Spotlight Interview with Ken Georgetti

Spotlight Interview with Ken Georgetti, President of the Canadian Labour
Congress and Chairperson of the Global Unions Committee on Workers'
Capital

CLC Canada: Tackling Inequality

Brussels, 12 March 2007: As in many countries, the Canadian trade union
movement is putting the spotlight on the growing gap between rich and
poor, including the fact that many workers simply don't earn enough for
a decent life. Ken Georgetti, President of the Canadian Labour
Congress, explains.

Stagnating wages, especially for the lowest paid, are now a global
problem. The CLC's annual report card for 2006 is titled "Is your work
working for you". What does this report card show?

It shows that wages are indeed stagnating and the quality of jobs is
deteriorating. From 2005 to 2006, the number of workers on poverty
wages increased by 1.5 % with around 12% of workers earning at or below
the poverty line. Canada has an economy that the business side is
saying is a booming economy. We have also been experiencing "jobless
growth" and an increase in precarious employment. People who are losing
their jobs in the manufacturing sector can expect a minimum of a 17%
drop in their wages as they find new jobs, if they find them. People
who are in the workforce are earning less, and people coming into the
workforce are coming into precarious jobs that don't pay enough. A lot
of part-time, temporary and very low paid jobs compared to previous
generations of workers.

What is the CLC actually calling for concerning the minimum wage?

We are calling for a Federal minimum wage of C$10 (Euros 6.5) per hour,
in the economic sectors regulated by the federal governments (for
example: banking, telecommunications, airlines.) Currently, there is no
federally-set minimum wage - the rates are set by the individual
provinces. We are also campaigning in each provinces to get it set at
C$10 per hour. There are big disparities between provinces, with a
difference of $3.50 from the lowest to the highest. No province has a
C$10 per hour minimum wage, which is the minimum a single person,
working full time for a whole year, needs to be avoid poverty as it is
defined by official statistics.

Is the gender wage gap in Canada closing?

We were making some progress on the gender wage gap, but we lost it all
largely due to the skyrocketing salaries at the top end of the scale
which are mostly men. Women's wages are basically stagnant at 83% of
men's overall. Neither the Federal or Provincial governments are doing
anything about that. We are pushing for federal pay equity
formulations, but this very right-wing government is extremely reluctant
to do anything about it.

How are young workers faring in Canada - can they get decent jobs, and
are they joining unions?

Their earnings a lower than a generation ago. They mainly find
themselves stuck in precarious work, work that is not full-time, not
fulfilling. With Canada's programs to increase tuition fees, they are
coming out of universities and colleges with crippling debt, so with low
wages they are a long way from retiring that debt, and getting into
buying houses and other goods that would actually help our economy.
Young people are not being organized into unions at the same rate as
older workers. The smaller workplaces that they work in are very
difficult to organize, so it is difficult for them to get better wages.
They also tend to feel that the union movement is "my father's and
mother's, not mine". One means to approach this is work we are doing in
a couple of jurisdictions where we have NDP* governments to pilot a
sectoral bargaining model, where once a certain number of collective
agreements are established in a sector, new workers coming into the
sector would automatically be covered. There is a huge union advantage
across the workforce in Canada. Union members earn on average about C$5
per hour more than non-members, and 85% of unionized workers are covered
by benefit and pension plans, whereas for non-union workers, about 45%
have benefit plans and about 18% have pensions.

Why aren't people beating down the doors of unions to join then?

Well, in a way, they are. A third of non-union workers would join
unions if they had a chance and they weren't afraid of reprisals from
their employer. In Canada, the only Constitutional right that people
will only exercise in secret is signing a union card! There is a very
real fear of losing your job if you join a union. One clear example is
that we organized three Wal Mart stores, and when we went to start
bargaining, the company just closed down the stores, so this intimidates
all Wal Mart employees. And it takes months and months to get through
the tribunal system or the courts, and the employers exploit that. We
need a "card check" system with just a simple majority of workers having
a union card required to get certification - even in Manitoba, an NDP
Province, unions need to get 65% membership sign-up before they can get
certification.

We have also been working to get a Bill passed in parliament to ban
employers bringing in replacement workers during strikes. We have been
hopeful of getting this through, but now it looks like there may be
another election, so we don't know if it will get through after all.

Taxation is also a key issue. What does the CLC want to change about
the tax system in your country?

It's ironic that the highest rate of taxation on earnings is on "sweat"
- those who work for wages are taxed on all of it, but if you trade
stocks, one-half is taxed, and if you get dividends, only a third. We
think we need tax fairness - income is income and people should be taxed
on the basis of their income, in a consistent and fair way. But it's
not easy to get this message across to the public. Our major newspapers
in Canada are all owned by the same person, and they won't cover this
issue. Although the French-speaking media in Quebec is a bit better.

You are Chairperson of the ITUC Workers' Capital Committee. What role
can union-linked pension funds play in promoting fairness and equity?

Pension funds play a significant role in the world's stock exchanges.
We think there need to be rules about disclosure of how pension managers
are voting - we have a campaign in North America with the US union
movement to change corporate law so that shareholders can actually
nominate directors for the Boards of Directors, and we need to hold the
Boards much more accountable in the way they compensate their
executives, pay dividends to shareholders and how they treat the
environment and their employees. We need a more activist approach not
just to the benefits, but also to the way money is managed. Creating
these big pools of capital and then making them available to people who
work against our interests, such as private equity funds, is contrary to
my way of thinking.

The ITUC was created a few months ago. How can the ITUC be more
effective in working with its national affiliates on issues such as
tackling inequality, or dealing with capital markets?

The main thing is to decide on campaigns and actions and to stick to
them, stay the course for the longer term. In Canada, a measure of
success would be to have one workplace issue become a vote-determining
issue in an election. Organising and collective bargaining are the core.
Let's remember, we have the largest democratic network in the world,
with reach, depth and breadth, and we need to utilise that capacity a
lot more.

Interview by Tim Noonan

*NDP: New Democratic Party

Ends

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