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AROUND THE LABOUR MOVEMENT

FTQ joins pay equity coalition
@ The Quebec Federation of
“> Labour has joined a five
—— trade union central front to
oppose the government's
inaction on pay equity issues in the
public and para-public sectors.
Included in the coaltion are the CSN,
CSQ, FIlQ, and SFPQ, which are
largely sectoral-based centrals. “The
new Liberal government promised
movement on pay equity and has
dragged its feet,” says IWA national
second vice president Norm Rivard.
“Pay equity is an important issue to
deal with and it’s long overdue.”

AFL joins with WA and CEP
to prevent policy changes
In late June IWA national president
Dave Haggard, Alberta Local 1-207
president Mike Pisak and reps from
the CEP and Alberta Federation of
Labour met with Human Resources
and Employment Minister Clint
Dunford to voice common concerns
about the government's behind-the-
scenes plans to introduce forest pol-
icy changes to
break the link
between public
forests and commu-
nities. The union brothers delivered
a clear message that such changes,
including log export are an unac-
ceptable use of publicly-owned tim-
ber resources.

Successful fightback saves
the Coquihalla Highway
The B.C. Federation of Labour was very

involved in assisting communities in
their opposition to privatization of the
Coquihalla Highway,
linking Kamloops to
Hope. A Fed-commis-
soned poll released in

CFED early June revealed

that 92 per cent of Kamloops rejected
the handing over of the highway to a
private corporation for the next 55
years. On July 23, Premier Gordon
Campbell announced the goverment
has backed down and will not sell off the
public asset "The good news today is
that communities working together can
defeat 77 silent Liberal MLAs,” reacted
Federation president Jim Sinclair.

Local supports SFL’s call for
law covering part-timers
Local 1-184 president Paul Hallen
says the IWA is supporting the SFL’s
push to get a 1994 amendment of
the Labour Standards
Act proclaimed into
law. The law would
allow part-timers,
G which make up a full
twenty per cent of the
Saskatchewan workforce, the option
of adding to their work schedule
until they have a full-time job (i.e,
when new hours would be available,
or hours extended, those with
seniority would get a first shot at
those jobs). The local wishes Danny
Mallett, the CLC’s prairie region's for-
mer political action representative,
well in his new CLC job in Ottawa.

industry jobs in Canada.

PHOTO BY NORMAN GARCIA

= Fifty-six per cent of women are employed in clerical, sales and service

Unions help to close gender gap

ON AVERAGE Canadian

women are paid about 81.6

- per cent of what men are.

In 2002 that worked out to

an average wage of $15.82

per hour versus $19.39 for men. But

annual average earnings for women

during the same year were only 63.9
per cent of men’s earnings.

Unionized workers, however, have
closed the gap, as organized women
bring home 91.1 per cent of what their
male counterparts do, on an hourly
basis. About 30.4 per cent of working
women are unionized in Canada.

In a report entitled Is Work Working
for Women, the Canadian Labour
Congress’ Research Department says

that unions are helping women make
progress by advancing a broader agen-
da of equality.

Unions create a high “wage floor” in
the job market through collective bar-
gaining or fighting for higher mini-
mum wages. They also compress pay
differentials between men and women.

Unions also fight for good job oppor-
tunties for women via employment and
pay equity (equal pay for work of equal
value) legislation, and pay and employ-
ment equity language in contracts.

“Unions have done a great deal to
right the wrongs that have been com-
mitted to women workers and the IWA
is proud of our record in increasing
women’s wages and being a pioneer in

the fight for equal pay for equal work,”
says national union president Dave
Haggard. “But there is still much work
to be done and we are committed to
organizing the unorganized in the
toughest and most marganilized work-
places in Canada.”

About one-third of women survive
on low-pay (two-thirds of the national
median wage) versus 1:5 for men.
Much of that is due to the fact that fifty-
six per cent of women are employed in
lower paying clerical, sales and service
jobs, versus the 8.7 per cent who are
employed as blue collar workers.

During the second half of the 1990s,
women of colour were paid less and
had less and less job security than
other women. Many, who were recent
immigrants to Canada, tapped into the
low-end of the labour market, even
though they were highly-skilled.

The CLC report indicates that
women of colour are not “catching up”
and that immigration is being increas-
ingly drawn from racialized groups,
which earn less,

But unions are out there doing the
job of elevating women of minorities
wages with wages of other workers.
The study notes that in 1999 unioniza-
toin effort rose the wages of women of
colour by $7,136 or some 34.3 per cent.

“We are seeing more and more
women of colour and foreign origin in
our union,” says National
Constitutional Women’s Committee
chairperson Brenda Wagg. “They are
making the IWA a more diverse union
when it comes to age, gender and racial
origin.”

Older women are staying in the
workforce longer. Forty-four per cent of
women between the ages of 55 - 50
were working in 1995. That jumped to
50.9 per cent last year. The same goes
for the 60-65 age category.
Employment rates for women jumped
by 6.8 per cent to 28.8 per cent over the
same seven years.

In 2001 only 62 per cent were class-
fied as employed full-time versus 73
per cent for men. “Overall women,
especially single parents with kids are
having to work more part-time jobs for
lower pay,” says Sister Wagg. “The
IWA is rolling up its sleeves in the fight
to organize women in Canada.”

NB Fed to hold OH&S annual
The New Brunswick Federation of
Labour is holding its annual Health
and Safety conference in the capital
city of Fredericton between the 21-
23 of September.
os Local 306 financial
5 secretary John
Richard says the IWA
will be sending three
delegates, one each
from the Northumberland Co-op in
Miramichi; the Baxter Dairy facility
based in St. John and Warren
Trucking, a firm that hauls hog fuel
between New Brunswick and Nova
Scotia. The federation is planning to
picket a meeting of the Workers
Health and Safety Compensation
Compensation Committee this fall,
to protest the government's refusal
to implement several joint manage-
ment-labour recommendations.

Fe.

Safety regulations committee
to review final draft version
IWA Local 830 president Jack
Alexander, an appointed member
of the tripartite
@ Workplace Safety
IMMFRLL and Health
Committee, an
arms length divi-
sion of Manitoba’s
Department of
Labour, says his group is awaiting the
final draft of health and safety regula-
tions changes. “All the recommenda-
tions we have worked on are supposed
to be in this draft,” says Brother
Alexander, who serves as a labour rep
along with reps from the CAW and
UNITE. According to Alexander, many
new regulations have been taken from
B.C. and Saskatchewan and have been
agreed upon by the parties for imple-
mentation in 2004.

Violent attacks on packaging
workers evoke condemnation
IWA national second v.p. Norm Rivard
says the union joins the OFL and the
provincial NDP in
their loud condem-
nation of company
goon-led attacks on

Grae workers at the
OFL/FTO Mississauga-based
Matrix Packaging company. UNITE
organizer Cory Mitic had his arm bro-
ken in attack by hired goons in early
June and several workers were fired
for being pro-union. Workers have
been following, harassed and intimi-
dated by the goons. Some have been
attacked while leafleting workers. “In
Ontario we are seeing a throw back to
union busting as if we were in the
1920s or 1930s,” says Brother Rivard,
who commended NDP leader Howie
Hampton for speaking out on behalf
of the mostly immigrant workers
being assaulted.

16 | THE ALLIED WORKER AUGUST 2003