Pay Equity and More Union Jobs
Delegates from the 25th Convention of the Canadian Labour Congress Convention supporters marched through Toronto's downtown financial district on May 26 in a show of solidarity with women workers who still experience an inequity of pay with men. The delegates were led through the streets by CLC vice-presidents Barbara Byers and Marie Clarke Walker and their other sisters from the Executive Council, including former CLC secretary-treasurer Nancy Riche.
The marchers handed out leaflets to all passers by to inform them about the growing inequality in pay. Despite higher levels of opportunity in education and in the workplace, women on average earn 30 percent less than men.
In his openning speech to the convention, CLC President Ken Georgetti called for increased unionization in Canada.
"Our goal must be to give far more workers the union advantage - defined benefit pensions, better wages, better working conditions, and better benefits," Georgetti told the delegates. "We urgently need to increase the labour movement's organizing efforts. Because we simply have to, in order for us to get the changes that working women and men need - to improve their lives."
The recent Statistics Canada report on median income shows that while the rich have gotten richer over the past 25 years, not only have the poor become poorer but also the wages of middle income Canadians are completely stagnant.
"We're not surprised," Georgetti said. "We predicted it, workers experienced it, we still feel it.
"Twenty-five years of bad trade deals, the assault on the rights of workers to join unions, and tax breaks for the rich - none of this has improved the quality of life for the majority of Canadians at all. The only way we can help most workers is - by increasing unionization."
The Convention has attracted over 2,000 delegates from unions, federations of labour and labour councils from every part of Canada. The CLC holds conventions every three years.