Presented by Barbara Byers on Thursday, 10 September 2009

(Check against delivery)

Sisters and Brothers it is my honour to bring you greetings of solidarity from the Officers, staff and the 3.2 million workers who are members of the Canadian Labour Congress.

I want to thank Cindy Impala, Director of Teamsters Training and Development for inviting me to speak and Canadian officer, Brigitte Sottile, who is also a member of our CLC Women’s Committee.

Your union and its members play an important role in the Canadian Labour Congress and I thank you for your solidarity and your support.

Sisters, these are very gloomy times.

I don’t need to tell you the economies of both our countries are still in deep trouble.

Last month the Governor of the Bank of Canada declared the recession in Canada over.

Well, the recession sure isn’t over for the thousands of workers still losing their jobs.

In July, another 79,000 workers were thrown out of work in Canada – 22,000 women lost their jobs and another 31,000 women dropped out of the labour force altogether.

Since the start of the recession in Canada, over 500,000 wage earners lost their jobs, with 400,000 of those workers losing full-time, decent-paying jobs.

We all know that workers didn’t cause this crisis.

Big business did – with their greed, their recklessness, their stupidity, and yes, their criminal activity.

They are taking advantage of the crisis they created to attack workers’ wages, to attack our pensions, to attack our benefits, and to attack our quality of life.

And in Canada, they have willing partners with our Conservative federal government.
This government sent autoworkers to the table with General Motors with orders to cut wages and benefits in order to get loan guarantees not once, but twice!

But I have to give it to the Conservative government. They don’t discriminate when it comes to workers and human rights.

Workers, women, recent immigrants to Canada, people of colour, Aboriginal people, gay-lesbian-transgendered, people with disabilities – it doesn’t matter – the Conservative government has attacked them all.
But it’s women that seem to hold a special place in their hearts.

This government attacked women workers in the federal public service by destroying pay equity and telling their unions they were forbidden by law to help women members fight wage inequality in our courts and human rights tribunal.

This government removed the word “equality” from the mandate of its own department responsible for the advancement of women’s equality in Canada!

This government “reassigned” the minister in charge of tourism because she actually gave money destined to support festivals and artists to one of Canada’s biggest tourist attractions – the Toronto Pride festival.

It’s unbelievable that in 2009 we must defend not only workers’ rights, but also human rights, from attack by this right-wing government who simply wants to turn the clock back on progress and put women in their place.

But enough of that – right now I want to talk about putting women where they belong – IN UNIONS!

As Sisters in the labour movement, we already know about the tremendous advantages of joining a union like the Teamsters.

For women, the single best pay equity program ever invented is a union card – bar none!

In Canada, statistics from 2006 show that unionized women earned an average of $21.86 an hour or 93% of the wage of unionized men.

But non-union women earned an average of just $16.15 an hour.

That’s a whopping $5.71 less pay for every single hour of work!

And it’s only 75% of the wage of non-union male workers.

In the private sector in Canada only 14% of women workers are in a union.

But if more women joined a union, they’d be making an extra $10,000 a year in most jobs!

Talk about winning the lottery – and that wouldn’t be once, it would be every single year!

It just gets better from there for unionized women workers.
Where else but through a unionized job can a women get: better wages and benefits; protection from discrimination and harassment; job training; job security; equalization of the wages of male and female-dominated jobs; better maternity, parental and family care leave and flexible work schedules?

NOWHERE!

But I know I’m preaching to the converted here – the real question facing union women is simple – how do we sign up more and more women?

How do we tell more and more women about the union advantage?

And how do we make it easier for workers to join unions and harder for employers to intimidate workers who want to organize?

In Canada, the single most important tool non-union women and men can possibly have is the most simple, yet the hardest to obtain – automatic certification by majority of signed union cards.

We have both won and lost that critical tool in several Canadian provinces – and we know exactly what kind of difference it makes based on the results.

Why is it that the very first priority for newly-elected right-wing governments is to gut labour laws by removing the right to certify unions through a majority of signed cards?
Isn’t it obvious? Both big and small businesses demand it – they adamantly don’t want unions to represent their workers.

And they don’t want us to have the increased political power that labour gains when more and more workers join unions.

I’m certainly not here to tell American unions and workers what to do.

But if I were an American union member and leader, I’d push to get the US Employee Free Choice Act passed as soon as possible!

I read a great quote on the Teamsters website in support of the Employee Free Choice Act.

