and the down-right dangerous.

Like many of the groups and individuals who have voiced opposition to the Third Way, there are four policy directions in the Framework that we find particularly alarming.

First, we're concerned about plans to remove the prohibitions on doctors working in both the public and private system.

Second, we're concerned about plans to allow patients to buy their way to the front of the line for certain services, like hip and knee replacements.

Third, we're concerned by the suggestion that some services may be de-listed or that new services may never be listed.

And fourth, we're particularly concerned about plans to open the door for private health insurance.

Despite repeated reassurances from the government, these are not mild reforms. This is not tinkering around the edges.

For the better part of a decade now, conservative governments like ours here in Alberta have been chipping away at our public health care system. We've seen contracting out of ancillary services; we've seen de-listing of things like vision care and physiotherapy; and, here in Alberta and in provinces like Quebec and B.C., we've seen strong moves towards increased for-profit delivery of services within the public system.

But let's be clear about one thing: if the Klein government goes ahead with the plans contained in the Framework document - in particular, if they allow people to buy their way to the front of the line for certain services and if you open the door for private health insurance - then they will be going one giant step beyond where anyone has gone before.

They will be going from "private delivery" to "private payment." They will be going from "access based on need" to "access based on wealth." They will be introducing a gold-plated tier of care for the few - and an inferior tier of care for everyone else.

And that doesn't just violate both the letter and the spirit of the Canada Health Act - it strikes at the very foundations of Medicare.

Before I dive into my specific critiques of the Framework document, I'd like to step back and take a closer look at the government's goals and assumptions ... because in the same way that buildings are constructed on foundations of concrete and steel, public policies are built on the foundation of goals and assumptions.

If the foundations of a building are weak, then the structure above is shaky. And if a government's goals and assumptions are faulty, then public policies that flow from them will be weak as well.

In many ways, the problem is not with the governments goals. Both Health Minister Evans and the Premier have said that their primary goals in these reforms are to control costs and reduce waiting lists.

Frankly, who can argue with that?

But while it may be hard to take issue with some of the government's over-arching goals, the same cannot be said for some of the assumptions that their plan is built on.

To put it bluntly, many of their core assumptions are flawed. And that's where the Third Way starts to come off the rails.

The first assumption that I'd like to take issue with is the assumption that public health care is not financially sustainable.

People in government have sometimes accused people like me and other leaders in the labour movement of fear-mongering on various issues. But on the issue of sustainability, it is the government that has been running around saying the sky is falling.

The truth about health care spending in Alberta is both more complex and less alarming than the government lets on.

When I met with Iris Evans last month she said breathlessly; "When Premier Klein took power, we were spending $5 billion on health care and now we're spending $10 billion."

That sounds very dramatic. But what this told me was not the health care spending is unsustainable - but rather than the minister doesn't have a really good grasp of basic economics.

The truth is that over the period of 13 years that the minister referred to, inflation in Alberta has increase by nearly 30 per cent and our provincial population has grown by more than 500,000.

We also have to remember that, in the mid-90s, the government imposed deep cuts on health services and staffing, creating a need for substantial "catch-up" spending.

When you look past the doom and gloom being pushed by certain politicians - what we find is that when you adjust for inflation and population growth, real per person spending on health care in Alberta has actually been going up by an average of about 2 percent each year over the past 13 years.

That's the crisis. That's what the government is using as justification to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

And it doesn't stop there. You can't say you really understand trends in health care spending until you break down that spending into its component parts and until you put it into the context of our provincial income.

When you do that, you see that spending on hospitals and doctors - which forms the core of Medicare - has remained almost entirely flat over the past 15 years.

You also see that the areas with the highest cost increases are actually the ones with the biggest for-profit components - most notably prescription drugs.

And then there is the question of what we can afford.

Thanks largely to a lucky accident of geology and geography, we're the richest province in the country - and getting richer.

As a percentage of our provincial GDP - which is our collective income - public spending on health care has remained stable at under 6 percent for the past twenty years.

The bottom line on health care spending is that the sky is not falling. Costs are rising, and that's a legitimate concern. But they are not as out of control as the Premier would have us believe. And they are certainly not bad enough to justify throwing the baby out with the bath water.

From our perspective, Medicare costs are still manageable - especially in a province as wealthy as Alberta.

That leads me to the second, and I would argue, even more dangerous assumption that almost all the government's Third Way proposals are built on. And that's the assumption that privatization is one of the best ways to achieve their goals on cost control and shortened waiting lists.

On the day the Framework document was released, I told reporters it read like a love-letter to private health care. That's because privatization was the strand that wound through the entire document and tied it together. It was the magic pill, the silver bullet.

But the assumption that greater privatization will lead to lower costs and reduced waiting list is just that - an assumption. And all the available research - and all the available evidence from the real world - suggests that it's a false assumption.

Take the proposal to allow doctors to work both sides of the street, for example.

The Framework suggests that by allowing doctors to take paying patients this will somehow reduce pressure on the public system.

It's a nice sounding theory - but experience shows it doesn't work in practice.

It doesn't work because there are only a limited number of doctors - and if they're working two days a week in their for-profit practice, that's two days a week they won't be available to work in the public system. The result is longer waits in the public system, not shorter. And this isn't hypothetical. These kinds of reforms have been tried in Britain, Australia and other countries. And, to put it bluntly, the experiments have failed. They haven't taken the pressure off their public systems.

On the contrary, experience shows that doctors consistently chose their higher paying private clients, and leave their public patients waiting in longer in public lines.

But allowing doctors to work both side of the street, is only one piece of the puzzle.

The government is also talking about allowing people to buy their way to the front of the line for certain service like hip and knee replacements. And you're talking about shrinking the umbrella of what's covered by Medicare by either de-listing some services or not listing new services.

When I look at all these proposals together, what I see is a deliberate attempt on the part of the Alberta government to create a market for private health care and private health insurance where there was no market before.

By shrinking the Medicare umbrella and allowing people to pay privately for things like joint replacement, they're creating the demand. And by freeing doctors to give faster access to those with thick wallets, they're creating the supply.

The big question is this: are these changes really in the best interests of Albertans? Will the creation of a market for private health care save us money? Will it improve access to care? Will it benefit our economy and serve our families better?

Our short answer to those questions is an emphatic "no" - private health care is not in our best interests.

As I've said, the biggest danger of the Third Way is that it is opening the door for and creating a market for private health insurance.

When I met with Iris Evans, I gave her a list of reasons why any move towards a greater reliance on private health insurance would not be in the public interest. And I'd like to share five of those reasons with you today.

First, an increased reliance on private health insurance would not be in the public interest because it costs more.

Our single-payer public system pools risk, thereby lowering cost. Our public health insurance system also has very low administrative costs - less than two percent of overall cost versus about 13 percent in private health care.

This explains why the American system - which relies on private insurance - is roughly twice as expensive on a per capita basis when compared to the Canadian public system.

Introducing a new tier of private insurance here in Alberta would undermine the advantages of having a single-payer system. It would fragment our system, reduce efficiencies and increase overall costs.

Second, an increased reliance on private health insurance would not be in the public interest because private health care has a much worse track record of cost containment than public health care.

