Public Service Alliance of Canada BC

Youth Now Volunteer Leadership Awards: Every year the Victoria United Way holds a gala event to recognize the amazing contributions youth make to our community. Individuals and groups from ages 11 through 24 who have provided extraordinary community service are nominated, with 4 individual awards and a group award.

• Do you know a youth (or group of youth) ages 11-24 who goes above and beyond what’s expected of them?
• Do they inspire other youth?

Now is the time to recognize the outstanding efforts of your peers, students, neighbours, and community leaders.

Visit unitedwayvictoria.bc.ca for full details and a nomination form, the deadline is April 14, 2006, 4pm

This year’s Spring Weekend Seminar sponsored by the New Westminster & District Labour Council will be held April 8th & 9th, 2006 at the Justice Institute of BC, 715 McBride Boulevard, New Westminster, BC.

The courses are designed to equip individuals with the knowledge and skills to handle the many roles in the union. See below for the registration form, course description, and delegate information.

If you have any questions, please contact the NWDLC at 604-524-9311. We encourage your participation at the April seminar and urge you to share the course information with members in your workplace and union.

• New Westminster & District Labour Council (CLC) Weekend Seminar
• Location: Justice Institute of BC, 715 McBride Blvd, New Westminster, BC
• April 8th & 9th, 2006

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Minutes of the Vancouver Regional Women’s Committee October 26, 2005

In attendance:

• Deanna Wilson
• Alethea Boire
• Stephanie Oostrander
• Sanda Turner
• Juliana Sou
• May Chiu
• Regina Brennan

Download the minutes , or read below.

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GATINEAU, March 10 /CNW Telbec/ - The reinstatement of Edith Gendron at Canadian Heritage has sent a clear message to all workers in the Federal Public Service: you have political rights and you have the right to assert them.

According to the PSAC Regional Executive Vice-President for the National Capital Region, Ed Cashman, “the decision rendered by the Public Service Labour Relations Board yesterday is a victory for freedom of expression and association for our membership and for the entire Federal Public Service. The decision clearly spells out that, in this region, it is possible to freely express oneself politically and assert oneself without fear of reprisals.”

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Minutes of the Vancouver Regional Women’s Committee, March 14, 2006

In attendance:

• Angela Marafon
• Alethea Boire
• Stephanie Oostrander
• Sanda Turner
• Patricia Ganczar
• Parveen Deepak
• Trudy Wilson
• Cheryl Oenema
• Regina Brennan

Agenda:

1. Review of the Regional Women’s Committee Handbook
2. Summer School for Union Women
3. Pre-convention Seminar for Women Delegates
4. PSAC Convention Observer Funding
5. Mail
6. Fall planning

Continue reading below, or download the Vancouver RWC minutes March 14, 2006 (pdf)

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Public Services International conference to develop agenda against privatization

Ottawa (14 March 2006) — More than 75 trade union leaders and activists from six countries will gather in Ottawa this week, under the umbrella of the Public Services International (PSI), to foster alliances and develop a coordinated agenda to prevent the privatization of public services.

“Many governments around the world are in the midst of turning control of public services over to large corporations,” says Nycole Turmel, National President of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC). “The public is paying a huge price for this privatization in terms of less quality, less access and less accountability.”

The three-day conference, being held at the Westin Hotel in downtown Ottawa from 14-16 March, will provide a forum to share and evaluate recent union campaigns against privatization and to develop a coordinated trade union agenda in the fight for quality public services.

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At the last National Health and Safety Conference the BC delegates decided that they wanted to have a survey done of all the Health and Safety Activists in the Region. This would allow the Brush Committee to plan for events that the Activists are wanting to see happen.

If you are a health and safety activist, or want to be, please complete this brief survey.

Fill out the survey online, or download the health and safety survey and mail or fax it back to the Vancouver Regional Office: (604)430-0451 or 200 - 5238 Joyce Street, Vancouver BC V5R6C9.

OTTAWA — The National Joint Council is pleased to announce that an agreement on the Public Service Health Care Plan (PSHCP) has been reached between representatives of the bargaining agents of the National Joint Council, the Federal Superannuates National Association and the Treasury Board Secretariat. The Public Service Health Care Plan is an important program providing health care benefits and services to over 500,000 members and their dependants.

