Hot Tubbin' For Justice

Members of the Migrant Workers Centre at their AGM last weekend. A few weeks ago my friend Susanna contacted me to see if I could bring greetings on behalf of CUPE BC at the Migrant Workers Centre (MWC) AGM. Formerly the West Coast Domestic Workers' Association, I knew this group was heavily involved in legal assistance and advocacy for temporary foreign workers (TFWs), admittedly a file I don't really know much about but I was intrigued by the invitation. Once everything went through the proper channels, I was in and looking forward to hearing more about their work and how our organizations could work together.  So, I showed up and brought greetings. I talked about the natural alignment of values between the work our union does and the work they do. T he labour movement isn't just about organized labour, it's about all workers. CUPE BC delegates passed a resolution at our convention earlier this year that called on the union to advocate for TFWs and to build re...

Homestretch! We spent the morning in our sectors concluding our meetings. After a quick debrief by the room we were ready to head back into plenary to hear back from all of the sectors and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh. One by one the sectors shared their top priorities, so in random order: Education address chronic underfunding and workload issues create a national campaign against privatization to highlight work in the school sector tools and resources for locals to deal with ineffective managers and employers (whatever that means) Library countering austerity - tackling precarious work, staffless libraries, underfunding and the use of volunteers  health and safety - library workers' roles in the opioid crisis, and violence in the workplace mental health in the workplac Healthcare strategies and tools to deal with workplace attendance management programs workload health and safety - violence in the workplace - prevention and lobbying for further protections ...

We started the morning off with a discussion on the day's theme "creating safe and respectful workplaces." We were treated once again to the great co-moderating team of Preethy and Matthieu where we heard about 3 very different situations where CUPE member are facing serious disrespect and challenges with their employer(s).  Sharon Richer - Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU) Sharon set the context by sharing the horrific violence healthcare workers in Ontario are experience - often by the very patients they are there to take care of. Not enough is being done to create a culture where violent behaviour would be tolerated in the workplace. OCHU has spent a lot of time over the last little while surveying their members - asking them about frequency of violent incidents at work, incidents of sexual violence/harassment, fears, frequency of reporting, employer follow up and support.  The stats she shared were staggering.  There are so many factors as to why me...

Back in Ottawa (on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishnaabeg peoples) - this time for the third CUPE National Sector Council Conference . Established in 2013, after many delegates at convention felt that the 2 hour sector meetings every two years were simply not enough time to connect with our counterparts from across the country, so we decided to hold a sector conference in the off years of national convention.  The first version of the sector conference was in Toronto and well, it was not good. Then 2 years ago, we decided to give it another shot and it was great. I wrote about the conversation we had on sexual violence on campus in 2016 , which led to some sector solidarity on the subject. We passed a resolution calling for a tool kit on the issue of sexual violence on campuses, critical incident stress support for stewards and bystander training for all CUPE members and staff. It passed - not sure where they are at in the development of the materials we asked...