Presented by Ken Georgetti on Friday, 23 October 2009

(Check Against Delivery)

Sisters and Brothers, I am very pleased to join you at your Ontario Council meeting and I bring you greetings from the officers and 3.2 million members of the Canadian Labour Congress.

I want to thank Pat Dillon for inviting me to speak to you today.

It’s always a pleasure to be with members of the building trades.

Many of you may not know I’m a pipefitter by trade.

I started my working life in the Rocky Mountains as a hard rock miner.

I then moved back to Trail and went to work in the Lead Furnaces.

It’s amazing how working underground all day in a tough, hot, and dangerous job makes you think constantly about learning a trade.

My shift boss thought I was nuts and was quite upset that I took an apprenticeship.

He would taunt me saying why does it take four years to learn crap goes downhill?

Before I begin, I want to give you another piece of advice.

In these troubled economic times, let me tell you it pays to listen to good working class investment advice from people like me – not the high-falutin’ advice you get from guys in $4,000 suits with red suspenders.

Here’s why – if you had invested $1,000 in Lear Corporation at the beginning of 2008 your investment would now be worth just $18.04.

The same $1,000 invested in the AIG Group at the beginning of 2008 would only be worth $11.82.

If you had put that $1,000 into Nortel Networks’ shares they’d now be valued at only $8.40.

But if you would have bought $1,000 worth of Molson's Canadian beer beginning in 2008, you’d have felt better about tough times for months – and after that – the deposit on all those empty beer bottles are holding steady at sixty dollars!

So my advice to you is keep your assets liquid and always recycle!

But, Sisters and Brothers – on a more serious note.

We have a major problem that the labour movement has to face facts about. We cannot continue to ignore the very threats to the survival of the labour movement here in Canada.

One-third of workers in Canada belong to a union – one of the best rates of unionization in the world. We brag about our figures a lot, particularly when we compare them to the American figures or some of those from European countries.

But look under the covers and you find that we may have feet of clay. In the private sector, less than 20% of workers in this country belong to a union and the building trades are even lower.

And, Brothers and Sisters, that’s a problem. A damn big problem because for nearly two decades there has been a declining trend.

But we do have a strong base upon which we can build. When we survey the general public we find strong public support for the good work that unions do for workers and the community – good wages and benefits, pensions, health and safety, vacations and holidays, minimum wages, anti-discrimination and human rights, opposition to bad trade deals, campaigns to end child labour and sweatshops.

Ironically, while the public agrees that unions do good work in these areas, they don’t necessarily have a great view of unions in general. They like what we do but don't necessarily like us.

Also on the positive side, survey after survey shows that the vast majority of union members support their union and the union movement.

A third of non-union workers would join a union today if they were asked and another third would be interested if there were no repercussions from their boss and if their co-workers were organizing a union.

But people get the public perception of unions from the media – from television and the newspapers, and the blogs on the internet.

And with our big, corporate-driven media what do the public see?

Well, in this economic crisis they would see that it was entirely the fault of autoworkers that GM and Chrysler went bankrupt.

Not the corporate fraud artists and the private equity firms who ran the businesses into the ground with their boneheaded business decisions, but the workers and their decent wages and pensions.

In this economic crisis the public would see that the real problem with the economy is those gold-plated pensions that public sector workers get.

You know, the gold-plated pensions that allow retired library workers to fly to Monaco for the winter, washing and waxing the red Ferrari, golf at the exclusive country club – reserved only for retired public sector members to keep out the corporate riff-raff, daily manicure and pedicure!

Yes, greedy unions.

If those darn greedy unions disappeared, then everything will be fine, the recession will magically disappear and everyone will benefit from the prosperity that the corporations will generate.

Let me tell you, we have a lot of work to do.

If we don’t change the public perception of unions – if we don’t use the media to get our stories in the news and to use advertising to demonstrate the work we do benefits everyone – then union density will not improve and governments will have no incentive to do what’s right for workers.

They’ll just continue to do what’s right for the corporate gangsters.

You know, at the CLC’s 2008 convention, last year in Toronto, delegates passed a resolution to examine the structure of central labour bodies like the CLC, the federations of labour and labour councils.

