April 26, 2009
Our Social Justice Fund is reaching out around the globe
Six years after PSAC's Social Justice Fund (SJF) was created by the 2003 convention, the Fund is active and growing. Speaking at a pre-convention social justice panel presentation, National President John Gordon proudly announced that the latest contribution to the Fund had been negotiated by the PSAC/UNW. The agreement with the Government of the Northwest Territories will provide two cents per member per hour for the Fund.
Since its inception, the SJF has provided vital supplies and medical support in Pakistan, Gaza, Haiti and in South East Asia during the 2006 tsunami. In addition to emergency relief, the Fund is providing training for public sector unions in Nicaragua and South Africa to build union capacity and defend quality public services. At home, the SJF is active in anti-poverty initiatives that involve immigrant workers, Aboriginal and Inuit communities and injured and unemployed workers.
PSAC has participated in worker to worker exchanges and union-organized tours in the Philippines and Colombia, building strong alliances. According to Gordon, if there is an upside to globalization, it is that it has helped create a world wide social movement, banding together to fight the corporate agenda, to protect quality public services and work towards a sustainable economy and a just society.
Barbara Wood, the director of Co-Development Canada, moderated the panel and introduced the speakers from PSAC and international unions. “It's inspiring to hear the breadth of the PSAC Social Justice Fund,” she said after John Gordon's introduction to the session on Sunday. “Now we will hear the depth from people on the front lines.”
Global support for a local fight
The people of Andhra Pradesh, India have faced both a natural tsunami and what Chennaiah Poguri describes as the man-made version. The Secretary of the Union Federation of fisher harvesters, agricultural and forest workers thanked PSAC members for their support in helping rebuild communities after the tsumani in 2006. Our Social Justice Fund helped put 200 organizers into the field to assist indigenous people gain state recognition as fishers and receive government benefits. For the first time in tribal history, homes were built for and owned by women and the menfolk could no longer ignore or displace them!
Poguri calls the World Bank the man-made tsunami. In this case, the disaster was the privatization of the area ports, displacing thousands of people who were on the verge of becoming independent. One million post cards were sent to the Minister of Health, effectively stopping the privatization funding, at least temporarily. “Thanks to your help, local action goes global as support from across the world allows people to access their rights.”
Union-free zones
National Component President Daniel Kinsella presented his perspective as a labour activist on the conditions of workers that he met during last November's Canadian trade union tour to the Philippines.
“We spent time in the region south of Manila, the biggest area where the government created strike-free, union-free economic zones to entice big transnational corporations,” he said. “This has been a major challenge for workers in the Philippines.”
He added that what he saw and the workers he met during the tour made globalization — once an abstract idea for him — more concrete. “I saw the real situation of workers who make our shoes and clothes. If big companies succeed in those countries, we're next. This is why we need solidarity.”
Kinsella said he had enormous admiration for the courage and effort that labour and civil society activists possessed, especially those who faced violent repression and persecution for doing what Canadian labour activists do on a regular basis.
Mitigating losses
Mathapelo Mphuthi, the second deputy president of the Communication Workers Union, described the achievements of the SJF-funded project to organize a new sector of workers in South Africa. Her union had made organizing a priority in the wake of extreme membership losses due to the privatization of the telecommunications and postal industries.
“Ten years ago we had 47,000 members in the union,” she said. “Two years ago, we had 24,000 workers. This shows how privatization affected our unions.”
Their main target for organizing is call-centre workers, which present challenges due to the casual status and temporary nature of their employment. Another challenge has been the union-bashing tactics that the internationally owned call-centre companies have used against their organizing efforts.
Mphuthi continues to fight in the face of these challenges and says that the international solidarity extended by PSAC through the Social Justice Fund has been helpful. “One can say the contribution is little, but the effects are huge,” she said.
Rebuilding public services in Nicaragua
Nicaragua has fluctuated between dictatorships and revolutionary governments. Jacaranda Fernandez Mejia, a nurse, former head of the hospital workers union in Masaya and current National Labour Front leader, has seen the best and the worst. A reformed constitution, public utilities for all and public health care in the 80s were subsequently undermined by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in the 90s.
“It was a titanic struggle against the privatization of services, including health care, the post office and the banking system,” says Mejia.
Privatized education was supposed to be better but literacy rates went down. Public sector workers were portrayed as being a burden. While a new leftist government is now in place, the old structures remain. The National Labour Front has been successful in dismantling the privatization of health care by working closely with those most affected – the poor. According to Mejia, joining with civil society is crucial for success.
Promoting social justice at home
The final speaker on the panel was Laura Stannard, a Vancouver-based social housing activist, who pointed to government cuts to social programs, including social housing, as the main culprit behind the housing crisis and increase in homelessness and poverty in Canada.
“It's simple. If you cut the housing supply and cut income you get homelessness,” she said.
She says the challenge facing activists is to wake up Canadians without turning them off.
“The majority of Canadians believe we are still a moderate country,” she said. “Bush and Harper are neck and neck, or redneck and redneck, in every social issue, including medicare.”
However, she pointed to signs of improvement as she described the recent 3,000-strong Grand March for Housing, organized by the Citywide Housing Coalition. There, she saw PSAC and the United Church contingents converge and walk side-by-side during the March.
“Right there we had the labour of faith and the faith of labour,” she said.
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