Public Service Alliance of Canada BC

The Play Fair campaign is a coalition of labour rights groups that seek to push sportswear brands that produce merchandise for the Olympic Games to abolish sweatshop conditions in their supply chains and to respect labour rights.

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In July of 2006, twelve delegates from four Canadian trade unions (PSAC, BCGEU, CUPE and CUPW) traveled to Colombia as part of an ongoing campaign to defend public services and trade union organizing in that country. Over twelve days the delegation visited three major cities and several smaller communities, speaking with dozens of people representing trade union, human rights and indigenous community movements. Here is a 13 minute video produced for CBC’s online Exposure series chronicling their trip …

For more information about the Frontline Tour, read the report written by BC Regional Council member Megan Adam, who took part, or visit the PSAC Social Justice Fund website.

If you enjoyed the video, take a minute to visit the CBC Exposure website and rate or comment on the video. Highly rated videos will be aired on national television.

Hi – thanks so much for supporting the street newz.  We’ve spent the $1500 you so generously provided, and we’re sending a report to let you know what we did with it. We appreciate your help very much …

The Victoria Street Newz is one of the projects the PSAC Social Justice Fund is supporting: here is a letter they recently sent to the SJF.

Thank you for your generous donation of $1,500 tax dollars to help cover production costs for the Victoria Street Newz.

With each issue, from February 2006 to June 2007, the PSAC logo and/or advertisement was displayed prominently in the newspaper and on the relativenewz.ca website.

The Victoria Street Newz is now entering its fourth year. We’re very grateful to all the organizations and individuals who have supported us thus far. Because of your generosity we are able to maintain our integrity. Rather than surrendering valuable print space to excessive advertising, or increasing the cost to vendors and readers, the Victoria Street Newz is able to ensure a comprehensive collection of community writings is available at a reasonable price. With help from the community we serve, we will continue to sustain our local environment by reflecting, showcasing, informing, and educating.

Additionally, we serve and sustain our local physical environment by printing on 100% post consumer recycled paper, rather than paper extracted from our precious forests. While we are forced to invest our print dollars in Vancouver, because of a lack of recycled print options in Victoria, we make an effort to distribute all other monetary resources within our local community. The Street Newz coordinator is paid $700 a month, works from her home office, rents a mailbox and phone answering service from locally owned Raincoast Business Centre, and meets with vendors at the locally owned Solstice Café – which serves locally owned Silk Road tea and Canadian owned fairly traded organic coffee, and which serves the community by offering its space to local groups for benefits.

We participate in BC Transit’s bus ticket purchasing project, in conjunction with the Community Council, and distribute free bus tickets to Street Newz writers, vendors, and volunteers.

Through the years we’ve published information about and from various local organizations and businesses including the Community Council, the Open Door/Our Place, the Oak Bay Green Committee, Parents of Apprehended Children, HomelessNation.org, Participatory Sustainable Waste Management, Victoria’s Committee to End Homelessness, the Faith in Action Coalition, Bridges for Women, Sukhi Lalli Pharmacy, Chinese Herbalist Dr. John, InnovativeCommunities.org, St. Vincent De Paul, Burnside Gorge Community Centre, Cool Aid, Vancouver Island Head Injury Society, TAPS, Access Justice, CARTS, the Downtown Victoria Business Association, the Western Canada Wilderness Committee, Livable Income for Everyone, street artists, musicians, poets, and writers. Archived versions of the newspaper are available on-line at relativenewz.ca.

To sustain ourselves in the future, we’re launching a creative fundraising effort in the form of volume subscriptions. In exchange for $600 subscribers will receive 18 copies of Street Newz, delivered monthly, for a year. We’ll also include a complete set of Street Newz for your library – back issues from the previous three + years of publishing. Alternatively, we’d be interested in completing another grant application and/or continue offer advertising space to PSAC. Either way, we thank you for your support.

Namaste, Janine Bandcroft, Coordinator, Victoria Street Newz

Prepared by Megan Adam, Public Service Alliance of Canada

In July of 2006, twelve delegates from four Canadian trade unions traveled to Colombia as part of an ongoing campaign to defend public services and trade union organizing in that country. Over twelve days our delegation visited three major cities and several smaller communities, speaking with dozens of people representing trade union, human rights and indigenous community movements. During our densely-packed itinerary we heard the Colombians’ stories of repression and resistance, saw films about police attacks and murders, and were called on to witness the ongoing degradation of public services and Colombian society. The tour was not only a chance to make stronger links with our southern counterparts, but a wakeup call to our future if global social justice and civil society movements do not continue the struggle to halt privatization pressures by organizations like the IMF and WTO.

• The first portion of the Frontlines Tour took place in 2004 when a delegation of Colombian workers visited Canada: read more at the Social Justice Fund website and the psacbc.com archives.

This report will give a brief overview of our activities in Colombia as part of the Frontlines Tour. The four participating unions (PSAC, BCGEU, CUPE and CUPW) are the major representatives of public sector workers in Canada and we met with many of our counterparts in Colombia as well as their human rights and community partners. This initiative in the PSAC is part of the ongoing work of the Social Justice Fund, and a component of the Make Poverty History campaign, incorporating the fight to defend quality public services such as health, education, welfare, clean water, sanitation and energy around the world.

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Thanks to Nick Humphreys, BC Regional Council member, for forwarding us an update on two of the projects in BC funded by the Social Justice Fund.

