Public Service Alliance of Canada BC

It took three years for members of the United Nations (UN) to reach agreement on just thirty articles that define specific rights and freedoms for all human beings.

On December 10th, 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted this comprehensive agreement and the United Nations Declaration gave human rights a new international legal status.

These thirty basic and universal rights were fought for by social justice movements around the world and advanced within the UN by progressive governments of the day.

Despite taking years to formulate and decades of existence, the struggle to ensure just entitlement of these thirty rights and freedoms requires our attention today and everyday.

• Read more about Human Rights Day 2006 at un.org.
• Read the PSAC Statement on International Human Rights Day at the national website.

Canadian governments must be held accountable by human rights activists and popular movements when any of the Universal Rights are violated.

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OTTAWA – As we get closer to December 1, World AIDS Day, Canadian workers and their unions call on the federal government to end its long silence on HIV/AIDS and make some much-needed commitments to fight the disease at home and abroad.

We are at risk of losing some valuable ground in our fight against HIV/AIDS because the Canadian government has deserted the field in the middle of battle,” says Hassan Yussuff, secretary-treasurer of the Canadian Labour Congress.

The Canadian Labour Congress adds its voice to the ninety organizations that support the call of the Global Treatment Access Group (GTAG) and share their prescriptions about what Canada should do to halt the spread of HIV/AIDS.

“For years, Canadian workers and their unions have been on the frontlines of the fight to prevent the spread of the disease, to protect affected workers against discrimination and unemployment and to help develop strategies to make medical treatment accessible. At times, we have been able to count on the government to accompany our efforts. However, the government’s continuous withdrawal from these issues, over the last year, could end up defeating all we’ve accomplished.”

Continue reading the CLC statement on World AIDS Day at canadianlabour.ca

It has been three months since the XVI International AIDS Conference in Toronto and the Government of Canada has yet to announce its plans to combat the pandemic.

On August 18th, the day the conference closed, Health Minister Tony Clement promised the Government would act. He said: “Is there more to do? Yes there is and we’ll be announcing that in the near future.”

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Preamble

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.

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March 21, 1960 – there must have been excitement and fear that day as the residents of Sharpeville, South Africa gathered to peacefully protest the Apartheid “pass laws.” Imagine the courage each of the equity warriors demonstrated as they peacefully stood together against those that were familiar with using brutal violence to enforce racial injustice. Students and neighbours came together in a common commitment to seek change, to pursue equity, and to demand the elimination of racism within a country that had legitimized inequality.

It must have been an exhilarating dream.

Forty-six years ago, they stood together for this dream. Today, we remember their bravery. That day, sixty-nine black demonstrators were killed and 180 wounded by armed South African police, in what history records as the Sharpeville Massacre.

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