Costs in the public system have been going up, but not nearly as much as costs in the for-profit health care sector.

In the U.S., private health insurance premiums have been rising at an average rate of more than 10 percent a year for each of the past seven years. The increases in premiums rates have been even higher for smaller employers.

In fact, the only way private insurers have been able to stop costs for completely spiralling out of control south of the border is by denying more people coverage, reducing the scope of coverage for those who are enrolled in plans and by charging ever-increasing deductibles and co-payments.

Third, an increased reliance on private health insurance would not be in the public interest because the companies most likely to step in and provide expanded private health insurance here in Alberta are the same American companies that have been found guilty of fraud on an almost mind-boggling scale.

Columbia/HCA, for example, was fined $745 million for fraud. Tenet Health Care was fined $683 million.

Even AON, the private insurance company that our provincial government contracted to help draft it Third Way framework, was fined $190 million.

Are these really the people we want to turn to as saviours? Are these the really people we want to invite into Alberta and entrust the care of our families to?

Fourth, an increased reliance on private health insurance would not be in the public interest because the expansion of private health insurance will hurt Alberta employers.

If the government shrinks the Medicare umbrella, workers (both union and non-union) will have no choice but to push for increased health benefits from their employers. And employers, especially in Alberta's current tight job market, may have no choice but to comply in order to attract and retain employees.

For public sector employers, this will mean less money left in their budgets to pay for the services they provide. And for private sector employers, it will mean reduced profits.

To understand just how costly the Third Way might be to employers consider these numbers: the average cost for health benefits in Canada is currently about $930 US per employee per year. In the States, the average cost is more than $10,000 US per year for employees with families.

To illustrate this point further, consider some of the numbers we've been able to gather from the construction industry. In the labour movement, we have many unions that operate on both sides of the border - and I had an opportunity to look at some of the contracts that had been negotiated by the Ironworkers in both Canada and the U.S. The numbers on health benefits were truly shocking. In Canada, construction companies in northern Alberta pay ironworkers $1.50 per hour for extend health benefits. In Saskatchewan they pay $1.60 per hour and in Manitoba it's $1.70.

But in the States, the amount they pay for health benefits is, in some cases, more nearly three quarters of what they pay for wages.

I'll give you four examples. In Phoenix, $7.15 construction employers pay ironworkers $7.15 per hour (Can) for health benefits. In San Francisco it's $7.38 per hour. In Minneapolis, it's $7.29 per hour and in Buffalo, NY it's $10.89 hour.

These costs have been literally eating American businesses alive.

The bottom line is that Medicare, as it is currently constituted, lowers costs for our businesses and gives them a huge economic advantage when competing with their American rivals. Creating a new tier of private insurance in Alberta will substantially reduce that advantage.

A move to a greater reliance on private health insurance will be particularly problematic for smaller businesses because large employers will more easily be able to afford extended health benefits. In the current tight job market that means that smaller employers will be at an even greater disadvantage when it comes to attracting and retaining employees.

With all this is mind, I ask these questions: Will your business or organization be able to afford increased health benefits for your employees? Where will the money come from? And, in a province as wealthy as Alberta, do you really think it's justified to download public costs onto individuals and business?

Fifth, an increased reliance on private health insurance would not be in the public interest because less than 35 percent of Alberta workers currently have access to supplemental health benefits through work.

These are the people most likely to received increased benefits to cover the new tier of private service that the Third Way would create. Even if you add in the families of workers covered by private insurance, more than 50 percent of the Alberta population will likely be left without supplemental insurance.

Sixth, and finally, an increased reliance on private health insurance would not be in the public interest because there is only one payer for health services - the individual citizen.

By opening the door for more private insurance, the government won't really be reducing costs, they'll just be downloading them to businesses and individuals. I ask this question: shouldn't the government consider the broader social costs of health care rather than just the focusing on getting health care costs "off its books"?

At this point I'd like to one make one thing very clear. We in the labour movement do not want to bargain for increased private health insurance coverage. We don't want to add an extra burden on our employers. And we don't want to have to deal with another item on the bargaining table that could cause tension and possibly lead to strikes.

Our strong preference is to maintain a comprehensive and universal public system. But make no mistake: if the government starts shrinking the umbrella of Medicare coverage, we will have no choice but to act. We will have no choice but to attempt to fill the gap at the bargaining table.

With all sincerity, I hope it never comes to that. It won't be good for our members, it won't be good for business and it won't be good for Alberta.

I'm fiercely proud of the fact that the Canadian labour movement has always fought for health care benefits for all Canadians, not just our members. And that will continue to be our priority.

But if the government proceeds with the Third Way as currently proposed, they'll be opening a Pandora's Box.

As it stands right now, Alberta employers cover extended health benefits costs for about 582,000 individual Alberta workers. If you add a new tier of care, that's a good indication of how many people will be demanding more private coverage from their employers.

Of course, other than hips and knees, we don't know yet what services your government plans to let people buy faster access to. So we don't know exactly how many new benefits we might have to bargain for and how much benefit costs might increase. But for each item they add to the list, the cost to employers to cover the gap will go up.

One way to estimate the cost would be to look at monthly cost being projected by Accure Health, the private insurance firm associated with Jim Dinning. They're planning to offer a plan that will cover access to services like hip and knee replacements - at a cost of $70 per month.

So if all 582,000 Albertans who currently have extended health benefits are successful in getting that kind of coverage - that would translate into an extra cost to employers of about $41 million a month and more about $492 million a year. And that's just for the one procedure.

At the end of the day, I'm left with many troubling questions about the framework document. For example, why would the government want to download so such significant costs onto businesses and individuals?

Why would they want to undermine the economic advantage conferred by Medicare?

How, if their goal is to control costs, are they going to do that by opening the door to private insurance which we know from experience is much more expensive?

And if their other goal is to reduce waiting list, how are you going to accomplish that by let doctors work both sides of the street - a practice we know will probably lead to longer public waits, not shorter? I know that the buzzword for the government on this issue is "choice." They say that people should have the free to choose where to spend their money - even if they're spending it on health services.

In democratic western societies, we've always tried to protect individual choice - and that's a good thing.

But we've also said that reasonable limits often need to be placed on choice - especially when an individual's choice might have adverse effects on other individuals. That's why we say people don't have the right to choose to drive down the highway at 200 km/hour or the right to smack their neighbour in the head when they have an argument.

Given that private insurance drives up cost and has the potential to increase waiting lists for everyone, I would argue that it's reasonable to prohibit access to it. It's a clear example of the public good trumping the narrow interests of wealthy individuals.

The majority of Canadians and Albertans understand this. It's just too bad that whoever wrote the Framework document didn't share that insight.

In conclusion, I just like to say this: Private health care and the Third Way may be Ralph's hobby horse, but Albertans don't have to hop on board.

All the evidence shows that privatization is the wrong way to go. The evidence also shows that there are many potential fruitful avenues for reform within the public system.

The bad news is that our Premier, despite his impending retirement, seems determined to proceed. And there's nothing more dangerous than a politician with a bad idea who knows he's not going to face the voters again.

