Greetings,

Unifor members employed by GreenShield Canada (GSC) are on strike and need your support!

Our GSC members at Local 240 in Windsor and Local 673 in Toronto began strike action on March 1 and are active on picket lines in both cities.

The Local 673 Toronto unit is a small one with fewer than 25 members and they need your solidarity to help maintain a strong presence on the picket line.

Please make every effort to join them during these shifts.

What: Support on Local 673 Toronto picket line
When: Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Where: 5140 Yonge St, Toronto, ON M2N 6L7

Please contact Unifor National Representative Kat Leonard for more information.

Thank you for your help in this fight. 

In solidarity,

Lana Payne                                        Samia Hashi
National President                           Ontario Regional Director

Order your T-shirt by Wednesday, March 13, 2024 Noon:

https://www.unifor112.ca/2024-mha-tshirt/

Mental health impacts all of us. In any given year, 1 in 5 Canadians experiences a mental illness. By the time Canadians reach 40 years of age, 1 in 2 have – or have had – a mental illness.
Mental health should not be talked about just on campaign awareness days. We need to continue the conversations, continue to challenge stigma, educate our members and support members that may be struggling.
The Ontario Regional Council (ORC) Employee & Family Assistance Program (EFAP) Standing Committee is working to raise awareness of the importance of mental health, both on the job and in our personal lives, and to eliminate the stigma surrounding mental health.
Show your support by purchasing and wearing an “End the Stigma, Mental Health Matters” t-shirt.

Hand-in-hand with awareness is access to information on prevention.

No workplace is immune from mental injury hazard. That is why our definition of occupational health and safety cannot be limited to the physical well-being only – it must include mental well-being as well.

With most adults spending more of their waking hours at workplace than anywhere else, addressing issues of mental health on the job is crucially important.

Together, we must keep this responsibility to ourselves and our co-workers in mind during any work activity.

Ensuring a psychologically healthy workplace (a workplace that promotes workers’ psychological well-being and actively works to prevent harm to worker psychological health) is a key function of Occupational Health and Safety Committees (OHSC).

Just like any other hazard at workplace, OHS Committees need to recognize, assess, control, evaluate, review, adjust, monitor and maintain the program.

OHSC’s need to use the National Standard of Canada for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace (the Standard) which identifies psychosocial risk factors (workplace factors).

No Unifor member is alone. You can access information on mental health or addiction and substance abuse here.

Additional Resources:

Mental Health Commission of Canada

• An Action Guide for Employers
• Mental Health First Aid

Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers (OHCOW)

• Mental Injury Prevention Tools – Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ)
• StressAssess.ca – Workplace and Personal Editions (COPSOQ III, Canadian data)

In solidarity,

Samia Hashi
Ontario Regional Director

November 29, 2023

Unifor marks December 6, the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. On this day, we solemnly remember the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre when 14 women were killed on their Montreal campus, and all lives tragically lost to gender-based violence, and we recommit to the ongoing battle against this pervasive and deeply unjust violence.

Violence against women is not an issue that affects women alone; it is a deeply entrenched societal problem that demands collective action and staunch commitment. We understand the fight for gender equality and the eradication of violence against women are interconnected struggles, and they are at the heart of the work within our union.

Unifor is recognized internationally for its Women’s Advocate program that educates members to be a source of support for colleagues facing harassment or violence. Having a Women’s Advocate in the workplace can be lifesaving for members who are seeking help and protection. If you do not have a Women’s Advocate in your workplace, consider making it a priority at the bargaining table and discuss this with your fellow members.

We must never relent in our efforts to challenge the systems that perpetuate gender-based violence. It is crucial that we call for and actively work towards the implementation of policies and practices that ensure the safety, respect, and equitable treatment of all individuals, irrespective of their gender.

We urge all members of Unifor to join us in the critical endeavor to end violence against women. Together, we have the power to create a world where no woman lives in fear, where every woman’s dignity is respected, and where gender-based violence becomes a dark chapter in history rather than a lived reality.

It is only through collective action that we can create a just and equitable society where violence against women is an unthinkable act.

As you mark the day with vigils and events with your local, or by wearing your December 6 button, we ask that you share your photos with women@unifor.org. We will share submitted photos of members marking December 6 on our social channels to highlight your work in fighting for equality and respect.

Find printable posters and social media graphics here.

Women. Life. Freedom.

Around the world, including in Iran, women continue to fight for their freedom, and for fair and equitable treatment. Toronto is the city that brings the world’s struggles together, side by side, so we can support each other in solidarity and sisterhood.

Join Unifor activists on March 4 at the IWD Toronto Rally and March at 11:00 a.m. ET, 252 Bloor St. W.

Bring your flags, signs, and noisemakers as we show that we won’t stop fighting until every sister around the world can lead the life she chooses freely and without discrimination.

