I would like to thank all those who participated in the four leafleting days on the Saturdays at city locations of “It's All On The Line” campaign information. So successful that we had to order more leaflets and they are all gone too. Thanks to Judy Holsgrove for organizing a couple of days and Gloria Morris for the last day January 6th. Special thanks to our community partner members who were out in force all of the weekends. The legislation was passed last December however will not be legalized by royal assent until spring. Until then employers cannot put these draconian changes into effect.

The “It's All On The Line Campaign” is shifting into a workplace campaign to encourage agreement with employers to uphold the collective bargaining process by getting employers to sign agreements to uphold the bargaining process. Ontario's unions plan a province-wide work-to-rule campaign to protest the legislation by being more meticulous to enforce every single rule that is in place to illustrate to employers their responsibilities and the joint cooperation in the workplace that unions usually bring. Companies must be shown that unions are good for productivity and safety in their workplaces.

Our Labour's Voice in The Community cable TV welcomes Gavin Anderson as the new host tonight as we thank Marc Bishof for an excellent job over the past few years. Marc has taken a six-month leave and is out in western Canada. Today's shows featured Ron Waring, outreach coordinator, with the Occupational Health Clinic for Ontario Workers (OHCOW), talking about cancer and repetitive strain injuries and indoor air quality, current topics that are at the forefront of workers health problems in Ontario. The second show will feature Ken Wynn, president of the Injured Workers Support Network of Kingston and Area. Ken talked about the startup of their new organization and what they have to offer to injured workers in the Kingston area this year in terms of programs and events.

We welcome to tonight's meeting several new delegates. We have had four building trades unions affiliate in the past month and Cupe local 109 (city workers) and CUPE local 1974 (KGH) affiliated this week. We welcome more than 2500 new members with the recent affiliations. We will be talking to a number of other unions about joining our council in the weeks ahead.

We gave a number of awards at the last meeting to both council and community members. We also have an award for Health & Safety activist of the year to Bonnie Smith from CUPE local 1302 at Queens. Congratulations to Honorary Kingston Labour Council Life Members: Oliver Doyle, John Smith, Vince Maloney, and Judy Holsgrove. Also on our community side we recognized the special contribution over the past year of Doug Carey, Beth Pater, Sister Pauline Lally, Karl Flecker, and Nancy York. Remember our yearly elections for executive officers tonight and we hope we have lots of interest for those executive positions. Good luck to all candidates.

As always,
In solidarity,

Peter J. Boyle
BACK