The good news is that while Ralph may be riding off into the sunset, the majority of his caucus members are not. THEY will have to face the voters.

That's, frankly, is why I'm here today. We in the labour movement are often on the opposite side of issue compared to business. But in this case, I think our interests coincide.

We don't want our members to lose health benefits - and you don't want to face increased costs.

Medicare gives individuals security and access to top notch health care that, in most cases, they would otherwise be unable to afford. But it also gives business an economic advantage especially when it comes to competing with their rivals south of the board.

Medicare is an important part of the Canadian Advantage and the Alberta Advantage. It's an Advantage we should not give up lightly.

That's why I want you to help us send a message to the government.

With the Premier's retirement announcement, the Third Way is teetering. But it needs one more big push to knock it over.

We in the labour movement will be doing our part. But I'm a realist.

Here in Alberta, the Premier and the health minister can afford to ignore angry letters from people like me. But they really stand up and take notice when they hear from people like you.

The Third Way may be on life support, but, more than anyone, you and your colleagues in the business community have the power to pull the plug.

So thank you for taking the initiative to establish this committee. I hope that, after gathering the information you need, you capitalize on the power you have to stop the Third Way before it becomes an albatross around the neck of the Alberta economy.

Thank you.

Gil McGowan, President of the Alberta Federation of Labour, December 2, 2005

Two-and-a-half years ago, the Alberta government made some sweeping changes to the labour laws covering health care workers in this province.

The government tried to argue that Bill 27 was nothing more than administrative house-keeping. They said it was about simplification, streamlining and efficiency.

But from our perspective, it was something much more serious. It was a law essentially drafted to force concessions from health care unions that the regional health authorities had been unable to win at the bargaining table.

Bill 27 allowed the government to tear up dozens of freely negotiated contracts covering the pay and working conditions of tens of thousands of health care workers.

It forced unions into run-off votes, denying many workers the right to choose the union they actually preferred.

And it removed the legal right to strike from thousands of union members in areas like Community Health, Mental Health and Extended Care - without even attempting to justify how it would threaten the public interest if a speech pathologist, physiotherapist or community health nurse walked a picket line.

We've had our share of anti-union labour laws thrown at us in the province - but Bill 27 has to rank among the worst.

Our concerns about the substance of the law were profound - but we also had serious concerns about the process.

In particular, we were concerned about the role employers may have played in introducing, designing and drafting the legislation.

In an attempt to substantiate these concerns we filed a series of Freedom of Information requests with the Department of Health and Wellness, the Department of Human Resources and Employment and the Labour Relations Board.

The responses we received to these requests only heightened our concerns. The Health department and the Human Resources Department disclosed boxes of documents - most of which turned out to be innocuous. But from the LRB, we got nothing.

The Board refused to release any documents, saying they were all covered by exemptions within the FOIP act.

This blanket refusal, coupled with a few hints from documents from Health and Human Resources, raised a number of red flags for us. In particular, we started to suspect that we had stumbled onto something even bigger than what we had initially thought. We had been worried about the government cozying up with employers. But now we started to have grave concerns about the role that the Labour Relations Board in the whole process.

As we all know, the LRB is the quasi-judicial board that over-sees the administration and application of labour laws covering unionize workplaces in Alberta.

It is the referee, the traffic cop, the court of appeal in matters of labour relations.

It is also - and this is crucial - supposed to be independent and impartial. And by independent, we mean arms-length from government and free from influence by either the unions or the employers that appear before it.

However, at least when it came to Bill 27, the more we learned, the more it appeared that the Board's independence had been compromised. In particular, we were getting hints that the LRB was taking a direct role in drafting Bill 27.

We had no smoking gun. But, if it was true that the Board was working with government on Bill 27 this was very serious & because the LRB would have crossed an important line & they would have gone from interpreting the law, to writing it.

The LRB and Clint Dunford, who was Minister of Human Resources at the time, essentially said we were paranoid & that we were chasing shadows.

While Dunford admitted that there might have been some consultation on technical matters, the he said emphatically that the Bill was written by the politicians, not the LRB. In fact, in one newspaper article that we've included in your information package, he is quoted as saying the board had no role in drafting Bill 27.

But we weren't satisfied with those reassurances.

We had a hard time believing that the LRB had no documents related to Bill 27 or that all of them were covered by FOIP exemptions. So we did what was our right to do & we appealed the whole case to the information commissioner's office. And then, we waited.

And that's where things stood until late last week. On the evening of Wednesday, November 23, our lawyer received a letter and a few documents from the information commissioner's office - you'll find them in the package we've prepared for you.

There are only a few short documents here. But they prove what we have suspected all along & namely, that the independence of the LRB was compromised during the Bill 27 process.

What these documents show is not only that the LRB was playing an active role in drafting labour laws that they where only supposed to be policing and interpreting & the LRB was also actively working with employers to determine what the law should look like.

In the e-mail, dated March 11, 2003 and labelled number 50 by the information commissioner, Bruce Baugh (who is a government lawyer whose job it is to write legislation) says he has followed instructions from LRB Vice-chair Les Wallace.

And in the e-mail dated March 4, 2003 and labelled number 95 - Les Wallace himself provides an outline of what he says Bill 27 should look like. And he goes further. He says he has consulted with Damien Bailey, a senior lawyer from the firm McLellan and Ross - who act as counsel for a number of major health authorities. In particular, Wallace says he had discussions with Mr. Bailey about how the section of the regulation dealing with severance should be worded.

We've done some digging - and the section of Bill 27 they were talking about is the one that took away severance pay from a large group of Mental Health workers, who at the time were represented by the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees.

From our perspective, this is nothing short of a scandal.

What's happened here is that, the LRB abandoned its independence. It's supposed to be an independent, third party arbiter - but it allowed itself to essentially become another branch of government.

And even worse, it took advice and direction from employers who had a vested interest in watering down contracts for health care workers.

This is a clear violation of the central role of the Labour Relations Board. And it is a clear conflict of interest.

All of us in this room understand why all of this is upsetting for the labour movement. But for members of press let me use a sports analogy.

Here in Edmonton, we've just watched our football team win the Grey Cup. How would Eskimo fans feel if there were ten seconds on the clock, Edmonton is third and goal - and then the referee goes to the Montreal bench to consult on a crucial penalty call.

That's what's happened to union and working people in this case. The referee is helping the other side to win.

The government passed one of the most sweeping - and we would argue damaging and unfair - pieces of labour legislation in Alberta history. And, instead of remaining impartial, the LRB has consulted with the other team.

In effect, the Labour Relations Board has put itself in the position of writing the law to reflect the interests of employers and government, and then they've gone on to sit in judgement of that same law.

Unions in this province appear before the Board every day.

But, given these revelations, how can we have any confidence that we will be treated fairly? How can we have any confidence that the Board will be fair and impartial? How can we have any confidence that the referee is not working for the other team?

These are deeply troubling questions. And honestly, until such a time that confidence can be restored in the true independence of the board, there will be a crisis in labour relations in this province.

With that in mind - and in an effort to restore the confidence in the LRB that is necessary to make the system work - the AFL has called for a public inquiry.