A retired Teamsters Brother and former Vietnam veteran from Arkansas named Fred Steubin put it totally in perspective:

Fred said, and I quote: “If I could sign my name to join the Marines, then I should have the right to sign my name to join a union.”
The results, as I said before, are crystal clear in Canada – when we have labour laws that allow unionization by majority of signed membership cards, the rate of unionization goes way up.

When those laws are repealed and workers are forced to take a vote, it is wide open to employer interference and employer intimidation.

When employers can make the ballot question not whether or not workers want a union but whether they want to keep their jobs, unionization dramatically drops.

And when unionization rates dramatically drop, income inequality grows.

A recent report from the University of California shows income inequality is at an all-time high in the United States, even worse than levels seen before the Great Depression.

The top 10% of earners in the U.S. in 2007 accounted for 49.7% of total income, a level that is “higher” than any other year since 1917 and even higher than 1928 – the peak of the stock market bubble in the roaring “20s” according to the study.

I don’t think it would surprise anyone in this room that a similar report done in Canada by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives showed a similar trend.

For the last 24 years of what is supposed to be the greatest economic prosperity since the 1950s, middle income Canadians saw their earnings stay flat, while the richest Canadians reaped most of the benefits of economic growth during that period.

If you want more details on this study please go to www.growinggap.ca. But just to pique your interest, consider this fact from the CCPA study...

By noon on January 2nd, each of the top 100 CEOs in Canada make more than the average worker does in an entire year.

No wonder they don’t like labour laws that level the playing field and make it easier to join a union.

And yet, in both our great countries, joining a union is supposed to be a democratic right!

How is it that a democratic right can be removed by what is clearly anti-democratic behaviour?

Interfering with a vote or intimidating voters in an American or Canadian election would not be tolerated.
So why are employers allowed to interfere and intimidate voters in the workplace?

Again, the answer is clear – right-wing governments and politicians allow it to happen to satisfy their corporate backers who don’t want unions.

They especially don’t want to see the Teamsters succeed in the mission of your conference here today – to sign up women into your union.

What they do want is also very clear – the opportunity to enjoy unregulated greed – without unions and without governments getting in their way.

For example, you might think American corporate and bank executives and traders would be so grateful that President Obama and U.S. Taxpayers saved their sorry jobs – by bailing out their firms – that they would tone things down just a little bit when it comes to their previously outrageous pay and bonuses.

You might think they would be thankful, even overjoyed, that American taxpayers kept them in business.

But you would be dead wrong. You could not possibly be more wrong!

Over on Wall Street, the “Million Dollar Club” had nearly 5,000 members in 2008.

That is – at least 4,793 bankers and traders who were paid more than $1 million each just in bonuses last year – while the economy melted down and taxpayers bailed out bank after bank.

Meanwhile, honest and hard-working women and men in our countries are being told to take pay cuts, to take pension reductions, to take benefit cuts, to take unpaid holidays, to take fewer hours of work, all to help our struggling corporations in this tough economy!

Well, workers are tired of taking it in the neck so that fat-cat executives can take them to the cleaners!

The solution to this economic crisis and the solution to runaway corporate greed is right here, right in this room.

We have to take back our countries from the bankers, the corporate CEOs, the hedge-fund managers and the lobbyists in Ottawa and Washington who have led us to the brink of disaster.

We have to put the citizens back in charge.

And it’s up to organized labour to do that job.
Because when we succeed in signing up women workers to our unions, when we start to build labour’s strength in both our economy and in politics – that’s when we start to win.

As union activists, we have a clear mission ahead of us – we simply cannot allow the overwhelming majority of women workers to go unrepresented in the workplace.

These women need our help – they need the help that a union offers – they need the better wages and working conditions,, the pensions, the job security and the basic rights in the workplace that we already enjoy.

And in order to provide that help, it’s up to us, it’s up to our unions to not just launch organizing drives – as important as that is.

Our unions and our movement must also win political power – we must elect politicians who support labour, who will listen to the needs of working people – not corporate elites – and who will take action on our behalf despite the strong opposition of business interests.
And that must include electing women politicians who are feminists, union women, women of colour, Aboriginal women, lesbian women, women with disabilities – feminists from every walk of our lives.

That’s how we create lasting change, that’s how we promote equality and that’s how we improve the lives of working women in both our countries forever!

Thank you for listening and have a great convention!