Presented by Ken Georgetti on Tuesday, 21 September 2010

(Check against delivery)

Sisters and Brothers, I am pleased to bring you greetings of solidarity from the Canadian Labour Congress and its 3.2 million members.

And I completely agree with the theme of this CEP Convention – “Workers First! Challenge the Rules”.

Consoeurs et confrères, je suis heureux de vous transmettre l’expression de la solidarité du Congrès du travail du Canada et de ses 3,2 millions de membres.

Et j’approuve complètement le thème de ce congrès du SCEP : Priorité aux travailleurs et travailleuses! Défions les règles.

I want to give you clear examples of how your Canadian Labour Congress is indeed putting workers first – and how we are doing so by challenging the rules of the game.

The results? We are winning big time – and I will tell you how.

But first I want to thank my friend and your President, Dave Coles, for inviting me to speak to you today.

Brother Coles is not only a strong voice for the CEP at our Executive Council, he is committed to worker solidarity across Canada and internationally.

I appreciate his good counsel and his dedication to help make this a better country and a better world for all workers.

Let me start by giving you some extremely unconventional advice.

As you know all too well, Canada and the world have been rocked by an economic recession.

Unemployment remains tragically high.

Wages are stagnating.

And employers demand yet more concessions from workers.

One big reason is that the corporate profiteers who got us into this economic mess – are the only ones that most governments listen to.

But they just aren’t as smart as ordinary workers.

Yes, you heard right – the “titans of business” know less about investment and economics than workers on the shop floor.
Here’s why:

If you had listened to your stockbroker and invested $1,000 in Lear Corporation at the beginning of 2008 it would have been worth just 15 dollars and 84 cents by the middle of 2009.

If you invested $1,000 in the AIG Group in 2008, it would have only been worth 11 dollars and 82 cents by mid-2009.

Or if you put $1,000 into Nortel Networks, your shares would have dropped to only $8.40 in just 18 months – you would have lost 991 dollars and 60 cents!

But the working person’s advice was simple and effective:

If you would have bought $1,000 worth of Molson Canadian beer in January 2008 instead of investing in any of those stocks, you would not have paid a cent to your financial advisor.

You would have felt better about tough times for months.

And after drinking $1,000 worth of beer – the deposit on all those empty beer bottles is still holding steady at a massive $60!

So I tell you – keep your assets liquid – and always recycle!

I tell you, the so-called “rules” that the big business elite in Canada want us to follow are simply dead wrong.

Take one more example – Tom D’Aquino, who ran the Canadian Council of Chief Executives from 1981 till last year.

D’Aquino gives lots of advice that workers should accept concessions – but look at his own track record as a Director of Manulife Financial.

He joined their Board in 2006, when shares were worth $30 apiece.

But today after four years of D’Aquino’s involvement – they are only worth $13.

Some example. Some advice.

Sisters and Brothers – the truth is that corporate CEOs do not know what’s best for our country or for our economy.

They just know what’s best for them!!!
And they relentlessly demand that governments give it to them.

But the CEOs wrongly claim that what’s best for them is best for Canada.

And our friends at the Canadian Federation of Independent Business just help them along.

Media across the country recently ran stories about a poll by the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses saying most of its members wanted union dues to be made voluntary.

Now that’s breaking news – business and employers don’t like unions!

So why is the labour movement so much the target of big business?

As the old saying goes: “Nobody shoots at a dead duck.”

Unions are successful at what they do best – getting protection for their members and for all workers.

But we’re not doing a good enough job making sure everyone knows that.

Fewer and fewer Canadians today say they would join a union than just ten years ago.

So like the theme of your convention “Workers First! Challenge the Rules” this labour movement must do the same.

We have to challenge ourselves and work outside our comfort zone.

Sisters and Brothers since the last CLC convention we have been working, with the complete support of your president Dave Coles, on challenging ourselves and our structure.

The world is a different place than in 1956 – when the Canadian Labour Congress was founded.

You know it.

I know it.

Your leaders know it.

The world of work is changing.

The demands on our members' precious time are increasing.

The face of the workforce is changing.

We have new challenges to confront, in a structure that was designed for a world that doesn't exist anymore.

I can't keep up with the speed of communications today, the technology we use to communicate and the expectations that it creates.

I tell you if I don't answer an e-mail within an hour these days, I get grief.

Imagine that?

Our members and the public live in an age where they get their news twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

How we work in the labour movement – our structure – has to change.

I know that your leaders won't let us sit on the status quo.

They will challenge us and challenge the rules.

We need to do it because we simply need to have more people wanting to join a union today.

And right now they don't want to.

It doesn't help that we are consistently under attack by business.

But Sisters and Brothers – business will continue to attack us – because they are angry – because we are having great success for our members.

Just look at these examples.

Avant la pire crise économique de 1930, le CTC et les syndicats affiliés ont lutté dur pour faire adopter par le Parlement un projet de loi de protection du salaire en cas de faillite afin d’aider les travailleurs et les travailleuses.

Et quand l’effondrement économique a commencé, les lois nécessaires étaient en place pour que les salaires des travailleurs et travailleuses aient pour la première fois plus de priorité légale que les créances des investisseurs et des autres créditeurs en cas de faillite d’entreprise.

Aucun juge ni syndic de faillite ne peut désormais violer les conventions collectives pour accorder aux travailleurs et travailleuses moins que la rémunération et les indemnités de départ qui leur sont dues.

Le gouvernement fédéral n’a pas adopté la législation en question parce qu’il aime les travailleurs et les travailleuses.