We don't want an internal investigation or a review that's conducted behind closed doors.

We want an independent body to look at these documents and the many others that are clearly out there, but haven't been released. We want someone who can call witnesses and subpoena evidence. In short, we want a thorough, public investigation. And we want changes to make sure something like this never happens again.

This is a stain on our labour relations system in Alberta. The good news is that the problem is now out in the open. Now all that's need is the political will to deal with it and restore confidence in the system.

Good morning. My name is Gil McGowan and I'm president of the Alberta Federation of Labour.

For those who are not familiar with our federation, we are the umbrella group representing unions in the province.

More specifically, we represent 29 unions in both the public and private sectors, who, in turn, represent about 120,000 Alberta workers.

But this morning, we're not here to talk about our members. We're not here to talk about those who are already represented.

Instead, we're here to talk about a forgotten group of workers.

We're here to talk about a group of people who are at the heart of our province's traditional economy, but who have been abandoned on the margins of our legal system.

The group that I'm talking about, of course, is farm workers.

In an effort to bring Alberta farm workers 'in from the margins' the AFL has decided to designate August 20th as Farmer Workers Day. This will be the first of what we hope will become an annual event.

We're also here to launch a lobbying campaign aimed at shining a public spotlight on the problems faced by farm workers in Alberta.

In particular, it is our intention to educate members of the Legislative Assembly and convince them to update the workplace laws governing farm workers so that they better reflect the realities we face in the 21st century.

In many ways farm workers have been enduring a drought when it comes to legal protections; that's why we're calling the plan we're unveiling today the 'End the Drought' campaign.

To help me launch this campaign this morning, we've invited two special guests.

To my left, we have Eric Musekamp. Eric is President of the Farmworkers Union of Alberta, or FUA for short.

For several years now, Eric has been a lonely voice trying to draw attention to the plight of farm workers. With this event today, we are signaling that Eric will no longer be alone in his work: the broader labour movement is also taking up the cause.

Our other special guest is Stan Raper. Stan is the Agriculture Worker Coordinator for the United Food and Commercial Workers union. UFCW has taken the lead among unions in organizing farm workers in Canada, and Stan has been the man directing most of that important work.

As far as the agenda for this morning goes, we'll break our presentation into four main sections.

First, I will outline the nature of the problem facing farm workers in Alberta, and I will talk about what our Federation plans to do about it.

Second, Eric will talk about what it's like to actually be a farm worker here in Alberta in 2005, and why, from his perspective, legal changes are so desperately needed.

Third, Stan will provide us with a national perspective on the issue of workplace protections for farm workers. In particular, he'll tell us about some of the progress that's been made in other provinces; progress which highlights just how much ground farm workers here in Alberta still have to make up.

Fourth, and finally, we'll open the floor for questions, and afterwards, we'll all make ourselves available for one-on-one interviews.

So who are we talking about when we talk about farm workers and just how bad are things for them?

As it stands right now, there are about 12,000 people working as farm or agricultural employees in Alberta.

About 25 percent of these people work on a temporary or seasonal basis. And about 300 are classified as foreign or migrant labourers.

But the rest - the vast majority - are full-time, permanent workers who make their homes in our communities.

Some of them work in nurseries and market gardens. Some of them work in mushroom farms or greenhouses.

But the majority work in animal production. You'll find them working on ranches, in huge hog barns and on sprawling feed lots around the province.

When it comes to the challenges these workers face, it can be boiled down simply.

The problem in a nutshell is that farm workers in our province are excluded from almost all of the legal, workplace protections that other Albertans take for granted.

Other workers are covered and protected by laws like the Employment Standards Code, the Occupational Health and Safety Act, the Workers' Compensation Act and the Labour Code.

These laws provide the basic legal framework of protections that most working Albertans take for granted. They guarantee rights and provide a safety net.

But farm workers here in Alberta fall outside that legal framework. They have no safety net.

More specifically, farm workers are either fully or partially excluded from all of the laws I've mentioned and denied the protections that those laws provide.

As a result, if you're a farm worker in Alberta today you work in an extremely insecure environment.

You're excluded from most provisions of the Employment Standards Code - so you have no protection when it comes to things like hours of work. You're not guaranteed a minimum wage. You're not entitled to overtime. You don't get statutory holidays or vacation pay.

If you're a farm worker in Alberta, you're also excluded from the Occupational Health and Safety Act and the Workers Compensation Act. So you don't have the right to refuse unsafe work and, in most cases, you're not entitled to compensation if you're injured on the job.

If you're a farm worker in Alberta, you're also excluded from the Labour Code. So you don't have the right to join a union. You don't have the right of association that's guaranteed in the Charter of Rights and which is, or will soon be, available to farm workers in every other province.

As a result of all these exclusions, Alberta is once again, at the back of the pack when compared to other provinces. Farm workers here in our province have fewer rights and fewer workplace protections that their counterparts in any other part of the country.

We have fewer employment standards protections for farm workers; we are the last to recognize farm workers right to organize; and we are the only province that has not committed to including farm workers in health and safety legislation.

So, Alberta may be number one in oil, gas and cattle - but we are dead last when it comes to protecting the rights and interests of farm workers.

That's why we're here today. And that's why we're launching our campaign to 'End the Drought' for farm workers.

The work that these workers do is valuable. It's also often hard and dangerous. And we believe they deserve the same kind of legal protections that are available to other Albertans working in other sectors of the economy.

Defenders of the status quo will say that agriculture is a special case. They will say that the rules in place for other workers are not appropriate for farm workers.

A generation or two ago that may have been the case. Back then, that majority of agricultural production in Alberta came from family farms - where the workers were usually the farmers themselves or members of their families.

But today, the small family farm is being pushed aside by agri-business. More and more of our agricultural products are being produced by corporations on factory farms.

Green Acres is being replaced by Hogs-R-Us.

As a result, farm workers are not relatives or friends of the family, they are employees. And the employers are not struggling small farmers, they are profitable corporations.

As employees, we think that farm workers should have the same rights as other employees in the province. As profitable corporations, we think big agricultural employers should have the same obligations to their workers as other employers in the province.

To put it simply, farming in Alberta has changed, and we think the law needs to change to reflect those changes. It's time to end the drought in legal protection for farm workers.

And it's time to end the free ride for agricultural employers.

In terms of the nuts and bolts of our campaign, we've produced a leaflet that we plan to distribute around the province. We're going to be holding town hall meetings in in targeted communities. And we're going to be lobbying the Human Resources Minister and other MLAs.

Our goal is to bring our farm labour laws into the 21st century, and we're going to make it really easy for our politicians.

We're not asking for the moon. All we want is four small amendments to four pieces of Legislation. It's work that the government could accomplish in a day or two if there was a will.

At this point, we remain optimistic. From our perspective the need for these changes is clear. It simply no longer makes any sense to leave farm workers out in the cold.

We hope the government will see basic inequity and injustice here - and we hope they will do the right thing and make sure farm workers are no longer relegated to the status of second class citizens.

Gil McGowan, President of the Alberta Federation of Labour, November 14, 2005

Good morning and welcome.

