In Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Local 1651 has a member who is very active in fund raising for the Parker St. Food Bank in Halifax. Last year April Poirier was the driving force in raising almost $2,000.00 in a short time. She gets volunteers to help her with food sales, raffles and other events and she has been doing this for the past year. Local 1651 will find out at Christmas just exactly how much April has raised.

Tommy Douglas, the former Saskatchewan premier who is credited with being the founding father of Canada’s health-care system, was recently named as the winner in the CBC’s Greatest Canadian contest. This socialist politician who has had the most profound impact on the country’s history beat out Marathon of Hope runner Terry Fox, who placed second and third place nominee Pierre Trudeau.

Douglas’ government also enacted the Saskatchewan Trade Union Act, which made collective bargaining mandatory and extended the rights of civil servants. The Act was described by Walter Reuther as the “most progressive piece of labour legislation on the continent,” according to the website of the Saskatchewan New Democratic Party.

During the days of the Romanow Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada, the vast majority of Canadians spoke in favour of maintaining and strengthening Medicare. Now the country has voted again, and in doing so has best defined not just the Greatest Canadian, but rather why Canada is truly a great country. The voters did not pick a mega star, great sports figure or anyone with a lot of flash. No, Canadians chose a quiet, dignified, hard-working individual who cared about only one thing in his entire career – Canada. Tommy Douglas’s daughter Shirley is invited to speak at the 2005 All Canada Progress Meeting.

Recently at the IBEW-NECA Employee Benefits Conference, the delegates in attendance were told that in many cases in the U.S., the total negotiated increase is going towards health care. Health care coverage in the United States will exceed $14,000.00 per person annually, which is double that from 5 years ago.

Alberta Premier Klein, who believes the health-care system needs more privatization to survive, should have been at this conference to hear about these spiraling costs in the privatized system south of the Canadian border where upwards of 45 million citizens have no medical coverage at all.

Hand-painted silk banners like this one at The Manitoba Museum in Winnipeg are rare today, but 100 years ago, when Winnipeg’s Local 435 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers received its official charter, they were commonplace among trade unions and fraternal organizations. They were used in union halls, demonstrations, in May Day or Labour Day parades, and possibly, even at funerals. The IBEW represented electrical workers in a number of trades, including telephone operators, and it is thought that this banner, made by Dominion Regalia of Toronto, was carried in parades and demonstrations during the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike and later may have been used during the arrest and trials of the strike leaders.

International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, AFL-CIO, CLC

© Copyright 2007 IBEW.  IBEW is a registered trademark.  All rights reserved.  Material from this Web site may not be used on any non-union Web site or publication without expressed permission from the IBEW.  Links from this Web site do not necessarily indicate an endorsement.