Il a été obligé parce que les fortes pressions faites sur les députés fédéraux de tous les partis dans l’ensemble du Canada ont permis aux travailleurs et travailleuses de remporter une victoire.

We did the same thing to win greatly improved health and safety rules on violence in the workplace and on ergonomics.

But the winning record doesn’t stop there.

In just the past few years the CLC has helped elect more than 800 labour council-endorsed mayors, city councillors and school trustees across Canada.

Here in Ontario, we anticipate having over 400 labour-friendly municipal candidates on election day – Monday, October 25.

And we will win more seats here and in every province – because our political action campaign is a long-term, well-resourced serious commitment.

How do we know it’s working?

Well, the federal and Ontario conservative parties recently held a secret election campaign school for right-wing municipal candidates across the province.

It shows that conservatives are deeply worried about our increasing municipal success.

They don’t want labour-friendly municipal politicians who actually listen to the union perspective before making decisions.
But we are not going to let them stop us, because we are putting “Workers First”.

We’re putting workers first when we stand side by side with your union to push for aid for Canada’s forestry sector.

When we stand side by side with you to stop the increasing foreign ownership of our natural resources – in potash – in energy – to protect good jobs in Canada.

When we stand side by side with you to defend rules that regulate foreign ownership of telecommunications and media.
And now we are close to winning another huge victory.

We are going to dramatically improve retirement security for every worker.

And working side by side with you – with the CEP – we will win.

The time is now to solve the retirement crisis in Canada.

Today – in this incredibly rich country – there are 1.6 million seniors living in poverty, earning less than $15,000 per year.

It is simply unacceptable.

Registered Retirement Savings Plans are no solution – only one in three Canadians bought RRSPs in 2008.

And one-third of Canadian workers between the ages of 24 and 64 have absolutely no personal retirement savings.

None.

Even those with an RRSP will get under $300 a month at retirement, on average.

It gets worse – only 38.5% of employers offer pensions – mostly in union workplaces.

And as everyone here knows, employers are demanding workers to give up their superior defined benefit pension plans and accept inferior defined contribution pension plans, where income depends on the high-risk market.

But the Canadian Labour Congress has a plan for retirement security that is simple, effective and affordable – and we are close to convincing governments to act.

We want to expand the Canada Pension Plan so that future benefits double.

And we can do that in an affordable way.

Under our plan – which has been costed and verified by a former chief actuary of the Canada Pension Plan, Bernard Dussault – our plan would see modest increases in premiums phased in over seven years.

How modest?

Well, for someone earning $30,000 a year the cost would be just six cents an hour – $2.27 a week – in each year of the seven year phase-in period.

Think about it. For less than the cost of a medium double double and donut at Tim Hortons each week, we can provide the one-third of future retirees who have no retirement savings with a better base from which to retire.

Younger workers will benefit the most, but even older workers will see some benefit in what they will get from CPP when we succeed.

Because the majority of provincial Finance Ministers now support expansion of the CPP – this is a huge accomplishment already.

They don’t yet support doubling CPP benefits – they say they support a modest expansion – but it’s a very positive start.

We also have the strong backing of Canadian mayors and councillors, who passed a resolution calling for pension reform nearly identical to the CLC plan at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities convention.

The reasons are clear.

The CPP already covers 93% of all Canadians, union or non-union.

The CPP is portable – no matter where you work or if you change jobs, CPP benefits follow you.

And it’s universal – all workers and their employers pay into it.

And it gives everyone the best of both worlds.

For workers, it’s a defined benefit that they can rely on when they retire.

For employers it’s just a defined contribution plan.

Our work to expand the CPP will benefit all workers, union and non-union alike.

The Canadian Labour Congress believes two more changes are urgently needed to improve retirement security.

We need an immediate 15% increase in the Guaranteed Income Supplement benefits to lift today’s seniors out of poverty.

And we need pension plan insurance to protect every worker’s pension income, so they can retire with dignity and security.

We insure our lives, our homes, our vehicles, our jobs – but not our pensions!

That doesn’t make any sense – it must change.

And that fits nicely along with the excellent work the CEP has been doing to develop a proposed National Investment and Pension Fund that would also assist workers whose own pension plan is terminated or who lose employment before retirement.

These are the kind of changes we need to make immediately so that in the future workers like your members at Nortel and Fraser Papers do not suffer the terrible consequences of corporate bankruptcies becoming personal tragedies.

Workers who do their job and contribute all their working lives to their pension plan career should not be punished for the greed of big business and the inadequacy of bankruptcy laws.

Consoeurs et confrères, je sais qu’avec votre appui nous pouvons obtenir le genre de sécurité de la retraite que tous les travailleurs et les travailleuses du Canada méritent.

Et ce n’est pas tout ce que le mouvement syndical a accompli.

Il suffit de constater par exemple que les syndicats et leurs membres recueillent plus de 200 millions de dollars par année pour Centraide.

Or consider the work our CLC Youth Committee is doing to ban the use of child labour – not in developing countries but right here in Canada.

What kind of a province is Alberta when it allows 12-year-old children to work without meaningful regulation to protect them?

Lastly, one of the most amazing moments I have had as your CLC President came in South Africa.

I was profusely thanked for the strong role Canadian unions had played in putting pressure on South Africa to end its racist regime.

I was told, and I quote: “Without the Canadian labour movement's pressure on your federal government and on South Africa, apartheid would have lasted much longer.”

Who said this to me? South African President Nelson Mandela.

Talk about someone who Challenged The Rules to put Workers First!

Sisters and Brothers, that is the kind of influence we have when we work together in our labour movement.

We – you and I – moved Nelson Mandela – we can move mountains.

Thank you and have a great convention.