Public Service Alliance of Canada BC

Yellowknife – Supporters of striking Ekati diamond mine workers will be leafleting customers at Brinkhaus Jewellers store in Vancouver and Idar Jewellers in Victoria this Saturday as part of their union’s Canada-wide “Dirty Diamonds” campaign to win a fair first contract.

Brinkhaus Jewellers and Idar Jewellers are two of several dozen BHP Billiton-authorized Canadian jewelers selling AuriasTM and CanadaMarkTM diamonds from Ekati. The Public Service Alliance of Canada says customers will be politely asked to not buy diamonds being produced by strikebreakers behind picket lines in its efforts to pressure mine owner BHP Billiton to reach a first collective agreement.

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OTTAWA - Due to the lack of transparency by Canada Post in refusing to reveal its development plans for this public service, members of the Union of Postal Communications Employees (UPCE) of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) will support a citizens’ action against the Crown Corporation on Monday, June 19, at noon.

“We hope to obtain answers to the questions we have been asking Canada Post management for months,” explained UPCE President Richard Des Lauriers.

“Unfortunately, instead of getting firm answers as to the impact of the Corporation’s development plan on services to the public, we have received meaningless slogans. The time has come to go over to Canada Post offices and get the answers.”

The UPCE and PSAC are therefore supporting the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) citizens’ search that will take place on Monday, June 19, at noon at the Head Office of Canada Post at 2701 Riverside Drive in Ottawa. This is when union members will peacefully enter the offices of Canada Post and seek the documentation that they have been asking management for but have been unable to obtain.

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Public Service Alliance of Canada says don’t buy trademarked Aurias™ and CanadaMark™ diamonds produced by strikebreakers

YELLOWKNIFE, June 13 /CNW/ - Over 2 million readers of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal in the United States will read today about “Dirty Diamonds” being produced despite a strike by Ekati diamond mine workers, as their union runs major ads in the newspapers as part of its growing international campaign against mine owner BHP Billiton.

The Public Service Alliance of Canada is asking consumers not to buy Ekati diamonds being produced by strikebreakers under the Auriasâ„¢ and CanadaMarkâ„¢ trademarks behind union picket lines as the union fights to win a fair first collective agreement for nearly 400 Ekati workers on strike since April 7.

“BHP Billiton is going to feel increasing heat around the world until it reaches a fair contract with Ekati diamond mine workers,” said Jean-François Des Lauriers, PSAC Executive Vice-President-North. “We will be telling readers of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal that they should not buy Canada’s own conflict diamonds - diamonds being produced despite a labour conflict.” Click here to view the ad (pdf).

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OTTAWA – After the first debate on Bill C-257 – An Act to amend the Canada Labour Code (replacement workers) – Canadian working families feel more confident that Parliament will finally adopt legislation to ban the use of scabs during labour disputes under the Canada Labour Code.

“It’s a matter of fairness and balance,” explains Ken Georgetti, president of the Canadian Labour Congress. “The prohibition to use scabs protects the interests of working Canadians and their families against the might of large, often global, employers with no roots in the community.”

Such legislation exists in Quebec since 1977 and in British Columbia since 1993; causing, in both cases, a general decline in the loss of work time due to strikes or lockouts, and marking a diminution of their length and intensity.

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Ottawa - The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) welcomes into its ranks all commissionnaires working in Health Canada buildings in the National Capital Region. For PSAC, this union victory is part of an extensive recruiting campaign aimed at better defending the rights of these workers.“We had to put in a lot of hard work to unionize this group of commissionnaires” , declared PSAC Regional Executive Vice-President, Ed Cashman. “Although they are spread out geographically which makes it difficult to organize them, these workers have the same rights as all Canadians, and it is our role as a union to ensure that these rights are protected.”

During the recruiting campaign, the union ran into opposition from the employer and was confronted by attempts to intimidate the employees.

“It is totally unacceptable that, in this day and age, an employer is so fiercely opposed to organizing a group of workers,” Cashman said. “The rights to associate and have union representation are recognized everywhere in Canada, and we should not have to fight to exercise them.

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Public Service Alliance of Canada and BHP Billiton to resume negotiations for first contract at strike-bound Ekati diamond mine May 25-26 in Edmonton; PSAC picket lines will stay up until ratified agreement reached

YELLOWKNIFE, May 23 /CNW/ - The Public Service Alliance of Canada, the union representing striking Ekati diamond mine workers, and mine owner BHP Billiton have agreed to resume negotiations for a first collective agreement, with talks scheduled for May 25-26 in Edmonton.

