Labour Day is a Call to Action

Labour Day is a Call to Action

President’s Message: Shawn Haggerty

The Labour Movement is about making sure the many voices of working people get heard by those that seek to dictate working conditions to those very workers. Employers rely on your work. Without employees, there is no profit.

Labour Day, to me, is not a holiday. It’s not a long weekend. It’s a day to take to the streets and parks with your community and family. It’s an opportunity to reconnect humanity to work.

How often do we think about how our livelihoods are connected to the rest of the workforce, the economy, and the Labour movement? Labour Day lets us see the faces of our family, friends, and neighbours behind the work.

Whether sharing food at a BBQ or picnic, watching your children play together at one of the many celebrations, or walking shoulder to shoulder as you march through your city and town with Union pride: Labour Day is about the strength and commonality found in our communities.

We need to remind ourselves that there are families affected by unemployment and job cuts. There are mothers and fathers behind those precarious, low-paying jobs. There are teenagers – our children – whose health and safety is on the line every day because of poor training and employers who exploit their newness to the working world.

Unions seek to bring back the humanity in day-to-day work and give working people a voice in how to make that happen.

The Labour Movement strives to make sure that all work is decent.

Decent means respecting the worth of the person providing the labour, service, and experience to an employer.

Because, all work has value.

Labour Day celebrates the achievements and gains made through the hard work, unity and strength of working people just like you. We can show our strength and commitment to workers’ rights through our participation in events to mark the day, and by raising up other workers throughout the rest of the year.

That means pointing out inequalities when you see them. It means supporting the causes of other working people in their fight to achieve decent wages, benefits, hours, and more. It means recognizing the value of your Union family and the Labour community.

Building community is the driving force behind organizing campaigns:

Bringing people together with similar concerns, facing the same challenges at work, at the mercy of the same boss. The only way an organizing drive succeeds, is if those workers unite.

Relying on each other and the strength of solidarity is what helps bring new members to our Union time and time again. It’s what helped achieve success for the members at Bayfield Manor and Dr. Oetker’s. You can read more about those two victories for workers on page 7.

A sense of community brings worth to its members. Feeling worth and pride in what you do is valuable to your well-being.

Every single thing we buy, use, live in, drive in, take as transit, wear, eat, watch, or otherwise consume in any number of ways, is produced by the hands of working people in some way.

Let Labour Day remind us of the blood, sweat, and muscle of the people behind the products, and let’s celebrate the value of all that work and the humanity behind it.

In Solidarity, Shawn Haggerty