Alberta Federation of Labour President Gil McGowan speaks at the 2010 UNA Annual General Meeting.
Unions have never been more relevant to public life, Alberta Federation of Labour President Gil McGowan told nurses at UNA’s provincial AGM. As an example he pointed to UNA and labour’s support for public medicare.
“This isn’t just a passing fancy,” McGowan said. “It was the labour movement that was there at the founding of medicare. More recently it’s been the labour movement that has played a leading role in stopping attempts to privatize health care. These are not battles out of a dusty history book. These battles continue today and will continue tomorrow.”
McGowan drew attention to a motion going to the next weekend’s Progressive Conservative policy convention to make it more difficult "for unions to spend money on politics, and public advocacy – [unions] need to stick to their knitting.”
This is, McGowan said, “kind of a back-handed compliment… they usually say we are ineffective, outdated and irrelevant… but the real reasons they want to shut us down and muzzle us is because we HAVE been effective.”
Pensions in crisis, Morton says don’t change
A top issue unions need to tackle, McGowan says, is improving pensions. Only 18 percent of Albertans have employment pension plans and most Albertans are retiring with an average of $60,000 in savings.
Eight of Canada’s province’s are on board with the Canadian Labour Congress and unions’ proposal to make a major boost in the Canada Pension Plan to head off a looming tidal wave of seniors living in poverty. But Alberta’s finance Minister Ted Morton denies there is a problem, McGowan said. “Our province is the only province putting up a roadblock to reform.”
A national pension summit is coming up in the province November 27 and McGowan announced plans for the labour movement to put pressure on the Alberta government on pensions before that.
No reason for Alberta to be talking about freezes cuts and austerity
“Alberta remains one of the strongest economies in the world,” Gil McGowan told nurses. “Our economy is 75% bigger than every other province, on a per person basis…yet we spend about the same as other provinces on average on public services… even though our ability to pay is well above every other province,” he said.
But, he pointed out, the Alberta government uses the global economic difficulties as a pretext for cutting public services.
“All this talk about how we can no longer afford education, health care, universities…. is not borne out by the facts. We are being sold a bill of goods.”
“The last provincial budget was NOT a return to Klein-style cuts, we were successful in preventing that.”
But, McGowan said, the battle over providing good health care, education and public supports for Alberta families, will continue, and unions need to be there taking part.
“Alberta is a more democratic place, because unions level the playing field. Alberta is a better place for the work we do.” |