The agreement is the product of a collaborative process that began in 2004. The terms of the new five-year agreement will improve benefits and ensure that the PSHCP continues on a sound financial foundation for the future. The new terms of the PSHCP will come into effect April 1, 2006 and will mark the first major changes in benefits under the Plan in over a decade.

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For immediate release, via Vancouver & District Labour Council: After receiving hundreds of citizen emails, letters and telephone calls in support and hearing from a broad-based delegation of citizens speaking in favour of the World Peace Forum 2006, Vancouver City Council voted last night to continue financial support for the event scheduled for June 23 – 28, 2006. The key portion of the multifaceted motion, moved by Councilor Peter Ladner, read “given the international nature and topical significance of the World Peace Forum 2006 that City Council provide a one-time special grant of $50,000 to the World Peace Forum Society in support of this event”. It was supported unanimously by the full Council and Mayor. The resolution also makes available “a further $50,000 to the World Peace Forum Society subject to raising $584,000 in cash donations”.

World Peace Forum Executive Director Jef Keighley expressed the organizers’ satisfaction with the outcome saying “we are grateful for the support from the City of Vancouver and appreciate the fact that Council members were clearly moved by the strong support we received from citizens across the city, around the Lower Mainland and around the world. We have always wanted the City of Vancouver’s support and we hope that Mayor Sullivan and City Councilors will play an important role by helping to welcome our guests and by participating in key sessions on the role of cities in pursuing peace.”

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The Department of Canadian Heritage has been ordered to reinstate a former employee who was fired because she belonged to a sovereigntist organization.

The Public Service Labour Relations Board has ruled that Edith Gendron was improperly fired two years ago.

Gendron may have been in conflict of interest when she was elected president of the group Le Quebec, un Pays in 2004, but the board found that Gendron’s termination was an excessive reaction, and ordered the government to give her back her job.

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Speaker Series: Ron Carr, Strategic Change and Organization Development Services, Public Service Human Resources Management Agency of Canada

See below for an outline of the presentation.

• Vancouver, March 22, 9:00 - 10:30, Segal Graduate School of Business, 500 Granville Street (corner of Granville) Event Room 1500, Main Floor
• Victoria, March 23, 9:00 - 10:30, Hotel Grand Pacific, Denman Room, 2nd Floor

There is no fee to attend these sessions. For registration please go to: http://pfc.gc.ca “Calendar of Events”

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Here is a letter the co-chairs of Make Poverty History sent Stephen Harper on March 1st …

Dear Prime Minister,

Congratulations on your election as Canada’s 22nd Prime Minister.

Make Poverty History is a broadly-based campaign, linked to a global effort active in more than 80 countries. Here in Canada over 700 organizations and a quarter million individuals have endorsed the campaign objectives of more and better aid, trade justice, cancellation of the debts of the poorest countries, and eradication of child poverty in Canada. During the recent federal election, sixty Conservative candidates publicly supported these goals. One hundred and seventy eight members of the new Parliament, from all parties, have publicly supported our campaign objectives. Now is the moment to transform this majority support into concrete action.

Mr. Prime Minister, we are writing to request your leadership to Make Poverty History at two crucial moments in the near future.

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One of our new Prime Minister’s first acts was to strongly advise another newly-elected government to honour the agreements negotiated and signed by its predecessor.

Yet, that’s what his new government wants to do. It wants to scrap the child care agreements signed last fall by the federal government and each province. Five-year funding deals will be terminated in March 2007, over the strong objections of provincial governments who made plans to better serve young families and their children.

Why do this? What makes the Prime Minister’s own vision of child care so compelling that it should override and cancel the vision each and every premier signed onto in their contract with Ottawa? Why take away badly-needed child care spaces – like the 6000 spaces that would have been created for working families in Toronto alone.

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It’s time to rise again – we all need a universal child care program

International Women’s Day represents nearly a century of struggle for the equality of women world-wide.

This March 8th women in the PSAC are not only celebrating the gains we have achieved over the last century, we are also actively participating in a campaign to ensure that child care is publicly (and not for profit) delivered, universal and affordable.

Given the election of the Conservative government, the challenges facing working women and their families are greater than ever. In fact, the threats to the rights we have won at are stake and PSAC women will not stand by and allow those rights to be eroded.

That is why the PSAC has made CHILD CARE one of our main priorities this year. We know that the number of women in the labour force is high and growing. At the same time, the overwhelming responsibility for the care of children remains with women and the lack of affordable child care spaces in quality public and not for profit centres remains a major obstacle to women’s full equality.

