FOR IMEDIATE RELEASE: August 31st, 2000

KINGSTON LABOUR COUNCIL CELEBRATES THE DAY SET ASIDE 106 YEARS AGO TO HONOR THOSE WHO LABOUR

Kingston: Labour Day 2000 in Kingston will see more than the local community celebrating a tradition established more than 128 years ago in Canada and enacted as a Canadian national holiday 106 years ago. With the motto this year “In the celebration of working together for a stronger community” the Kingston & District Labour Council will highlight the strength of our connection with the United Way in our community for the well being of all.

The event being held at Lake Ontario Park, on King St. in Kingston, begins at noon and runs to 4 PM, with the park open until 8 P.M. Future workers will be in for a treat with many activities planned for the next generation of labour. Free park rides to the first few hundred kids, arts and crafts, an interactive clown workshop, magic tricks in a special performance by Gesser The Great Jr., and balloons and face painting round out the act ivies for the younger set.

A BBQ picnic lunch and refreshments with live music by local area artists “The Dunn's” and community information booths all under a large tent will keep the present day “labourers” entertained. The day is billed, as a “Pay What You Can Event” where all proceeds will go to the United Way for agency work within our community.

“While the rights and freedoms enshrined in our society from the past sacrifices of generations of women and men are under attack today in Ontario, we must continue the struggled to make life better for all who labour” said Peter Boyle, President of the Kingston Labour Council. “We find the need to protect and enhance those rights and freedoms just as great today as it was a hundred years ago.”

Besides being a time for celebration it will also be a time for reflection. The day will allow union members locally from all unions time to look back and remember past generations who founded and built our labour movement, and a time to look forward to the young people who will expand and advance it.

“Times have changed but issues such as globalization has clearly widened and sharpened the opposing philosophies and programs of capital and labour. Business and their pet governments have their agenda. And we have ours.” Said Ken Georgetti, President of the Canadian Labour Congress. He added, “Theirs is an agenda based on the economic survival of the fittest. Ours is rooted in the well being of family and community.

Monday September 4, 2000 will kick off a new century of celebration for working men and women in a tradition established in Canada more than 128 years age when the struggle began to remove the laws of the day making membership in a union in Canada a crime.