Presented by Ken Georgetti on Monday, 28 June 2010

(Check Against Delivery)

Sisters and brothers, I could not be happier – for the first time since 1996 – to be bringing you greetings of solidarity from the officers and 3.2 million workers who are members of the Canadian Labour Congress.

Welcome back to the CLC – you have been missed!

We have been weaker without your membership – we are measurably stronger with it.

So thank you for making the important decision to re-join the Canadian Labour Congress – I know that working together we can better serve the hopes and needs of your membership and indeed of all workers in Canada.

I especially want to thank Joseph Mancinelli – International Vice-President and Regional Manager for Central and Eastern Canada – for his leadership of your union in making the decision to return to the CLC.

Brother Mancinelli – your advice on issues of concern to your members will always be very welcome at the CLC.

LiUNA members in building, heavy, residential and highway construction and in the public service can count on the Canadian Labour Congress to fight on their behalf in Ottawa and right across the country.

And the CLC – working with our affiliates, Federations of Labour and Labour Councils in every part of Canada – has been fighting hard on behalf of working people – and achieving considerable success.

I want to briefly outline just some of the CLC’s accomplishments since 1996.

I know that LiUNA members share the concern of all Canadian workers about health and safety on the job.

Unfortunately construction is a dangerous sector, as are other occupations like mining and logging.

That’s why one of the CLC’s priorities is to improve safety – so that workers always come home safely at the end of their shift.

And that’s why the CLC and its affiliates put so much energy into getting the Westray Act passed in Parliament.

That Act is named after the Westray Mine disaster in Nova Scotia that killed 26 workers in an underground explosion in 1992.

The Westray Act was passed in 2004 after an enormous effort by the CLC and affiliates.

It allows for the criminal prosecution of those found responsible for killing workers on the job through negligence – including corporate executives and directors.

The Westray Act hasn’t ended workplace deaths, sadly, but it has put corporations on notice that for the first time their executives could be jailed for failing to protect workers’ health.

The CLC is also pleased with another significant achievement – the passage of federal legislation that protects workers when companies declare bankruptcy.

Thanks to this legislation – the Wage Earner Protection Program – fully implemented just last year – workers are now first in line if their company goes bankrupt.

Up to four weeks of unpaid wages, vacation pay, severance pay and termination pay – the wages owed to them will be paid by the government – and the government will stand in line to get paid back, instead of workers.

Workers first, not last like before – after banks and creditors.

We expect each year that about 20,000 workers will benefit from this new protection.

And for workers with a union, never again will a judge or a bankruptcy trustee be able to override a collective agreement and make changes to it without negotiating with the union.

The CLC has also taken the lead in pushing the federal government to deal with the unfair exploitation of temporary foreign workers in Canada – especially in the construction sector.

I want to salute LiUNA for your own strong efforts to both expose these abuses.

I was pleased to work with Mark Olsen, Business Manager of Local 1611 in Vancouver, and other building trades unions when they fought for the rights of temporary foreign workers on the Canada Line rapid transit project.

Imagine this – on a $2 billion publicly-funded construction project, workers from Costa Rica and other countries were working for less than $5 an hour – not even the legal minimum wage!

This was outrageous.

Thanks to Local 1611 signing these workers up as LiUNA members, the multinational corporations running the project were forced to pay dramatically increased wages and benefits to those workers.

The CLC has taken examples like this to the federal government to demand an end to this exploitation and monitoring of basic workplace health and safety and labour standards.

It’s not right that temporary foreign workers be exploited – and it’s not right that employers can bring such workers into Canada to rip them off in order to avoid hiring Canadian workers at fair wages.

The CLC’s efforts have been particularly successful in Manitoba, where the provincial government has taken strong steps to protect workers and ensure fairness.

In Manitoba all employers wanting to hire temporary foreign workers must register with the Employment Standards Branch to ensure workers are not mistreated.

