Unfortunately I am unable to attend tonight as the Day of Action steering committee is meeting at the headquarters. Our labour council has been extremely busy since we last met. The Day of Mourning ceremony was a very successful, well attended event. The poster contest received a nice amount of media coverage and the street banner hung across Princess Street for the whole week. Debbie Scrivens and the rest of our committee deserve our gratitude for a job well done.

The satellite Occupational Clinics for Ontario Workers (OCOW) clinic will be having a grand opening on May 26th and will be a blessing for workers who have been affected by occupational disease or illness who will no longer be inconvenienced travelling to Toronto for appointments with clinic doctors. This is a perfect fit with the clinic being located at the Greater Kingston Area Injured Workers Association site. Ron Wharing from the clinic will speak to the delegates at tonight's meeting after he tapes the Labour's Voice television show.

The council was successful in securing a summer student placement and the student will commence work on June 6th. The project will involve developing a plan for community economic development in regards to twinning Kingston with Zaragossa in El Salvador.

On behalf of the Labour Council I wish to thank those delegates who have been actively supporting the strikes at Pathways and Kingston Dodge Chrysler. The strike committee sponsored a BBQ for the picketers and their families with a large number of participants.

Natalie Mehra and I taped a Labour's Voice in the Community television show to highlight the issues surrounding the Day of Action on June 8th; this follows up the earlier show with two members of our community.

The Kingston Day of Action is starting to shape up nicely. The headquarters at 400 Elliot Avenue is full of activity with both staff and volunteers spending long hours on our behalf. The march route has been set and special events are being organized to ensure a wide variety of issues are highlighted each day of the week leading up to June 8th. Anyone who would like to volunteer some time or receive more information about the Day of Protest please feel free to drop in to the headquarters at any time.

As always,
In solidarity,

Charlie Stock
BACK