My name is Gil McGowan and I'm the president of the Alberta Federation of Labour.

We're here today largely because of a strike that captured public attention not only here in Alberta, but across the country.

It was a strike that shocked us; angered us; and pulled at our heart strings.

It was also a strike that did not have to happen. In fact, it was a strike that would not have happened in almost any other Canadian jurisdiction.

The strike I'm talking about, of course, is the strike that recently came to an end at the Lakeside meatpacking plant in Brooks.

For those of us in the Alberta labour movement, the Lakeside strike was significant because it was about rights that most working people take for granted.

Like the right to go to the bathroom when you need to.

Like the right to see a doctor when you're injured on the job.

Like the right to actually get paid for all the work you do.

But the Lakeside strike was also important because it highlighted a major weakness in our province's system of labour laws.

In particular, the Lakeside strike reminded us of what happens when you have laws with loopholes.

It reminded us of what happens when you have laws that ignore easy-to-predict problems - and laws that don't give people "on the ground" the options they need to deal with problems.

That's why we're here today - to talk about the lessons of Lakeside - and how we can learn from those lessons.

The big lesson that we think needs to be taken from the experience at Brooks is that we need some form of first contract arbitration here in Alberta.

It's commonly known in labour relations circles that first contracts are the most difficult contracts to negotiate - mostly because the two sides haven't built a relationship. They haven't yet found ways to live together and to prosper together. This often leads to hostility and conflict.

Recognizing this problem, most provinces have adopted laws that provide for an independent third party to step in and settle first contract disputes when they've bogged down and have the potential to get dangerous.

The federal labour code makes provisions for first contract arbitration. So do the labour codes in B.C., Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island.

Eighty percent of Canadians live in jurisdictions that have first contract arbitration. Only Alberta, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick don't have it.

The reason so many provinces have chosen to adopt these laws is because they make sense - and because they work.

I think we can all agree that the goal in labour relations should be to settle disputes and reach fair agreements without recourse to nasty strikes. If that's the goal then the record from provinces that have first contract arbitration speaks for itself.

In 2002, the last year for which complete statistics are available, 41 first-contract strikes were avoided in B.C., Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario alone. 41 strikes that could have been ugly like the strike at Lakeside didn't happen because of first contract arbitration.

The really frustrating thing about our Labour Code here in Alberta is that it actually encourages confrontation. Under the Alberta Code, if no collective agreement has been reached 10 months after a union has been certified, an application to decertify that union can be filed. So for employers who want to bust the union, all they have to do is drag their feet in bargaining, wait for the clock to run out, and then push for a decertification vote.

Union members know this - so when they strike for a first agreement, those strikes tend to be even more bitter and acrimonious than usual because they are literally strikes for survival.

First contract arbitration would allow us to avoid this kind of bitterness and conflict. It would promote negotiation and discourage confrontation.

That's what happens in provinces that have first contract laws. Just knowing that an arbitrator could step in and impose a deal, encourages the parties to negotiate. In the 41 cases I mentioned earlier of strikes that had been avoided in other provinces, 31 were actually settled through negotiation after the arbitration process had been started because the parties wanted to avoid an imposed deal.

So the evidence shows that first contract arbitration works and makes good policy sense. But, you know what? It also makes good politics.

Near the end of the Lakeside strike, the AFL and the United Food and Commercial Workers commissioned a large province-wide poll of 800 Albertans.

The results of that poll are in your press kit. What it showed was that 61 percent of Albertans supported the idea of bringing first contract arbitration to Alberta. Even among self-identified Tory voters, more than 60 percent said they either supported or strongly supported the idea.

So when people ask me: can we avoid future Lakesides? I say: you bet we can!

There's a mechanism out there that we know can help us cool temperatures in first agreement disputes. It's been tested and proven in other provinces. And it's supported by the majority of people here in Alberta. First Contract Arbitration is a good idea whose time has come. All that's missing is the political will to put it into practice.

If we had first contract arbitration in Alberta we could have avoided Lakeside.

We could have avoided the $1.8 million tab for policing.

We could have avoided the picket line clashes.

We could have avoided the smash-up derby that almost killed the union president.

We could have avoided the anxiety and financial losses sustained by the ranching community.

We could have avoided splitting the town of Brooks down the middle.

And it's not just about Lakeside. Over the past few years there have been other nasty first contract disputes that also could have been avoided. Like the Shaw Conference Centre Strike in Edmonton. Like the Calgary Herald strike in Calgary.

The bottom line is that our labour law is broken and it needs to be fixed. If we don't seize this opportunity and take advantage of the momentum that's been building behind the idea of bringing first contract arbitration to Alberta, then it's not a question of "if" we're going to see more Lakesides, it's just a question of "when."

That's why the Alberta Federation of Labour is launching this campaign today. It's a campaign that's supported by most of the major unions in the province including, to name just a few: the United Food and Commercial Workers, who represent the workers at Lakeside; the United Nurses of Alberta; the Health Sciences Association of Alberta; the Canadian Autoworkers; the Communication Energy Paperworkers union; the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the Alberta Teachers Association and the Alberta Building Trades.

Starting today, we will be running radio ads across the province urging our provincial government to bring first contract arbitration to Alberta.

We will be distributing leaflets to the public. We will be meeting with groups outside the labour movement and urging them to get on board. We will be talking to the media. We will be lobbying MLAs.

The good news is that we've off to a running start. As most of you know, some members of government are already talking about first contract arbitration.

Lyle Oberg has said it might be a good idea. Premier Klein said it might be a possibility. And just last Thursday I met with Human Resources Minister Mike Cardinal and he gave me his personal commitment that public hearings will be held on the issue.

I've also been given a date in February to appear before the government's standing policy committee on Education and Human Resources to make the case for first contract arbitration.

All of this is encouraging. But, given this government's track record on labour issues, we know we can't simply wait for members of cabinet to do the right thing.

The only reason first contract arbitration is even the table right now is because Lakeside was on the front page almost constantly for more than a month. Politicians move when they feel the heat - and with this campaign we hope to keep the heat on.

In the end, what we're asking for is a relatively small change. We've included excerpts from other provincial labour codes in your press kits - so you can see that this issue can be dealt with in as little as half a page. With the Legislature reconvening tomorrow, I can't think of a better time to fix the problem that has been so dramatically highlighted for us by the strike at Lakeside.

First contract arbitration won't eliminate all strikes. But it will help us avoid some of the worst strike - the ones most likely to spill into the streets and onto the front pages.

It's a small change, but one that - if implemented - could go a long way to promoting workplace peace in the province. And that's a goal we think is worth striving for.

Given the lessons that we've learned from Lakeside, we think the time has come to fix about Alberta's broken labour law. The time has come to support the change that brings workplace peace. The time has come to bring first contract arbitration to Alberta.

Thank you.

Gil McGowan, President of the Alberta Federation of Labour, October 28, 2005

Hello and welcome.

As many of you know, my name is Gil McGowan, and I'm president of the Alberta Federation of Labour.

I'd like to begin this afternoon by thanking all of you for taking the time to attend this reception.

