Hot Tubbin' For Justice

BCNDP Women's Rights Committee Convention We started our BCNDP convention experience off by attending the Women's Rights Committee (WRC) convention which occurs prior to the opening plenary.  We were fortunate to have Rhiannon Bennett, from Delta, give the territorial acknowledgement. She started off by holding up a purse and a scarf, and acknowledged that both of which belonged to Maurine Karagianis. She asked "is it enough to acknowledge these items of Maurine's if I have them, for her to access the economy ?" Nope. We, the NDP need to do better - it's not about shame or guilt, but about acknowledging the privilege of what we've been given. She talked to us about the resilience of indigenous peoples and how they've been able to save their languages in the face of being being jailed for speaking their languages, having needles poked into their tongues in residential school, and other horrific things. Rhiannon brought humour and heart to her te...

"Solidarity of the working class is the greatest force for change in history."  Sara Nelson, CUPE National Convention 2019 The 2019 CUPE National Convention took place in Montreal, October 6-11th. This convention marked 10 years since I attended my first union event and as the BC Caucus Whip, I was really excited for the ensuing week. I am so proud to be from BC. I tried to coordinate the floor differently this time by using an app that would enable communication to get to delegates in a more consistent and timely manner. Our executive board came together, we huddled, chatted and cheered each other on. Everyone stepped up when I needed help and I thought we did a great job repping our region.  Here are some of my thoughts on various parts of convention. Post-Secondary Sector Meeting This year, the post-secondary sector meeting focused on the rise of hate on our campuses. We were fortunate to have Kimalee Phillip, one of our Human Rights reps, speak to...

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 ...

It's interesting how a complete stranger can change your life and one year ago today, Jack Layton died. I cried. I cried because we lost a champion of the labour movement. I cried because we lost a man who cared about the working people in this country. I cried because we lost a great Canadian.  I didn't know Jack personally. I got to meet him at one of CUPE conventions a few years ago. He shook my hand, said hello and smiled that famous mustachey smile. He always lit up the room at convention - he was articulate and inclusive. He wanted everyone in on the speech. He was always passionate - whether it was about pension reform, childcare, education, economics or the environment, he was passionate about everything.  At at the 2011 Canadian Labour Congress Convention he walked into a room of almost 3000 trade unionists from coast to coast to coast. You would have thought Bono had arrived by the reaction he got! It was right after the federal election where he had...