The structural review challenges us to look at ourselves and see if we are meeting the needs of our affiliates effectively and efficiently. I wanted to start from square one and ask the affiliates some very fundamental questions about the Congress, the federations of labour and labour councils.

Well, the affiliate leaders, when asked, said: unions in Canada need strong and effective central bodies at the national and provincial levels to work for legislation that benefits workers, increases our profile in the media and creates the public conditions to make it easier for unions to organize.

The affiliates told us they want us to change the public perceptions of unions.

They want us all to do a better job of delivering this message to Canadians – when workers do well, Canada does well.

And, we have been doing well in delivering results for Canadians by working together.

You know, we say to workers when we are organizing, an individual worker, by herself or by himself, is at a major disadvantage when dealing with the boss. One worker cannot take on the boss.

But we often fail to apply the same principles when we talk about unions working together. It is rare that any individual union acting on its own could secure the types of changes we have attained in the Federal Labour Code over the past decade – the recent changes on ergonomics and workplace safety issues – will eventually benefit every worker.

The government recently proclaimed the amendments and implemented the regulations giving effect to the changes to the bankruptcy legislation we obtained. These changes protect workers’ wages, severance and pension contributions in the event of bankruptcy. It took years of advocacy and coordinating efforts with three different political parties, a number of federal elections and a new conservative government but we were able to do it.

Most importantly, we did it as a movement, many unions working together through the Canadian Labour Congress.

A few years ago, we got an amendment to the Criminal Code so that corporate executives and managers who are negligent in circumstances leading to workplace deaths, can face criminal prosecution. The "Westray Bill" again could not have been achieved without many of us working together.

We are making advances in apprenticeship programs as illustrated by the recent government publication "It Pays to Hire an Apprentice" which will be of benefit to many building trades’ members.

We worked tirelessly to convince the government to come with the extra training funds in the Employment Insurance program which will also be of benefit to your members.

In addition, for the past two years, we have spearheaded a campaign to prevent CLAC from expanding its membership base in the trades. There have been a number of successes in winning campaigns and votes against them.

Our political work is also important since we need to elect politicians who would be proud to say in public that when workers do well, Canada does well and, who would then put those words into action.

Last month, I attended the AFL-CIO Convention and President Obama spoke to the delegates.

To hear a politician of that stature talk positively about unions and their importance to the economy and well-being of society is something I never thought I would experience.

We need Canadian politicians to stand up and say what President Obama said at the AFL-CIO labour day picnic – modern benefits like paid leave, minimum wage and Social Security (in Canada the CPP) "all bear the union label."

There are other challenges to overcome if we are to increase union density and bring the union advantage to those who need it, to those who are just waiting to be asked.

We won’t grow our labour movement, Sisters and Brothers by raiding each other for workers already in unions.

We won’t deliver the union advantage to the millions of women and men across the country who need us now more than ever, by having a divided labour movement.

We need to work together – like the building trades did in BC recently – to defeat bogus unions like the CLAC.

Workers at the Seymour-Capilano Filtration Plant twin tunnel project in BC just voted a second time to reject CLAC representation. They voted in favour of three BC Building Trades unions which worked together to convince the workers to defeat CLAC at the ballot box.

That’s how we have to do it.

Work together to get results for working people.

Are we up for the challenge?

Because workers and their unions won’t be ready to prosper from the new economy if we’re not working together.

Everyone in this room knows the kind of team it takes to build an office tower or a home.

It’s a team that works together.

A team that succeeds when everyone recognizes their success is dependent upon each person on the team – from the pipefitter, to the electrician, to the bricklayer, to the painter.

That’s why we need to renew our commitment to each other – to build a labour movement that can take on the corporate fraud artists and the banksters who have destroyed our economy and our economic security.

To build a labour movement that makes workers want to join us.

100 years ago, brave unionists faced scabs, employer goons, and hired thugs on the picket line to win the right to organize... the right to better wages and working conditions.

We can’t let our own differences do what those scabs, employer goons and hired thugs could never do – divide and destroy our labour movement.

Solidarity is how we built this movement, solidarity is how we run this movement, and solidarity is how we will grow this movement!

Thank you for listening and have a great convention.