I know we have a jammed packed agenda and every spare minute is precious; so we appreciate you making the effort to squeeze us in.

I'd particularly like to welcome all the delegates from the government and business communities.

Some people joke that we come here first for the food and the scenery and only second for the discussion.

But for me, there simply aren't enough opportunities for dialog between our two solitudes.

I sincerely believe that by meeting like this and getting to know each other face-to-face we can more effectively make strides towards that elusive goal of workplace harmony.

Of course, harmony is not the word that many would use to describe what's going on in Alberta today.

And that's why I've arranged to have this talk this afternoon.

In many ways, what we're seeing around the province right now is a story of stark contrasts.

On one hand, here in Alberta in 2005, we have it all.

Our economy is literally floating on a sea of oil dollars. Demand for what we produce is strong and getting stronger. Profits are up, unemployment is down and our provincial treasury is bursting at the seams. It's hard to imagine how our economic prospects could be brighter.

During times like these, Albertans should be comfortable and confident. We should be looking to the future with hope. We should be dreaming big. We should building schools and hospitals. We should not only be maintaining the social programs we have, we should be enhancing them.

Many around us are indeed living the Alberta dream. But for many others, it's a different story.

Instead of comfort and confidence we get picket lines. And instead of enhancing the programs we have, we get 12-year-olds at work and Premier's Klein's Third Way for private health care.

That's the face of the other Alberta; and it's the face that many of our members are struggling to deal with today.

Military metaphors are often over-used by leaders & but it's hard for those of us in the labour community not to describe what's been happening over the last six months as a war.

It's a war with many fronts.

Telus. CBC. Lakeside. Finning. Casino Calgary.

Never before in Alberta history have so many workers, from so many different unions and so many different sectors of the economy been on the picket line at the same time.

It would be one thing if all these strikes were simply about wages; about workers trying to get a bigger piece of Alberta's expanding economic pie.

But they're not. Each one of these labour disputes are about much more fundamental issues.

In the case of both Telus and Finning, for example, it's about contracting out and job security.

In both cases we have companies that are hugely successful. Telus dominates the telecommunications market in western Canada. And Finning is the leading supplier of heavy equipment to Alberta's booming oil industry. These are companies that measure their profits, not in millions, not in tens of millions, but in hundreds of millions.

And yet, despite their market dominance and despite their profits, many of the people working at these companies feel insecure.

And they feel insecure with good reason: Telus has laid off thousands and they've been dipping their toe in pool of foreign outsourcing. And Finning has already contracted out or spun off whole divisions at the expense of hundreds of jobs.

So the fight at Finning and Telus and the CBC has not been about nickels and dimes: it has been about fighting for careers rather than contracts; and about stopping the disappearance of stable, family-sustaining jobs.

The strike at Lakeside Packers in Brooks and Casino Calgary are also about bedrock issues of fairness.

Just last weekend I spoke with a women on the Casino Calgary picket line who has worked as a dealer at the Casino for 25 years. When she started in 1980, she made $7.00 and hour. Today, 25 years later, she makes $7.80 and hour. 80 cents in 25 years.

To make matters worse, while I was standing there, the casino owner's son pulled up in his Hummer and sneered at the picketers.

It was one of those moments of clarity. Here, on one hand was a group of struggling minimum wage workers, and there, on the other hand, was some driving a vehicle that costs more than any of the workers could make in ten years.

It's a similar situation in Brooks.

You've already heard from the Lakeside workers themselves last night, so I won't belabour the point. But I'll say this.

This is a strike about the most basic issues. It's about right most Albertans take for granted: like the right to go to the bathroom when you need to; like the right to see a doctor when you're injured; like the right to actually get paid for all the time you work.

To illustrate how bad things are there, I'll tell you two quick stories.

First, one of the strikers told me about an incident when one of the beef carcasses, weighing hundreds of pounds, fell off the assembly line on top of a worker. The managers rushed in quickly: but not to help the injured worker. They were there to pick up the meat.

The second, story I'll tell you is about a practice that sounds like it comes right out of some south Asian sweat shop. It's called gang time and it happens every day at Lakeside. Basically what happens is that Lakeside stops paying people when they stop slaughtering cattle.

The only problem is that it's an assembly line operation, so it takes some time for the last animal to make it's way from the killing floor to the end of the line. And for all that time, as much as an hour at the end of each shift, the workers along the line are not getting paid.

Lakeside's parent company Tyson Foods has been brought up on charges and convicted of this practice in the states. But it's also happening here.

This is why some of the workers talk about how working at Lakeside is like slavery. Many of them have come from desperate war-torn countries & they come to Canada full of hope and this is how they are greeted.

Now, I don't want to paint all of Alberta business with the same brush. The truth is that the vast majority of employers in the province are good employers and the vast majority of business people in the province are people of good conscience.

But, in the spirit of openness, I have to tell you, when we in the labour movement look at what's going on, we come away feeling deeply troubled.

We're fighting for job security during strong economic times when insecurity should be the last thing on our minds.

And we're fighting battles for basic fairness and respect that most people thought were won a generation ago.

As president of the AFL, I'm often asked: what's going on? And why is all of this happening now.

In nutshell, I think it's a problem of limits, or more precisely, the lack of limits.

Think of it this way. Ours is an individualistic society, where we are generally free to choose how we live our lives and that's a good thing.

But even in this free society we have limits, we have boundaries.

Some of them are legally codified: you can't steal, you can't speed, you can't break into your neighbour's house and help your self to his new plasma TV. But some of our boundaries are strictly social. For example, it may not be illegal to make a pass at your best friend's wife, but generally speaking, we know it's something we shouldn't do.

In the same vein, here in Alberta - when it comes to the way employers deal with their workers - I would make the argument that there is a problem with limits. Specifically, I think there is a problem with both the codified rules and the less formal cultural and social limits that put boundaries on what is acceptable and what isn't.

On the legal side, we have a weak labour code that makes it hard for unions to organize and bargain and which fails to give our labour board the powers that other provincial labour boards have to promote fair bargaining and discourage unfair practices.

We also have a weak employment standards system that sometimes sounds good on paper but is not backed up with an effective enforcement mechanism.

These weak laws open the door for some businesses to behave badly, and, as we seen, some of them do exactly that.

On the social side, we also have a business culture that too often says "anything goes."

We all know that some companies are behaving badly. But too often our leaders in other business and government circles turn the other way.

As someone once said to on the picket line in Brooks: It's like someone is getting beaten up in the alley and instead of helping, people close the blinds and turn up the stereo."

That's what happens when you don't have appropriate limits. In the broader society, when limits break down, we end up with people behaving badly; maybe not everybody, but some people.

In the same way, without appropriate limits in the business world, some businesses cross over the line of what's acceptable.

In nutshell, that's what I think explains the explosion of labour unrest in the province this year. It's a story of weak limits. And it's a story about corporations behaving badly.

The thing about weak limits is that they are really in no ones best interests. Our members don't want to be on the picket line. It's costly, it's disruptive and, especially when it comes to things like the situation in Brooks, it gives the entire Alberta business community a black eye.

