Canada's workers rise up! w/Emily Leedham

foreign I'm a senior reporter with press progress we're a progressive News website in based in Canada and I cover the Prairies Manitoba and Saskatchewan in the middle of the country but I also covered labor and I have a Weekly Newsletter called shift work which provides a Roundup of all the strikes and lockouts across the country the only place you can find a list like this as

well as a Roundup of the labor news from across Canada so it's looking at mainstream local sources and independent news sources to see what's happening across the country so it really gives you a snapshot of what's happening in the Canadian labor movement once a week hell yeah well Emily thank you so much for sitting down and chatting with us at the real News Network we are

obviously here in Montreal at the Action Network 10th in the 30th Constitutional Convention of the Canadian labor Congress and you know the real News is here to sort of talk to as many folks as we can to learn as much as we can about what working people across Canada are going through fighting for what the state of the organized labor movement is in Canada and like

you're the one that I normally go to to sort of like get that pulse read so like first I just wanted to say big fan of your work and everyone watching and listening to this should go check it out um we've actually been fortunate enough to have you on the real news so we've we've republished a couple of your great pieces for press progress and you

were on my colleague Mark Steiner's show yeah it's great to finally meet in person I wanted to just sort of start there as someone who is doing this important labor reporting weekend week out I was wondering if you could just sort of like sort of like set the scene for people watching and listening like what crucial stories have you been focusing on over say like the

past year because there have been some pretty explosive stories in Canadian labor but what have you been focusing on yeah definitely I mean the interesting thing is you know um coming out of the pandemic is obviously like a really really hard time for labor a hard time for workers um you know a lot of stress about you know what is labor doing what are what are

workers going to do and what we're seeing right now is it's been a couple years and a lot of this organizing has been happening behind the scenes you haven't always been seeing it but workers have been frustrated they've been agitating and we're starting to see that coming to the surface we saw that with the education workers uh just last year they went on an illegal one-day

strike they divide um you know legislation that would impose a Collective Agreement on them and ban the right to strike and they defied that legislation and they got it repealed in Ontario the conservative Premier you know back down and that was a really big moment right now we also saw the national strike of 155 public sector workers across the country this is the first big strike

like this in uh 30 years since 1991 was the last time there was a strike of this magnitude it's like 155 000 workers across the country right yeah yeah so they were 250 picket lines across Canada so they did strategic so they weren't all out at once but they were kind of doing rotating strikes strategic strikes but it was um you know 155 000 workers that

were in those bargaining units that were represented in the strike and it was like bookkeepers ships Crews people in lighthouses I talked to some Lighthouse workers it was so interesting just a wide spectrum of workers but a lot of them were women women of color a lot of them making uh forty thousand to sixty thousand dollars a year and they were on strike over wanting higher

wages and uh remote work policies um and this is not typically thought of as a militant Union so it was a surprise to a lot of people that this strike actually happened because I was watching the strike votes happen a lot of times unions will take a strike vote as a a bargaining chip in itself right like we have this in our pocket um but then

to actually do the next step and go on strike that was a really big moment so for the past two weeks we covered the strike barely uh fairly regularly and it was very fascinating because a lot of the workers were on strike for the first time and a lot of them were learning what their Union is and what their Union does and is very transformational moment

and so they were able to win some wage increases some improvements to remote work there's a bit of debate you know could they have got more should they've got more there are ratification votes are about to happen um but what I've heard from the a lot of activists is that this is a transformational moment that will impact the union for years to come because now you

have people engaged in their Union debating stuff within their Union you know wondering how can we get more um and that's something to build on is what was what they have right now so that's really been a really interesting moment another thing about that strike is that it's very political because the employers like the federal government right and so you had the three major Labor uh

three major parties the Liberals conservatives and the NDP um all they portray themselves as like the friends to workers they don't want to be coming across as like anti-worker anti-labor which is very interesting watching them how they navigated it and it was quite an unusual precedent for this kind of uh for this kind of moment so you can really see that you know workers issues are

at the Forefront of a lot of political leaders a lot of reporters as well and uh so yeah it's very interesting time to be watching labor right now yeah I would say so um because uh you mentioned the the Ontario Educators strike like that was that was pretty like badass right I mean like defying Doug Ford's uh Draconian attempts to strip like basically kind of do

