(Updated October 18, 2007)

Presented by Janek Kuczkiewicz of the International Trade Union Confederation, authors of the Annual Survey of Violations of Trade Union Rights. Trade union and other human rights of workers are under attack in many countries around the world, including Colombia, Zimbabwe, Burma and Iran.

National Minimum Wage Bill, C-375 learn more about this bill to raise the federal minimum wage to $10 per hour

Five issues, one question - Who's on your side?

Canadian working families want politicians to listen to them and work for them. That’s where the Better Choice 2007 campaign starts. It is a campaign to promote the interests of Canadians who work for wages and their families.
Download the Better Choice 2007 brochure here.

Finally! Wage Protection Law moves closer to reality

OTTAWA – Basic wages and pension contributions’ protections for workers when their employer goes bankrupt are closer to reality. The political logjam that has held up long-awaited wage protection legislation for working Canadians finally broke this afternoon. The House of Commons passed amendments to a law originally adopted in the previous Parliament.

“On behalf of all wage earners, the Canadian Labour Congress welcomes this move and urges the Senate to match the all-party agreement that made today’s progress in the House of Commons possible and pass the amendments without delay,” says Ken Georgetti, president of the Canadian Labour Congress.

“This legislation was developed and spearheaded by the Canadian Labour Congress. We have relentlessly pushed to get it through the House in 2005. Then we had to pressure government and opposition parties to come to a consensus on the amendments that will make it work.”

“Finally, workers can look forward to desperately-needed protection of their wages and vacation benefits when their employer goes bankrupt, become insolvent or moves to restructuring. They no longer have to fear the prospect of losing earnings owed to them while dealing with the blow of the loss of their jobs,” explains Georgetti.

Georgetti expressed hope that the federal government would quickly establish the new wage earners protection measures that, among other things, include:

• Protection of wages: Ensuring that workers get compensation for their unpaid wages which will guarantee payments to employees for any unpaid wages and vacation earned, but not paid, up to a maximum of $3,000, at the time their employer enters bankruptcy or receivership under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act.

• Protection of pension contributions: Ensuring that arrears in regular pension contributions that have not been remitted to the pension plan by the employers constitute a priority charge over all assets ahead of secured creditors.

“Canadians have been waiting a long time for these protection measures. Over the last three federal elections, workers and their unions have campaigned for similar measures. Today marks a good new beginning and tomorrow can be better. We must keep reminding the decision makers in Ottawa that working people make up the majority of Canada’s citizens, and that Canada does better when working people prosper,” concludes Georgetti.

Analysis of the 2007 Federal Budget : We Cannot Tax-Cut Our Way to Prosperity

March 20, 2007

Overview

Budget 2007 erodes the federal government’s capacity to improve the lives of working people. Tax cuts will benefit profitable corporations without increasing investment in the Canadian economy. The federal government will continue subsidizing oil-sands extraction for nearly a decade. Increased transfers to provincial governments may serve important public purposes, but the Budget’s general thrust is to reduce the proportion of Canada’s economic resources devoted to such purposes. Click here to read complete analysis by the CLC.

Petition to the House of Commons – Federal Minimum Wage

Canada needs a $10/hour minimum wage

OTTAWA – “Canadians expect that everyone who works should be paid fairly,” says Ken Georgetti, president of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC). “Too many Canadians are working in full time jobs, yet they still have to choose between paying the rent and feeding their families. It's time to bring back the federal minimum wage to help the growing number of working families earning poverty wages.”

A worker today needs to earn $10.09 per hour for 2,000 hours to reach the poverty line.– Disturbingly, the proportion of adult workers (age 25 plus) who are working for less than these wages has increased in 2006. They are workers who, working full-time hours for the whole year, still would not reach the Statistics Canada low-income line.

“The federal government recently commissioned and paid for its own review of Canada's labour standards. The report came in last October and it calls for the restoration of a federal minimum wage that would be set at the poverty line as a way to address the growth of precarious, low-wage jobs across the country,” explains Georgetti. (That report is available at www.fls-ntf.gc.ca/en/fin-rpt.asp).

In December, the Canadian Labour Congress' Report Card 2006 Is Your Work Working for You?, which compares job and income statistics for the first half of each year since 2001, noted a disturbing growth in the number of Canadians unable to earn enough to meet their basic needs in the first part of 2006 despite strong job creation numbers over the same period.

“Getting a job is supposed to mean getting ahead. It's supposed to be a family's ticket out of poverty. A country so prosperous and rich in opportunity should be able to do better for working citizens,” concludes Georgetti.

The Canadian Labour Congress' Report Card 2006 Is Your Work Working for You?, is available at www.working4you.ca.

CLC supports Day of Action on affordable education

February 7, 2007

(CLC News)

OTTAWA – The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) stands in solidarity with the Canadian Federation of Students and supports its campaigns and its National Day of Action for affordable, high-quality, post-secondary education in Canada.

“Our governments, federal and provincial, are short changing the country and betraying our children when they refuse to open up access to post-secondary education while they keep repeating that we now live in a knowledge-based economy,” says Ken Georgetti, president of the Canadian Labour Congress.

The Canadian Labour Congress has long advocated for affordable education. Soaring tuition fees have resulted in much higher debt loads for students and reduced access to post-secondary education for working families.

“High tuition fees make us all poorer, individually and as a country.”

“During the 2006 federal election, we called for the re-regulation and phasing-out of tuition fees for all post-secondary education programs and increased core funding for colleges and universities.”

“This would promote equality and would help the economy as a whole because it would deliver young workers from the accumulated burdens of high student debt loads and low wages,” concludes Georgetti who invites everyone to consult the study “Better Educated, Badly Paid and Underemployed: A Statistical Picture of Young Workers in Canada”.