So I have a modest proposal. I would like to see the labour movement and the responsible majority of the business community work together at promoting a package of more appropriate labour standards.

We're not asking for the moon.

On the legal side, what we need is first contract arbitration, so that employers can't simply ignore the democratically expressed will of their employees.

Dozens of strikes were avoided in other provinces last year because of first contract arbitration. If we had it here, there would be no strike at Brooks. The time for first contract arbitration in Alberta has come.

We also think that the Labour Board needs some of the powers that were stripped from it in 1988. In particular, we think they need the big stick of automatic certification. Charges of bad faith bargaining mean nothing if there is no effective deterrent.

When it comes to employment standards, we could go on all day. But at the very least, we need a more aggressive approach to enforcement. Giving employment standards officers the power to issue tickets, as opposed to always having to go through the courts would be an important first step.

On the social side, we'd like to see is leadership from government and the business community & we need to identify standards of what's acceptable and what's not.

We talk about promoting best practices - that's great - but I think we should also be talking about identifying and actively discouraging worst practices.

So, when some corporation behaves badly - when something dark slithers out from under a rock - we don't want them to be greeted by silence. Instead we want them to be greeted by the law, and the full blown and actively expressed disapproval of not only the labour movment and civil society, but also the Alberta corporate community.

Finally, on the subject of contracting out and job security, which is at the heart of so many of our disputes, we'd like to see some movement from the business community.

Providing employees with decent working conditions and some measure of job security should not be seen as a straight jacket that undermines profit, but as a cost of doing business.

To conclude, I'd just like to remind you of what we all know. We are living through a period of great prosperity. We can make the argument that Alberta today is one of the most prosperous jurisdictions, not just in Canada, but the entire world.

But, and here's the really important point: the only real way that most ordinary Albertans share in the Alberta Advantage is through their jobs and the wages they earn. If those wages are stagnant or declining, if those jobs are insecure, then those people are not sharing in the Alberta Advantage.

And the implications are serious; if our companies in Alberta can't provide some measure of security; if careers are really being replaced by contracts, if job security has become a quaint notion from the past, then where does that leave us?

Without being too melodramatic, I think that what's at stake is nothing less that the future of our middle class.

If even here in Alberta the Wealthy people don't have security, can't take mortgages, can't save for kids education, then we really have a problem.

It's not enough to think, some one else will provide the good jobs; if we all think that the next guy is doing it, one day we'll wake up and wonder where the middle class went.

The fact that so many people are not being treated better, the fact that we're allowing some corporations to behave badly even during a time of unprecedented prosperity, is a black mark on Alberta.

I think we can do better. Given prosperity, I know we can do better. Maybe, by working together, we can get the ball rolling.

Gil McGowan, President of the Alberta Federation of Labour, October 11, 2005

Good afternoon. Welcome to Alberta and thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today.

I'm here today as a spokesperson for the Alberta Federation of Labour is Alberta. The AFL is Alberta's largest labour organization, representing over 115,000 workers and their families.

As it stands now, only about 10 per cent of our members work under federal jurisdiction. But in many ways the Federal Code sets a bar for provincial codes - so our interest in this review is not narrow.

Before I get into the substance of my remarks, I want to begin by commending you on the extensive and exhaustive process that's been established for this review.

You've taken the broad view. You have allowed for a wide ranging discussion on the role of employment standards in the 21st century. You have reached out to stakeholder groups and formally included them in the process. You haven't rushed. You have taken the time to conduct a truly rigorous and thorough review. And you are in the process of conducting public hearings across this province and across the country.

The federal process stands in marked contrast to what's happening here in Albert. As you probably know, our provincial government just completed a review of our employment standards code - and it could not have been more different from what you're doing.

Instead of the broad view, our review was narrow and careful stage-managed. Instead of consulting with all stakeholders, our government only met with business. Instead of public hearings, we got a hastily thrown-together on-line questionnaire.

Frankly, in comparison to the federal review, our review comes across looking like an amateurish, one-sided, ham-handed embarrassment.

So thank you for taking the time to do your review the right way. You won't hear this said in Calgary often: but at least when it comes to these kinds of reviews, the Alberta government could learn a thing or two from the federal government.

On the subject of expectations and stereotypes, there are a lot of unfair stereotypes about Albertans. We don't all drive pick-up trucks with gun racks in the back; we don't all have pump-jacks in our back yards - and we're not all cut from the same monolithic political cloth.

However, there is one stereotype that unfortunately holds true. We do have some of the worst labour laws in the country.

As a labour activist and president of the AFL, I have seen the effects of poorly written, lop-sided and rarely enforced labour laws first hand. And it's not a pretty sight.

Just in past six months, the Alberta government watered down its Employment Standards Code to allow 12 year olds to work in restaurants; they've signed permits allowing people with disabilities to be paid less than the minimum wage; and they refused to enforce their own rules when it found the a midway company at the Edmonton Klondike Days exhibition violated the Code repeatedly.

The Alberta Employment Standards Code is full of holes; it offers too little protection for workers, and rests on an almost non-existent enforcement regime; and it is widely ignored, even mocked, by employers.

Why am I spending so much time talking about the Alberta Code? Well, because in several important respects, the federal code is not much better.

Take the issue of compliance, for example. According to recent audits, of which I'm sure you are familiar, only 25% of employers under the federal jurisdiction are in compliance with the provisions of Part III. One in four. Here in Alberta, similar audits have never been done - but the results would probably be similar, if not worse.

My question is this: what is the point of having legislated protections if the majority of employers ignore them? And, what is the point of amending and updating those protections if there is no enforcement?

From our perspective, laws and regulations mean nothing if they are not reflected in the day-to-day of real Canadian workers, in real Canadian workplaces.

In order to change this dismal situation, I think it's important to understand how we got here.

To put it simply, over the past 25 years, I think that governments in Canada, at both the provincial and federal levels, have been seduced by the pro-business crowd; they have forgotten why we have labour laws; and they have lost sight the role government needs to play in the labour market.

During the 80s and 90s the employment standards agenda largely became the business agenda. Deregulation replaced rules. Self-regulation and voluntary compliance replaced enforcement. And "flexibility" replaced worker protection as the main policy goal.

But in all these changes we've lost our way.

Labour standards are more than just words on a dusty page. They are an expression of our values - about what we will and won't accept and how we think our fellow citizens should be treated in the workplace.

Labour standards are also a recognition of the inherent power imbalance exists between employers and workers. The employment relationship is not a contract between two equal parties. For reasons of law and basic economics, most of the power rests with the employer.

That's why we have employment standards: to protect the weaker party in the contract, to ensure that the power imbalance cannot be misused to exploitative extremes.

We as a community have a right to express our moral disapproval on certain actions. For example, we have decided that child labour is not appropriate, and so have outlawed it. We have decided people deserve a day of rest each week. We have decided certain days should be days off for everyone.

Labour standards legislation is the vehicle through which the will of the public expresses itself. It is our way to ensuring that workplaces meet the moral and ethical expectations of the community around them.

I have seen nothing in the past 20 years that makes me think that workers are any less in need of protection than they were in previous generations. In fact, I think the opposite is true, with the rise of more precarious and contingent forms of work, I think, in many areas, there is more potential for abuse than in the past.

