President Stewart's speech to CLiFF
Good afternoon everyone.
I’m Sharleen Stewart, President of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1 Canada and SEIU’s International Canadian Vice-President.
At SEIU, our mission is to improve the lives of working people and their families.
We strive to lead the way to a more just and humane society by giving a voice to the voiceless, by organizing the unorganized, and by showing we are stronger together.
SEIU represents people who work in nursing homes, retirement homes, hospital wards and emergency rooms. We represent people who work in the community as home care workers or in office buildings and bank towers as office cleaners.
Of the 50,000-plus health-care workers we represent in Ontario, nearly 80 percent are women.
Together, we have accomplished important victories for the rights of working people in Canada.
We have paved the way for women to bargain for fair wages, improved working conditions, and a better life for their families.
We have fought tirelessly to end gender discrimination and bridge the wage gap between men and women, contributing to a 10 percent reduction in income disparity over the past 12 years.
I started organizing when I was 18 years old. First in supermarket chains, later in the hospital where I worked.
And I am proud to say all of our efforts combined have had results.
Unionized employees in Canada now make 22 percent more than their non-unionized colleagues.
For women, the union advantage is even more dramatic. Unionized women make a whopping 35 percent more than their non-unionized peers, with the additional benefit of better health and dental insurance, more sustainable pensions, and more secure jobs.
These gains for women who belong to unions provide firsthand proof of the collective power of women coming together to make a difference for their community, and for each other.
It shows us that progress is possible if we act together.
That is why SEIU is committed to extending representation to those left behind by the labour movement, to building a different kind of union, made for this century. Already, SEIU is the fastest growing union in Ontario, the fastest growing union in Canada, and the fastest growing union in North America.
But the battle is just beginning.
In the wake of the globalization, privatization and deregulation of our world’s labour market, multinational companies are gaining strength.
Increasingly around the world, women's incomes are shrinking, and their social safety nets are being dismantled, forcing them to live with greater insecurity.
On every continent and in virtually every country, we hear a similar story. Corporate power is on the rise, and working women and their families are suffering the results.
And make no mistake; it is women workers who are taking the brunt of corporate greed and discriminatory practices.
It’s a sad reality that not a single country in the world can claim to treat its female workforce with fairness and respect.
Not one of them provides women workers with the same pay, the same health benefits, the same retirement security and the same working hours as men.
Here in Canada, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, women continue to earn at least 20 percent less than their male counterparts – a figure that represents the fourth largest pay equity gap of the world’s most developed nations.
To put it plainly, that means the average Canadian woman is working one day of every week for free.
And in these times, there is no excuse for inaction.
With the popularization of online communication, social networking and global media, never before has our ability to connect and rally around a common cause been so great.
SEIU is committed to ensuring that the benefits of globalization are shared with workers and their families, not just the corporate elite.
We are building a 21st-century global union, partnering with labour and community organizations around the world to organize workers across borders and challenge multi-nationals to provide comparable protections.
I have recently returned from Colombia, where I attended a conference of women trade union activists. They were some of the bravest women I have ever met.
When women in Colombia sign a union card and stand up for themselves they not only risk losing their jobs and losing their livelihoods, they risk losing their lives.
Colombia is the most dangerous country in the world to be a trade union member.
More than 4,000 trade unionists have been killed in that country in recent decades, many of them women. Women like Zorayda Cortés López.
Zorayda was an art teacher in the Paisa region.
Loved by her students, adored by her family, Zorayda was shot dead for being a union member.
More than 195 members of Zorayda's union have been killed so far, without a single arrest, without a single conviction.
This year alone, more than 40 trade unionists have been murdered.
Despite this appalling record, Prime Minister Stephen Harper saw fit to agree to a free trade deal with Colombia's elite this summer.
Mr. Harper did not attach a single meaningful condition to protect human rights, protect women, or protect trade union members.
What he did do was give a green light to Canadian companies to move aggressively into a country where there are more than 5 million internally displaced people.
The vast majority of these internal refuges are women and children who have been driven from their homes, driven from their villages and forced to flee.
They are now living in tents and shacks on mountainsides and in valleys, by the hundreds of thousands, surviving by sticking together.
More than 70 percent of people in Colombia are in precarious employment.
And what happens to those few women from Colombia who land here in Canada?
What do they face here?
They face night shifts in bank towers as cleaners, or in seniors' homes as care aides, working for companies that deny them minimum wage.
Companies that prey on them because they think they're vulnerable, that threaten them with deportation or put them out in the street if they speak up.
These are the women who make up SEIU.
Women from Colombia, from Turkey, from China, from Pakistan.
Women like the ones you will see in these films.
Women who bring to our movement, to our country, their experiences of resistance, of organizing, and of building communities against incredible odds.
Women who bring their experiences of fighting, and of winning.
Today we’ll hear from women like them, women from around the world, women of courage, women who have a lot to teach us.
They come from all corners of the globe, and yet they share one thing in common: a desire for change.
It is thanks to the Canadian Labour International Film Festival that we will hear their stories.
I am honoured to be a part of this inspirational event and to be able to introduce these films.
The women you see today will show you the power of solidarity in their own countries.
I encourage you to bring the spirit of these courageous women into your own lives with a renewed understanding that we are, in fact, stronger together.
Thank you.