Brothers and sisters, there are many unscrupulous employers that cause us problems, but there is also one employer-dominated union that undermines workers in the construction industry – the Christian Labour Association of Canada – or CLAC.

The CLC has been working hard with construction unions to expose CLAC and to encourage its members to leave.

We provide research on CLAC’s sub-standard contracts and work with affiliates’ education campaigns to counter CLAC organizing drives.

I know that now, working together with LiUNA as an affiliate, our efforts to stop CLAC will be even more successful.

I want to end by telling you about the CLC’s most ambitious campaign yet – and to ask for your strong support.

Our biggest challenge is to achieve significant pension and retirement security reforms in Parliament.

Sadly, the prospect of retirement is actually scaring most Canadians – they see ahead of them not their golden years, but poverty fears.

And even more sadly, they are right to be worried.

Today more than 1.6 million Canadian seniors are living with incomes below $16,000 a year – what a shameful situation for the people who built this great country!

So what is the answer?

Well it’s definitely not RRSPs!

Billions of dollars were lost in the financial meltdown caused by corporate greed and the failure of governments to regulate banks, financial institutions and corporations.

Just weeks ago we saw another panic in the markets that caused stocks to plunge.Do Canadians really want to gamble with their retirement security that way?

They clearly don't.

In 2008 only 1 in 4 Canadians even invested in RRSPs.

Meanwhile, the 38.5% of the workers who actually have pensions are under attack.

Employers are scrapping defined benefits pension plans and replacing them with defined contribution or RRSPs – which both have the same high risks as the markets.

What’s the answer from the banks and the financial “experts” like former Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge?

Just save more money, they tell workers.

But how?!!

We’ve had 25 long years of wage stagnation – or worse – for workers.

Fortunately, the Canadian Labour Congress has a better plan – we want to expand Canada Pension Plan benefits phasing in over 7 years a small increase in premiums that would result in a doubling of the maximum benefits to $1,635 a month.

That would raise the basic pension floor for all workers from a poverty level of $12,000 a year to a more liveable $20,000.

The reasons are clear – the Canada Pension Plan is universal, it’s portable – it goes with you, not your job – and it covers 93% of working people.

For construction workers, that’s the best deal in town.

Many construction workers follow work from province to province.

The CPP is both a defined benefit AND a defined contribution pension plan – suiting the needs of workers and companies.

It’s what every corporate CEO has – certainty and security.

I mean, did you know that an astonishing 50% of all pension plans in Canada have less than 10 members?

Did you know that most of those plans are defined benefit plans with guaranteed lucrative benefits for the corporate elite?

The corporate bosses sure know what’s good for them – too bad they want to eliminate it for us.

The CLC plan is achievable – we have had it costed by Bernard Dussault – the former chief actuary for the plan.

And now – I am very pleased to say – Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and provincial ministers have said they support expanding the Canada Pension Plan.

They have not – regrettably – signed on to the CLC plan to double CPP benefits, but it is a welcome start.
That’s why I am asking for LiUNA’s help – we must convince all federal and provincial politicians that a minor increase in the CPP is not enough to protect Canadians' retirement income – we must do more than that.

And that’s not all we need to get done – we need an immediate 15% increase to Guaranteed Income Supplement benefits in order to lift those 1.6 million seniors out of the poverty they are now trapped in.

And it would only cost $1.12 billion – taxpayers spent that much on security for 72 hours in Toronto this past weekend – an amount that could lift all seniors out of poverty.

We also need federal pension insurance – to protect our workplace plans.

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

So sisters and brothers – this is our time – our moment to make the most sweeping positive change seen in Canada since Tommy Douglas introduced Medicare in Saskatchewan and transformed the nation.

It’s time to protect every worker in Canada so they can retire with dignity and security.

And I know that with your strong support – we can do it – we can win!

Once again – welcome back to the Canadian Labour Congress – we need you with us in these important battles on behalf of all workers in this country.

Thank you for inviting me and have a great convention!