Address
by Ken Georgetti, President,
Canadian Labour Congress
to the
"All Canada Progress Meeting" of IBEW Canada, the International
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (Canadian District)
Wednesday, August 28, 2002
Mont Tremblant, Que.

Brothers & Sisters, Mes chers amis!

It's a pleasure and an honour to be your guest today.

I bring greetings from the officers and staff of the Canadian Labour Congress.

And on behalf of the 2.5 million unionized Canadian workers, who are the membership of this Canadian Labour Congress, I bring you solidarity.

A few years ago, BC Hydro had an advertising campaign with the slogan: the power is yours!

Today, five days before Labour Day, my message to you is the same. As citizens, as workers, and as power workers: the power is yours!

It's time to speak up!

It's time to make your voice heard!

It's time for a change.

The power is yours, exercise it!

My message to you - and what I know of your activities in the last few months tells me you will agree with me - my message is that we have to go back to basic union political activism.

Because political action gets results.

Working people come together in unions to take control of their lives.

Our unions bring positive changes to our workplaces and in our communities.

And our unions have raised the standard of living of our families.

For decades, union members' achievements to secure higher wages, safer working conditions, pensions and other benefits have successfully raised the quality of life in Canada to one of the highest in the world.

The other side also knows that political action matters.

Big business and multinational corporations spend billions of dollars every year lobbying the people who run our governments and supporting the campaigns of their friends.

They're good at it and they got results. Over the last decade, it won them hefty tax cuts,

weaker labour laws, and made them very, very rich at our expense.

Not surprisingly, over that same period Canadians' standard of living slipped and many of us saw our quality of life starting to erode - except, to a large extent, unionized workers.

Last year, on Labour Day, at your Canadian Labour Congress, we released our report Is Work Working for You? which documented trends and facts about the standard of living of the majority of Canadians.

This year, we are releasing our first follow-up Report Card and it is on the web at www.working4you.ca.

Unfortunately, this follow-up Report Card shows no progress.

Labour market conditions declined over the year.

Canadians are feeling more insecure about their jobs and the economy.

Earning gaps based on gender and skin colour remain substantial.

This is why, I'm telling you: working people have to get back into the political game.

Comme chef syndical, ma résolution est de renouveler notre détermination politique.

l'État nous sert quand nous montrons notre force.

Governments will work for us when we show our force.

The same CEOs who brought us the financial scandals of Nortel, Bell, World.Com, Enron, and Vivendi have convinced politicians that public medicare doesn't work anymore.

They say that it is a luxury we can no longer afford and will only be preserved and improved if we let them run it for a profit.

With their track record medicare will truly go bankrupt!

Think about it, what is it they want?

Big business medicine sees profit in the illness and suffering of people in Canada.

They see our aging population and have dollar signs dancing in their eyes. These bastards would love nothing better than to see Medicare destroyed.

It's no wonder! Americans spend an average $5,668.92 [CDN] per capita for a system in which 43 million people have no health coverage, and another 50 million have inadequate coverage.

In contrast, in Canada we spend about $3,139.99 [CDN] per capita for a system which covers everyone for their basic health needs.

Our public Medicare system is a threat to privatized medicine - because it is simply more efficient and more effective, hands down.

That is why I keep repeating that the so-called crisis of our public medicare is first and foremost a crisis of political leadership.

A crisis of political will.

Notre assurance-maladie n'est pas en crise.

Nos finances publiques ne sont pas en crise.

C'est Ia moralité politique qui est en crise!

Nos politiciens préfèrent écouter les corporations qui veulent faire de l'argent sur le dos des malades - c'est ça Ia crise.

My friends, that is why the Canadian Labour Congress, with your support and the support of other affiliates, is fighting a tough battle against those who want to kill Medicare.

We have to be prepared, in the fall, whatever the recommendations of the Romanow Commission may be to present, promote and prevail with the medicare model that works for the working families of this country.

As a pay cheque issue and a matter of quality of life, as a hallmark of social responsibility and a symbol of national pride, Canadian working families intend to keep and improve our public medicare system.

It is critical that we win that battle.

Brothers & sisters, I count on your active and dedicated support in this battle we must win, just like you can count on my support and on the solidarity of the Canadian Labour Congress on a number of battles you are waging that are also of critical importance for every single working family in this country.