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Yellowknife — By using scabs at its Ekati diamond mine and by refusing to bargain in good faith with its 400 unionized workers, BHP Billiton is showing its contempt for Canadian workers.

According to the National President of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) John Gordon, “if BHP Billiton wants to stay in Canada and continue to do business, it has to respect Canadian workers.”

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Defending Quality Public Services

The PSAC supports strong public services and service delivery and remains unalterably opposed to privatization of public infrastructure and public services.

Quality public services are essential in building strong economies and inclusive societies. Privatization undermines the ability of public sector workers to provide the kind of services to the public that they would like to provide. The PSAC’s People behind the Services Campaign in 2004 highlighted this commitment.

After 20 years of pro-privatization policies, neither Canada nor the world are better or fairer places to live. The gap between rich and poor has widened.

Continue reading the PSAC Defending Quality Public Services policy at the national website.

Student Employment

A significant number of employers, including many, that count unionized PSAC members amongst their employees, routinely hire students.

The PSAC believes that employers, including the PSAC itself, have an obligation to future generations of workers, and that this obligation can be partially met by hiring students.

The PSAC is equally clear that students should be hired into carefully crafted and monitored programs that are designed to assist them in advancing their academic skills and acquiring social and workplace knowledge and skills – including an understanding of the role of Unions in workplaces and society and not into determinate and indeterminate positions. Under no circumstances should students be hired as a form of cheap labour for employers, or in any way to undermine the employment security of the employers’ regular workforce.

Continue reading the PSAC Student Employment policy at the national website.

TORONTO - John Gordon has been elected as the National President of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC). Gordon has been the union’s National Executive Vice-President since 2000. Competing against three other candidates, Gordon was elected on the third ballot. Over 400 Convention delegates participated in this process.

“PSAC will be moving quickly to implement the plan to defend quality public services adopted at our convention this week,” said Gordon. “We don’t intend to have the Conservative government’s proposed budget ’savings’ come at the expense of needed public services and our members’ jobs.”

Prior to his election as National Executive Vice-President, Gordon was the National President of the Union of Public Works Employees from 1982 to 1999. A PSAC activist since 1974, when he joined the federal public sector as a tradesperson with Public Works Canada, Gordon has held a variety of union positions in his Component.

Delegates also elected Patty Ducharme as the union’s National Executive Vice-President. For the past six years, Ducharme has been PSAC’s Regional Executive Vice-President (REVP) for British Columbia. Prior to her election as REVP in 2000, Ducharme had worked as a customs inspector in British Columbia and served as First Vice-President of Branch 20040 of the Customs Excise Union Douanes Accise (CEUDA). She has been a PSAC activist for over 20 years holding a number of union positions.

In a two-way contest, Union of Postal Communications Employees President Richard Des Lauriers was elected alternate National Executive Vice-President. All elected officers take up their duties effective immediately.

TORONTO – While 400 of its members at the Ekati diamond mine north of Yellowknife suffer the consequences of having scabs in the workplace, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) applauds the anti-scab Bill introduced today by the Bloc Québécois aimed at stopping this practice.

“During the last session of Parliament, the Bloc introduced Bill C-263 which was lost by only 12 votes,” explained PSAC President, Nycole Turmel. “We will work with the Bloc Québécois and other Canadian unions to ensure that finally, workers under federal jurisdiction are protected by anti-scab legislation.”

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TORONTO – The Harper government’s first federal budget provides more questions than answers about its impact on services to Canadians, according to the Public Service Alliance of Canada.

In its pre-budget submission, PSAC had argued that demands for public services are growing as the population ages and as more and more people locate to larger cities and communities. The union urged the government to reconsider premature tax cuts.

“In addition to tax cuts, particularly the many corporate tax cuts contained in the budget, the Conservatives are slowing government spending at a time when the economy is growing,” says PSAC National President Nycole Turmel. “They’re also instituting another round of expenditure review, cutting $1-billion in each of the next two fiscal years.”

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On May 1, 1886, a general strike was called in the United States at a time when the right to organize and strike did not exist. A peaceful mass meeting at Haymarket Square in Chicago that followed was broken up by the police and led to the hanging of four labour leaders. All these events sparked the declaration of May 1 as an international day to remember and celebrate workers’ struggles.

One hundred and twenty years later, workers are fighting to protect their hard-won rights to organize, to bargain collectively and to strike. Recently, there has been a concerted effort by the labour movement to protect the right to bargain by pressuring Members of Parliament to adopt federal anti-scab legislation and first contract arbitration.