This review provides an opportunity to turn things around. It provides the federal government with a chance to find its way again and restore its commitment to protecting Canadians in the workplace and upholding our values as a community.

Today, I want to urge the federal government to become a leader in the area of labour standards. You can and should set an example for provinces like Alberta by showing them that you can protect workers without undermining economic prosperity.

While Alberta permits 12-year olds to work, you should prohibit it. While Alberta refuses to offer compassionate leave or family responsibility leave, you should provide it. While Alberta continues to let its minimum wage drag near the bottom of the pack, you should step forward boldly with a strategy for a Living Wage.

And, most importantly, while Alberta continues to run away from enforcing its own laws, you should step up and send the message that the rules must be taken seriously.

If you take strong steps to revitalize federal labour standards, I strongly believe you will quickly be copied. Other provinces will be watching, and when they find out that you can shore up labour standards without negatively affecting business, they will join in.

I have no doubt there will be some initial outcry from employer lobby groups when you try to toughen rules and bolster enforcement. But you need to ask for proof of hardship.

When Alberta recently increased its minimum wage by $1.10 an hour, many employer groups were saying this was too much. The end result? The economy barely felt it. A significant number of workers received a raise and no employer laid off staff, no employer significantly increased prices. The system absorbed it.

When you raise the bar for everyone equally, no competitive disadvantage is created. What happens - miraculously - is that the new requirements quickly become the new norm. I believe this is what will happen with improved labour standards.

Don't be afraid of pro-rated benefits for part time workers. Don't be afraid of allowing workers to refuse overtime. Don't be afraid of increased vacation entitlements. These are practical ideas that reflect Canadian values. Be a leader. Be the example that everyone else looks at.

The federal government has the ability to reinvigorate employment standards. And if they do, millions of Canadians will thank them for it.

Thank you for your time.

Gil McGowan, President of the Alberta Federation of Labour, June 29, 2005

We're here today because a crime has been committed.

Laws that were supposed to protect workers have been broken.

Rules that were supposed to compel companies to honour the contracts they sign were trampled on.

As a result of these violations of the rules, these failures to observe the letter and the spirit of the law, jobs have been lost, careers have been interrupted, families have been forced to endure unexpected and undeserved economic hardship.

To make matters worse, the villains in the story didn't act alone - they had accomplices.

And those accomplices were people who - in theory at least - the workers were supposed to be able to rely on.

Unfortunately, this is not some prime-time crime drama that you might see on TV. This is real life.

The bad guys in this story are the managers at Finning - and their accomplices are the Labour Relations Board and the provincial government.

We're all familiar with what's gone on here.

The business we see in front of us today is a testament to the mean-spiritedness of one employer and the complete inadequacy of our province's labour and labour relations institutions.

Finning bankrolled OEM. Finning owns most of the stock in OEM. Finning provided OEM with most of its business.

But the Labour Relations Board, in its wisdom, says OEM is different from Finning and is not bound to honour any of the contracts negotiated by Finning.

They also saw nothing wrong with OEM signing a new deal with CLAC even before this building was finished - and even before workers had been hired.

How much can you trust a so-called union that is hand-picked by the employer?

We all know this is a shell game. For all intents and purpose, OEM is Finning. All that's happened is that they've moved down the street and put up a new sign.

The goal of this superficial identity change has been clear from the beginning. This wasn't about contracting out or doing business differently. This was about breaking a duly negotiated contract. This was about breaking a real union and replacing it with a lap dog association that was more to the employers liking.

One important point that needs to be made is that these kinds of tactics would not have been allowed in any other Canadian jurisdiction.

In any other province, Finning would have been slapped down, found in violation - and you would be working inside as proud members of IAM.

Even here in Alberta, the law says that employers can't simply change their address or change their name to get rid of a duly elected and duly constituted union.

But our government wrote its laws badly and they tipped the playing field in favour of the employer. And our Labour Relations Board has abandoned all pretext of being object - they've bent over backwards and tied themselves in knots trying to find ways to justify what Finning has done.

The LRB is supposed to be a watchdog. But it's clear they're a lap dog - one that Finning has on a very short leash.

So where do we go from here? The message that we need to send today is that we're not giving up. IAM is continuing to fight this unjust situation in the courts. The AFL and all of our affiliates will continue to support them in that effort.

But we have to go further. If we let Finning get away with this, it's just a matter of time before another employer tries the same shell game.

So we need to support IAM. We need to fight CLAC whenever they slither out from under their rocks. And we need to make this a political issue - so working people understand that this is what Tory government brings us.

Today, they were supposed to be having a grand opening here. Ralph Klein was supposed to be in there celebrating with corporate types who have broken the letter and spirit of Alberta law - the laws that the Premier is supposed to protect and uphold. But they're not inside. We chased them away. That's a step in the right direction - but we still have a lot more chasing to do.

In conclusion, I want all of you to know 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.

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.

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.

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

Good afternoon. My name is Kerry Barrett and I'm here to bring greetings on behalf of the Alberta Federation of Labour's Executive Council.

The Federation represents about 120,000 members from many different unions in this province.

At one time or another, we've all suffered the frustration and anger that comes from dealing with a stubborn employer.

So, we understand what you're going through right now - and we want to assure you that both as unions and as individuals, we are prepared to anything and everything we can to help you get a fair collective agreement.

The struggle that you're having with Telus is one that is going on in many sectors of the economy.

On one side, we have a company that is worth billions - and is the dominant player in its industry in western Canada. On the other had, we have you, the workers, who have made the company strong.

The mangers of Telus have made big mistakes, they've made bad investments and they've consistently focused on short-term self-interest over the real long-term best interests of the company.

But who gets the blame for managements' failures? And who has to pay the price, in terms of lay-offs, pay cuts, reduced benefits? It's not the guys on top, it's not people like Darren Entwhistle.

Instead, it's people like you, the people who actually do the work.

That's what this dispute is really about. And it's the same kind of dispute we in the labour movement are dealing with in so many sectors.

The good news is that you've been taking action. You've stood up for a fair and equitable deal for all Telus employees & and you've won a few rounds at the CIRB.

Obviously, the company's latest tactics are frustrating. If they put half as much effort into negotiating as they put into fighting there our employees, a deal would have been reached long ago.

But that's the way too many managers approach labour relations these days. They dig their heels in, they try to divide people they try to starve us out. It's all part of the play book.

But you know? Even in this hostile climate, unions like yours can win. Other unions and other workers have faced down tactics like this and still emerged with good agreements. I am confident that you will do the same.

In conclusion I'd just like to say two things. First, our federation's convention is coming up here in Edmonton in May.

I'm looking forward to seeing many of you there and celebrating what I'm confident will eventually be a victory for you and TWU.

Second, and more importantly, I want to make sure you know that - whatever happens - they rest of the labour movement is behind you.

The locations and the employers' names may be different, but we're all in the same boat, facing the same challenges. Whatever we can do to help, we'll be there for you.

Good luck with your fight. And thank you for this opportunity to talk to you today. Solidarity!