The Victoria Street Newz has just published their 13^th issue: July 2006 (available soon on their website), which contains an excellent article about the PSAC’s support of Native land claims. Their mission is to provide a voice and income opportunities for economically marginalized and/or socially disadvantaged people in the greater Victoria area while at the same time offering employable skills training, increased self-esteem, confidence, and pride in accomplishments. Click to visit their website.

Also in Victoria, Liveable Income For Everyone is continuing their Community Education to Make Poverty History project which aims to increase poverty education and to create social solidarity in order to “Make Poverty History” with a universal Guaranteed Livable Income. They also are planning to make a presentation to an upcoming Area Council meeting. Click for a project update.

As an important member benefit, the Public Service Alliance of Canada provides members with $5,000 of life insurance plus $5,000 of accidental death and dismemberment (AD&D) insurance absolutely free through the PSAC For Life program. Coughlin & Associates, the insurer, also offers PSAC Enhanced life insurance.

Starting next week, PSAC members will have an opportunity to update their PSAC Enhanced life insurance coverage and enter their names to win one of 20 gift certificates worth $1,000 each from Canadian Tire. With PSAC Enhanced coverage, PSAC members can now own as much as $ 250,000 of life insurance protection for as long as age 70. It’s an important product improvement that can ensure that our members have the financial security they need, even after age 65.

In addition to the chance of winning their choice of some fabulous gifts from Canadian Tire, PSAC members can also support justice, simply by completing a PSAC Enhanced coverage application. For every application received, $5 will be donated to the PSAC Social Justice Fund.

For details and an application form, visit coughlin.ca/psac-afpc/

Funding anti-poverty initiatives in Canada is one of five priority areas for the PSAC’s Social Justice Fund. As part of this the SJF funds initiatives that support a closer collaboration between union members and low income groups in the community, particularly activities that are part of anti-poverty coalitions at the community level.

One of the projects the SJF has funded in BC is the Bread & Roses Collective, a registered not-for-profit society created to support the Victoria Street Newz community newspaper and other projects. The Victoria Street Newz mission is to provide a voice and income opportunities for economically marginalized and/or socially disadvantaged people, while at the same time offering employable skills training, increased self-esteem, confidence, and pride in accomplishments.

Street Newz vendors live on a low income and sign a code of conduct agreeing to be friendly and sober while at work. They pay $.50 for each paper, and sell them by donation at various locations in Victoria’s Downtown, Esquimalt and Saanich. They’re essentially self employed, working as much or as little as they’d like, and free to spend the money they earn as they please. Click for profiles of some of the vendors. Here are the Street Newz issues to date.

Visit the Street Newz website for more information and to read the Street Newz back issues.

When the city adopted its ethical purchasing policy in February last year, staff estimated that it could add $150,000 to the city’s budget and cost the parks board $185,000. A report Tuesday updating council on the progress of the policy says the costs have been negligible. In one notable instance-the cost of city uniforms-ethical purchasing resulted in a $14,000 saving, thanks to a consolidation of suppliers and a standardization of products. This is not the case in all areas. The introduction of fair trade coffee at the Carnegie Centre and the Gathering Place has tagged $11,000 on to their budgets.

The ethical purchasing policy governs the products city staff buy. Because of industry trends, availability and the nature of civic government, it applies mostly to uniforms and foodstuffs. When most of us hear the term “fair trade,” we think coffee. But the term, which designates that the farmer, producer or supplier has received fair compensation, employs environmental practices, and supports improved social services and investment in local economic infrastructure, also applies to the chocolate, sugar and bananas the city uses.

Read more about the COV’s ethical purchasing policy at the Vancouver Courier’s website.

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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Thanks to Nick Humphreys, BC Regional Council member for forwarding us an update on the Make Poverty History fund, and an update on one of the projects in BC funded by the Social Justice Fund.

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Livable Income For Everyone, one of the projects the PSAC Social Justice Fund is sponsoring in BC, is presenting two documentary films discussing homelessness in Victoria. There will be an introduction by Cindy L’Hirondelle about the Guaranteed Livable Income project.

• When: Monday January 30th starting at 6:30pm
• Where: Harry Hickman Building (HHB) 105
• Cost: FREE!

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As labour activists we are often asked by our members to describe for them our bargaining demands at contract time. When we answer with the usual list of demands, such as “a raise” or “improved leave provisions,” our members are comforted that they will experience some improvements to their working conditions. However, when we mention the “Social Justice Fund” as a bargaining demand, the Union of Taxation Employees (UTE) members question why the union needs to negotiate the creation of such a fund.

No doubt we’ve all heard talk of the “Social Justice Fund” from the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC). However, few members have a complete understanding of what this bargaining demand really means. In fact, many members quietly wish it would be dropped in favour of more “meat and potato” demands directly related to our workplace. But what is the “Social Justice Fund” and what role does the UTE play with respect to “Global Social Justice?”

Read more at the PSAC Social Justice Fund website.

Funding anti-poverty initiatives in Canada is one of five priority areas for the PSAC’s Social Justice Fund. As part of this the SJF funds initiatives that support a closer collaboration between union members and low income groups in the community, particularly activities that are part of anti-poverty coalitions at the community level. These activities include the development of educational initiatives or advocacy work such as letter writing, postcard campaigns, marches, white-band days and other similar activities.

Here is a list of groups and activities in BC that received funding assistance from the PSAC Social Justice Fund.

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To get involved with the Social Justice Fund/International Solidarity Committee, contact your local Regional Office.

Visit the national website for information on the PSAC Social Justice Fund.

Older SJF/International Solidarity news and information is archived in our old webspace.