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Waterloo Region Record
Sat Aug 31 2013
Byline: Marc Xuereb
Is Labour Day an anachronism in 21st-century Canada? Many pundits and politicians would have us think so.
But the cry of society’s powerful to diminish the strength of unions is not new, and we need unions to be champions of fairness today as much as ever.
In 1886, eight years before labour day was officially recognized as a Canadian holiday, the Toronto Globe declared “unions have outlived their usefulness.” Given that unions were still then illegal in much of North America and were fighting for a 58-hour work week, we can see that quote for what it was: an argument of society’s powerful to hold on to what they had. It wasn’t true then, and it’s not true now.
Inequality today is at its most extreme levels since the Great Depression. Average wages have stagnated in real terms since the 1980s. A report by McMaster University and United Way Toronto released in February this year found that 50 per cent of workers in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton areas rely on part-time, low-wage, or contract employment with no job security or benefits.[more]