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While the Canadian flag on Parliament Hill flies at half-mast on April 28, workers observe a moment of silence in remembrance of those workers killed or seriously injured on the job.

The National Day of Mourning was officially recognized by the federal government in 1991, eight years after it was launched by the labour movement in Canada. The Day of Mourning has since spread to over 80 countries around the world. Here is a list of Day of Mourning events in BC (pdf).

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OTTAWA - After six years as the PSAC’s national president, Nycole Turmel will be stepping down and making way for a new leader of the 155,000-strong union. Elections for the new national president and national executive vice-president will be held on Friday, May 5, 2006, starting at 8:30 a.m.

The PSAC Convention officially begins on Monday, May 1, in Toronto, but there will be a pre-convention forum on political action and social justice on the previous day.

The Sunday Forum

• What: Political Action and Social Justice Forum
• Who

• Moderator: Hassan Yussuff, Canadian Labour Congress Secretary-Treasurer
• Panelists: Olivia Chow, NDP Member of Parliament; Carole Lavallée, Bloc Québécois Member of Parliament; Alex Munter, Ottawa Mayoralty Candidate; Jim Sinclair, British Columbia Federation of Labour President

OTTAWA - After pressuring past governments for decades to provide real protection for whistleblowers, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) is concerned the government’s new Accountability Act may not go far enough.

“On the surface it appears that this legislation will offer more protection against reprisals for all workers in the federal public sector who come forward to make a disclosure of wrongdoing,” said PSAC National President Nycole Turmel.

“We will be undertaking a thorough analysis of the proposed legislation,” Turmel added. PSAC has applied and is expected to be invited to testify to the House Committee that will hear presentations on the legislation.

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The fight continues for a national child care program. As outlined in the Throne Speech on Tuesday, the Harper government is moving forward on financial support for families and ignoring the need for quality child care options.

Here are two press releases issued by the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada and a backgrounder on the Conservative’s Community Child Care Investment Program.

• Click for Throne Speech - New government must tackle stable funding for child care press release issued on April 3, 2006.
• Click for Child care to become focus of Parliamentary struggle: Throne Speech shows no compromise press release issued April 4, 2006.
• Here is the backgrounder on the Conservative’s Community Child Care Investment Program.

OTTAWA - The Conservatives may talk about transparency but the Speech from the Throne was far from clear on the details of the government’s plans for the upcoming session of Parliament according to the Public Service Alliance of Canada.

“The Speech was long on rhetoric but short on specifics,” says PSAC National President Nycole Turmel. “PSAC members will be waiting for the real news when the government tables its Accountability Act and its first budget.”

According to Turmel, “the Conservatives are promising ‘real protection for whistleblowers’, but we have yet to see just what that means. Real protection for our members means a guarantee of no reprisals and real penalties levied against anyone who breaks that guarantee.”

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(Vancouver) A major study released today finds that BC’s welfare system is systematically discouraging, delaying and denying assistance to many of the people most in need of help, with harmful consequences for some of the province’s most vulnerable residents.

Denied Assistance: Closing the Front Door on Welfare in BC examines why the number of people receiving welfare has plummeted in the wake of changes to eligibility rules and the application system, and looks at what is happening to people who seek and are denied welfare. It is the first in-depth assessment of the new application system, drawing on data obtained through Freedom of Information requests and extensive interviews with people who have applied for welfare, front-line community advocates and Ministry workers.

“The provincial government says its policies are a success. It claims that more people are leaving welfare for work, and that the new application system is ‘diverting’ people to employment,” says Bruce Wallace, Researcher with the Vancouver Island Public Interest Research Group (VIPIRG), which undertook the study with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA). “This is true for some people. But our research found that many others are being ‘diverted’ to homelessness, charities, survival sex and other forms of hardship.”

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For Immediate Release: VANCOUVER – Picket lines could be up at Vancouver International Airport Thursday morning at 8:00 am as members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) will be in a legal strike position against their employer Limo Jet Gold Express Ltd.

The PSAC represents drivers at Limo Jet, the exclusive provider of limousine service at the Vancouver International Airport. “Management at Limo Jet, have refused to seriously deal with the issue of dispatch fees and allow its employees to make a decent living” said Patty Ducharme, PSAC’s Regional Executive Vice-President for BC.

“On average PSAC members are paying more in dispatch fees to Limojet then they earn in wages to support their families,” Ducharme added. “Instead of getting serious about bargaining Limojet ownership is threatening to close the operation and put people out of work.”

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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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