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Remembering our Sisters

This event will highlight photos of some of the sixty-five commemorative quilts produced by women of the Downtown Eastside. Poetry and music will be featured at an event taking place at 119 West Pender Street, on March 8, 2006 from 4:00pmm. til 7:00 p.m. International Women’s Day. A special guest, poet and Guatemalan woman’s activist Sandra Moran will perform and bring greetings from the women of a country also devastated by hundreds of cases of missing and murdered women. Teenage girls from North Vancouver will perfom a touching piece of music they wrote in commemoration of women from the Downtown Eastside.Remembering Our Sisters uses the celebratory occasion of International Women’s Day to both commemorate the more than sixty-five women who have disappeared from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and to celebrate the art and political activism of those who continue the struggle for equality and survival among some of Vancouver’s most marginalized women.

The organizations Wish Drop-In Centre, PEERS and PACE, groups that provide counselling services for current and exiting sex-trade workers, are hosting the celebration, art and performances with broad community support from women in BC’s Labour Movement and others.

VDLC Friends and Affiliates,

The Save St. Paul’s Coalition needs our help.

The Coalition is trying to set up a meeting with the Health Minister for the end of March and need your signatures on their petition to help make that happen. The letter they have sent the Minister is attached.

Please visit their website, at www.stpauls.wera.bc.ca and if you haven’t already signed their petition, please do.

The Vancouver and District Labour Council is already on record as supporting the work to save St.Paul’s and Mt. St. Joseph’s Hospitals from being closed or moved by the Campbell Liberals and supports the Save St.Paul’s Coalition, in their fight to do the same.

In solidarity, The Vancouver and District Labour Council

The Ottawa Citizen, Mon 06 Mar 2006

Re: Labour pains, March 1.

The Citizen rightly claims that the Public Service Alliance of Canada “endorsed a number of separatist candidates in the Pontiac, despite the fact that the union represents workers whose livelihood depends on a strong federal government.” However, poll after poll suggests that about 25 per cent of Bloc Quebecois supporters are federalists.

The reason is that the Bloc is proactive and progressive on a range of issues, from pay equity to anti-scab legislation to child care. On the basis of its strong support for social, human and labour rights alone, it gets support from workers and their families.

And while the leadership of the Bloc supports separation for Quebec, this is an issue that will not be decided in a federal election.

Workers and businesses in the area should be more concerned about the Citizen editorial board’s support of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE) which, in the words of the editorial, is “regularly putting forward serious policy proposals.”

The Harper government and the CCCE, and by implication the Citizen, endorse the concept of a fiscal imbalance between the federal and provincial governments, a notion that I and my union reject. I suggest that your acknowledgement of a fiscal imbalance and lack of support for measures to ameliorate it will do more to undermine workers and businesses, including the Citizen, whose livelihoods depend more on a strong federal government than on the endorsement and democratic election of a Bloc MP.

Nycole Turmel, Ottawa, PSAC National President

Join the Governexx Team for the 2006 Vancouver Sun Run, Sunday, April 23, 9 a.m.

Governexx would like to put together a team for the Vancouver Sun Run. Teams can include runners, joggers, walkers or wheelchair participants and comprise of co-workers, friends and family.  Your entry into the run includes a T-shirt with the Governexx team logo.  We need a minimum of 10 entrants to qualify as a team.

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• Saturday, March 11, 12 noon
• Extra Foods / Super Valu, 1020 Park Royal South, West Vancouver

Speakers:

• Jim Sinclair, BC Fed
• Brooke Sundin, UFCW Local 1518
• Suzanne Hodge, UFCW Local 247

organized by the BC Federation of Labour

SUSAN SACHS, Special to The Globe and Mail, March 2nd

PARIS — Few travellers think they are helping the less fortunate when they buy a plane ticket. But soon everyone flying from airports in France, Britain and 11 other countries will be making a charitable contribution, like it or not, to the global fight against AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.

In France, the donation will take the form of a “solidarity tax,” as President Jacques Chirac has called it, on all international and domestic flights. The tax will range from €1 (about $1.35) to €40, depending on the class of ticket and the destination, and will take effect on July 1. The other countries have a year to figure out how they will impose the charge.

Mr. Chirac has campaigned energetically to persuade other countries to impose a similar tax on airline tickets and he made it the centrepiece of his address to an international conference on alternative methods of development aid that opened Tuesday in Paris.

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