what Joe Biden did with the railroad workers right like force them back to work force a deal down their throats um and you even like for us in the states watching this massive Federal Public Service workers strike yeah it was like well I guess that's why the US government doesn't let us do that right so like this is why Ronald Reagan was able to fire all

the air traffic controllers in the 80s right because like federal workers in the United States don't have that legal right um and you know it's it's just incredible to look northward and see the strength that that many workers taking Collective action has and the interesting like you said dynamics that it creates within the different parties and across the labor scene when the employer the boss is

the government yeah because then we would um there would be talk about Back To Work legislation because they are federal workers right and they provide a lot of really essential Services um but the fact that that wasn't nobody overtly like called for Back To Work legislation um and it became very clear early on that like the government wouldn't move in that direction because it would look

so negatively you know on them to be so oppositional to workers whereas before that the conversation might have been different because other workers have been legislated back to work postal workers just a few years ago before the the pandemic happened so things have really shifted a lot and I think the fact that we didn't see the government or any politicians even the conservative ones who normally

do not like unions they had to watch what they said as well so I think that really shows that there is a moment to be taken advantage of for workers and unions right now that politicians want to be seen as accusing them well let's talk about that real quick it's like I again as someone who does such great essential reporting week in week out you're talking

to like you said Lighthouse workers uh you know clerks and and so many folks across the labor Spectrum I was wondering like kind of what's your like what you're hearing from these different groups of workers that like like what's your impression of the key issues that workers are struggling with and fighting against in Canada I mean costs we're all in the midst of a cost of

living crisis I mean this is why we're seeing strikes by workers all over the place in the United Kingdom France Belgium the states right so like I know that that's a key issue but I was wondering if you could say a bit about um kind of what you're hearing from folks as the really galvanizing issues for workers and how the labor movement such that it is

is responding to those yeah definitely well like you just said like cost of living people are recognizing that you know oh like my union is a place where I can actually engage and I can we can bargain we can do cost of living adjustments put those into Collective agreements there's talk about you know incorporating that more into into negotiations and I cover you know strikes and

lockouts across Canada wages wages Wages that's like the number one issue that people are striking over right now and I think we're going to see even more strikes um who's talking to some labor leaders at a conference as well and they're like yeah this is the tip of the iceberg like our members are upset there's and they're ready you know um and the another main issue

is um migrant workers in Canada as well um as there's like a employers are talking about like oh there's a labor crisis labor shortage you know they they don't want to they don't want to pay for good jobs so they're saying you know we get to have in the states too nobody wants to work it's like well yeah maybe increase your your wages your working conditions

there is a movement right now of Migrant workers that is organizing to really push this forward and make sure that when they come up with this regularization program it is expansive and covers all workers across Canada and that is a really crucial moment because if migrant workers are able to you know have Union uh or have employment rights the same as any other workers that means

they can join a union that means they can organize that means they don't have to be scared that they'll be deported for even like going to a know your right session or anything like that and so that will really strengthen the labor movement overall if we have all these workers that are able to you know be here and fight and organize so that's something that's on

the horizon and hopefully we'll get pushed through this year so that's something really important to keep an eye on definitely and just a quick kind of follow-up on that have you seen like the organized labor movement the established unions like have they been part of that push have they been receptive to it driving in yeah there's been some definitely who have been supportive of the movement

um um but you know there's a bit of a disconnect for sure because some unions can be very insular and just like we want to secure improvements for our members and they don't really step back and they take a big picture like look at it um even working with other unions or non-unionized workers much less migrant workers right so it definitely is a mixed bag there

is a lot of support um for the migrant worker movement but it is really like led by independent organizers um outside of the union movement and yeah so any support that institutionalized labor can throw to behind that I think will really benefit everyone in general you know you lift like the most exploited workers up and it lifts everyone up well and I think like it's also

really important like for folks watching and listening to this to not just assume that the Dynamics that are true in the states automatically translate to what's going on in Canada right I mean like that's the same we can say the same for any country right but I know there's a 10 agency to sort of assume that like basically Canada is like going through the same stuff

that we are so there's a one-to-one comparison the reason I ask that is or say that is because I was wanted to ask quickly if like the public has been behind um these labor mobilizations because I think um that's been a an important factor in the states unions have not been popular for most of my lifetime yeah and now kind of suddenly they are more favorable

in the Public's estimation than they've been in decades is that is that are you seeing something similar here in the in Canada yeah I think the tide is definitely shifting for sure um there's been the big Starbucks Union Drive in the states and she's been so amazing we've seen a bit of that spillover here we've had um some locations Starbucks locations unionized which is so great

