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In just five months, Unifor has emerged as much more than the sum of its parts, National Secretary-Treasurer Peter Kennedy says.
“Years from now, historians will be trying to figure out how we pulled this off,” Kennedy told delegates to Unifor’s BC Regional Council meeting.
Unifor was founded, and has redefined the labour movement in Canada, thanks to the incredible level of engagement with members and local leaders, building links and networks to amplify the voice of working people since the beginning of the new union process.
Over two years, he said, there were more than 60 leadership meetings, bringing more than 4,000 leaders together – first to lay the ground work for Unifor and since the founding convention to define Unifor and its priorities.
On top of that, there have been regional councils in Ontario and BC already, with more to come in the Prairies, Quebec and Atlantic provinces, plus sector meetings, the current leadership tour setting up the spring Rights at Work campaign and the Canada Council and Good Jobs Summit in the fall.
On top of that, there are nearly constant education programs bringing together smaller groups of members around a common interest, he said.
That level of engagement is why Unifor has been able to redefine the labour movement in Canada and is today challenging the conservative orthodoxy of diminished expectations, he said.
Bringing 6,000 Toyota workers into Unifor will be a watershed moment for this new union, and the labour movement as a whole, he said.
“It’s going to have an impact well beyond Unifor,” he said, saying a successful organizing drive will strike a blow to the right-wing anti-union movement in Canada by showing that working people in this country support unions as a force of good.
“There is no democracy without a union in the workplace,” he said.
