The National View

In his speech, Hassan Yussuff, Secretary-Treasurer of the Canadian Labour Congress, touched on a number of national and international issues – particularly those related to the current economic situation. He talked about how half million Canadian workers have lost their jobs in the past year – how 50 million workers worldwide had lost their jobs because of the economic down turn.

The economic downturn was not the workers fault – they were not the ones responsible for the current mess. But they're the ones paying the price. Of the 1.6 million workers in Canada who are now out of work, less than half are receiving Employment Insurance.

Yussuff said that illustrates why the labour movement must make improvements to EI a priority – strive to make it better serve the workers of Canada. The benefit must be increased to 60 per cent of earnings plus other improvements – but those changes won't come until there's a change of government at the federal level.

Another priority for the CLC is to improve the pensions of Canadian workers so that they can retire in dignity. When Yussuff asked how many delegates to the convention would be retiring within the next 10 years, probably close to half of them stood to signify that they would be retiring within that time frame. That made it abundantly clear why it must be a priority to make improvements to the Canada Pension Plan, and for a national pension insurance plan to be established to protect workers against company pension plans folding and 'cheating' workers out of the pension they had thought their many years of work had secured for them.