A message from UNA President Heather Smith:
Monday is Labour Day 2011 and the important work of Canadian unions is needed more than ever, now and in the future, by middle-class Albertans.
Public health insurance, public hospitals and health care, overtime pay, child labour laws, workers compensation, occupational health and safety legislation, employment insurance and fair pensions - not to mention long weekends like this one - are all among the things unions have worked hard and fought hard to bring to our society.
That's why, for those of us in the United Nurses of Alberta and throughout the labour movement, Labour Day is not just a long weekend, but a very serious occasion. We recognize the role of working people and their unions in creating our successful society in Alberta, and we see that the rights of working people and their families are under assault today more intensively than in generations.
Indeed, many of our fellow citizens are not aware of how vulnerable important laws and public services would be in if unions and their members did not continue to campaign actively and publicly to protect them.
Consider the constant lobbying by various corporate "think tanks" and large corporations to undermine Canada's system of public health care and replace it with an inefficient, expensive and unfair corporate model similar to that in the United States.
And consider the efforts of anti-union businesses and lobbying groups to take Alberta's already weak labour laws - which already make it hard for working people to join unions and provide only the barest protections for non-union workers and young people - and make them weaker still, or even overtly hostile to the rights of working people.
What happened in Wisconsin earlier this year is not just an oddity in a far-away U.S. state, but a trend throughout North America, Canada included, as powerful anti-union groups, individuals and corporations launch an all-out assault on the middle class and its hard-won historical rights.
This is why it's important for us in Alberta to remember on this Labour Day and all the ones that follow that unions are the most effective advocates of the rights of working people - including working people who have no union - and for the protection and enhancement of the fair and efficient public services such as health care that working Albertans deserve and expect.
We must never assume that our child labour laws, Workers Compensation, health insurance - or even our right to stay home for the occasional long weekend - would last long without active, committed union members determined to defend for all working people what unions have created.
That's why, in 2011, Albertans need their unions more than ever.
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