I mean even just a few years ago like I was in the 5315 movement and the talk about like unionizing franchises it was like oh it's so hard so you know it's just like look it's happening it's not impossible right um so that has been happening here um in the psac public Sector Strike it was really interesting because there's kind of a dichotomy between public and

private sector unions and like the conservatives and the right-wing movement business Lobby movement they kind of tried to divide workers along those lines and say these are government workers they're making so much money um they're just like bloated you know big government and they use that as an excuse to you know erode the labor rights and to drive down wages so that was really interesting to

see during the federal strike there was a poll done and there was support for the for the workers there was like um you know quite a lot of people understood kind of what they were what they were fighting for and there was uh I think you know like 60 like support across the board for for the workers so you know it was higher than would be

expected for for federal public sector workers especially since you really we did have like the business Lobby going hard to try to like demonize these workers and be like they're just like asking for too much basically so um I think the tide is Shifting for sure oh yeah well and on that note I wanted to sort of ask uh before I let you go about the

role that media is playing in that um and kind of like what the state of the labor beats is in Canada I mean the U.S it's not great I mean like we used to have way more local newspapers uh it was a staple of most newspapers to have a designated labor reporter back in the day um and with the kind of gradual and not so gradual

kind of collapse of the media industry in the digital age a lot of those beats were axed a lot of those papers have been shuttered and it was looking really dismal until quite recently like so we've had a bit of a Resurgence of the labor B yeah mainly driven by Freelancers and independent uh Outlets so I mean great folks like Kim Kelly uh Sarah Jaffe Michelle

Chan Luis Felice Leon labor notes in these times I'll see the real news like we're doing the best we can but we've got a long way to go and so I wanted to ask like uh what does the sort of media the labor media landscape look like here in Canada and what role do you see um your work and and press progress kind of playing in

the the movement that we're talking about here yeah definitely it's been kind of the same here where there wasn't a lot of Labor reporting for a while but because of the pandemic like every story became a labor story and so a lot of the mainstream you know reporters like were just forced to cover labor and for us to learn about Labor and talk to workers talk

to unions so you definitely saw them or surgeons there we've had there's a reporter of the Globe and Mail one of the big newspapers um she was a business reporter and she basically turned her position into a labor reporter because she's like this is a crucial moment we're not talking to the right people we need to be talking to the workers so I think that was

like so great um there's another labor reporter in the NBC a brand new position at the Thai and so it is kind of having a Resurgence and in Progressive media as well Independent Media but of course the state of the news industry in general has been very stressful and that impacts of course the kind of work that you can do so the scope and the quality

of the kind of reporting that you can do so yeah you have this kind of like rise of a labor reporting but then also just like the conditions of the news industry kind of keep getting worse yeah so for us at press progress um one thing that I've been trying to do with with shift work is really highlight labor journalism this is what I tell we

do labor internships we've had interns that we bring on Into Summer and we teach them how to do labor reporting oh yeah it's so exciting and what I've been saying is um you have to be an advocate for the debate as well you have to learn about the labor movement do these stories but you have to learn how to fight for these stories and fight for

the beat itself because that's gonna be how it's built is by journalists like pushing it forward so I'm really excited about that and that's what I'm trying to do at press progress with the shiftwork newsletter and covering the strikes and lockouts that we do um I'd like to yeah build up labor reporting more at press progress oh yeah well we stand in solidarity with y'all we

love to keep collaborating and supporting that important work and in that vein I just wanted to close by asking uh give us some plugs where can people find you and follow your work yeah so press progress.ca slash that's where you can go some for the newsletter find all of our reporting we report on you know right-wing political movements business lobbyists um you know political uh political

movements but then we have our own all of our labor reporting there as well um and then you can find me on Twitter just look me up at Emily leadham on Instagram as well and uh yeah that's where you can find me oh yeah thanks so much for having me on as well it's always really great to talk to you and be connected to um you

know outlets in the states as well like you said a lot of the labor reporting I've learned from people in the states we've been pushing it forward as well that's been a real inspiration for me in learning how to do it here so thank you oh yeah right back at you thanks so much for sitting down with us Emily thank you so much for watching The

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