I want to talk to you about two of them.

First let's talk about training!

We want governments to focus on this issue and we will make them focus - and we will get them to adopt the models that work for us.

We need a visible change of attitude and a public long-term commitment from all governments and, yes, from employers to the training needs of Canadian workers.

Look at apprenticeship. Openings are not keeping pace with our needs.

As many of you know, I'm a pipe-fitter by trade.

In the plant where I did my apprenticeship, we were way over 200 apprentices in the early eighties.

Now there are none!

Many employers, even those who desperately need skilled trades people and who are making huge profits are not hiring or training.

Fewer apprentices are hired and too many are laid off halfway through their training.

This is the harsh reality.

Whether we are talking about the regular economy or the so-called new economy, we all know that there will be no economic growth without workers with knowledge, workers with skills.

Yet - aside for the break we got last December in the federal budget, when they finally heard us and lifted the UI rule on the two-weeks waiting period when you go back to classroom - our governments refuse to stimulate apprenticeship and training in ways that work for you, work for our children and for the country.

Canadian labour has ideas, proposals and plans developed to reverse the current situation.

It is not acceptable that consumers are hurting because trade quality standards are not met, employers are hurting because skill shortages are growing and yet, our children go unemployed because they have no opportunity for proper training.

You can count on us at the Canadian Labour Congress in this battle - promoting your vision and your needs.

Just like you can count on us in your struggles against greed when public utilities are being broken down with no regard for workers or consumers.

Just like in the training issues, in this struggle, your goals - our goals - are of critical importance for every single working family in this country, because they are about the kind of society we want to pass on to our children and our children's children.

Your fight against the privatization and the break-up of Ontario Hydro, Hydro One and of other publicly-owned power corporations, is everyone's fight. You can count on our solidarity.

Your fight is not just against the privatization of public wealth, it is a fight about the cancellation of service to people.

It is about refusing to allow social responsibility to take a back seat to private greed.

It is about refusing to allow misguided politicians to do the bidding of rich people who are so greedy they never have enough.

I congratulate you on the campaigns you started in Ontario this year ... mobilizing official support in California and in New Zealand...

You made the point that will need to be made over and over again.., that people must come before profit.

Les gens avant ľargent.

Le monde d'abord.

Les families et les communautés d'abord.

Avant l'argent, avant les profits.

II faut ramener Ia responsabiIité sociale dans les décisions.

En politiques et dans les affaires.

Les gens d'abord, I'argent après.

The crisis in corporate accountability we are experiencing today is doing terrible

damage not only to workers and our economy, but to our whole society.

We have allowed private profit to become more important than public good.

We have allowed the wealth of the few to be put before the health of the many.

And as a result, we have created a society where greed is more important than need.

That is fundamentally, unequivocally, absolutely wrong.

Look at the case of the CEO of Ontario's Hydro One, a publicly-owned company, who was recently fired after stories appeared about her salary, her severance package and her car allowance and limousine service.

Her car allowance was an astonishing $17,833 a month - that's $214,000 a year!!

On top of that, she also had limousine bills of $330,000 over three years - I guess you

get tired of driving the Rolls Royce to work some days and need a chauffeur-driven car too.

And this is a publicly-owned company - not a for-profit corporation!

The irony is that it was big business and the right-wing politicians who do their bidding who argued that Hydro One would be more efficient once it was managed like any other corporation.

I guess this is just another example of what these guys mean by profit-motivated.

Sisters and brothers, the culture of greed over need, of profits before people is, quite simply, out of control.

My friends, we've let things go too far.

The profit-crazed agenda that's taken hold of our economy has to be stopped.

It's damaging our future.

Our pensions and savings are threatened.

Our standard of living and our quality of life are at risk.

We've got some more fighting to do.

It's time for a reality check for the elite and for our politicians.

Working people want more.

We expect our hard work to work for us.

At the workplace, in the community and across the country, people are calling for relevance.

On Labour Day 2002, I will call on you to be more political and to promote a working people's agenda.

When was the last time you called your MP? or spoke to your mayor? wrote a letter to your provincial elected officials?

On Labour Day, make a resolution to do this often and regularly.

Get your friends and neighbours to do it too.

Demand that politicians address your issues and reflect your values.

And remember, that when working people stand together and act together, in solidarity, we always win.

Thank you.