WHEN:         Saturday, March 4, 2023

Rally starts at 11:00 a.m. ET, march begins at 1:00 p.m. ET

WHERE:       OISE/UT, 252 Bloor St. W – look for the Unifor flags

Everyone is welcome.

This event is organized by the IWD Toronto committee and for more than 40 years has been the largest event in North America recognizing International Women’s Day.

For updates, please visit iwdtoronto.ca.

We invite you to capture your experiences at the IWD Toronto Rally and March and send photos or videos to women@unifor.org and tag @UniforWomen on Facebook and Twitter.

In solidarity and sisterhood,

Naureen Rizvi                              Tracey Ramsey
Ontario Regional Director           Women’s Department Director

As Unifor recognizes Black History Month, in 2023, our focus is empowering the next generation of Black youth.

As we reflect on Black history, Black accomplishments and the contributions of the many Black communities here in Canada and globally, we also reaffirm the collective work and collective responsibility we all have to continue to advocate to end Anti-Black racism in all institutions and society. We owe it to future generations.

This year, our message is “Black History, Black Futures.” Our focus will be featuring Black youth and all they offer in our workplaces and to broader society through skills, talents, intelligence, innovation, creativity, determination and leadership.

Black youth have made it clear – we need to listen. Young people are leading the way into the future, making demands to address climate change, exposing environmental racism, calling for reform within governments, advocating for health care, lobbying for job security, highlighting the inequalities within workplaces, combating Anti-Black racism, and offering real solutions to world issues. They are the future of activism, informed by history and ready to voice their demands for equity and justice for themselves and other workers, for all people and for the planet.

The Canadian government first recognized Black History Month in December 1995 in the House of Commons, following a motion introduced by the Hon. Dr. Jean Augustine.

As a progressive union Unifor is committed to more than statements and a month of solidarity. We must ensure physical and emotional health for all Black Canadians and continue to celebrate, appreciate and acknowledge Black communities across the country.

Unifor membership, leadership and communities will celebrate Black History meaningfully.

Below are tips to help celebrate Black History Month in a meaningful way

1. Celebrate and acknowledge Black history throughout the year
2. Celebrate Black history with everyone
3. Center Black History celebrations around diversity, inclusion and equity commitments and practices
4. If you don’t have diversity, inclusion and equity commitments and practices, create them
5. Eliminating anti-Black ideology and methods in organizations
6. Provide resources for Black businesses, culture centers, and community groups for everyone
7. Celebrate the present, not just the past
8. Do your learning at your own pace

We also ask them to recognize Black Unifor members, not only in February, but each day of the year, support Black members in roles in all levels of the union, respect and value the contributions and views of Black members in order to combat anti-Black racism and to continue to remove barriers in institutions that prevent Black members from fully participating.

We need to ensure physical and emotional health for all Black Canadians and continue to celebrate, appreciate and acknowledge Black communities across the country.

This year we mark Women’s History Month in Canada with the knowledge that gains toward equality are fragile and need vigilance to continually protect and enshrine them into the fabric of our union and country.

As we reach back into our past to share the stories of women who have been trailblazers, we learn important lessons from their struggles and triumphs that we need to continually remind ourselves of today.

On October 18, Canada commemorates Persons’ Day. This day in 1929 was when Canada’s highest court of appeal handed down the decision to include women in the legal definition of “persons”, and permitted some women to be appointed to the Senate of Canada and to more fully participate in public life. Persons’ Day was both the culmination of years of activism, and the start of many more years of work to ensure it was expanded and strengthened to include the rights of all women. Women of Indigenous or Asian heritage and descent remained excluded from this legal personhood for many more years.

Our history is full of obvious discrimination toward women of colour and Indigenous women. Canadian women were granted the right to vote in federal elections in 1918 but First Nations women could only vote at that time if they gave up their status and treaty rights. Their full right to vote federally wouldn’t happen until July 1960. These 40-plus years of exclusion must remind us that our work as trade unionists and feminists must be intersectional and focus on eliminating the additional barriers faced by Indigenous, women of colour, LGBTQ, and women with disabilities.

At the 2022 Unifor Women’s Conference we were reminded that until all women cross the line, none of us can truly celebrate without full inclusion of all women. As we make strides toward equality in the courts, in public policy and in workplaces, we must not simply extend the ladder to other women, but reach back to help each other climb.

Unifor has a proud history of advancing women’s rights and fighting for workplace improvements and then pushing provincial and federal governments to grant those same rights for all women. Our union’s ground-breaking and internationally-acclaimed Women’s Advocate Program plays a key role in changing workplace dynamics, educating workers about the challenges women face, and providing resources to support women through unfair treatment in the workplace, discrimination or harassment.

We must pay attention to the rollback of abortion rights and attacks on bodily autonomy in the United States and push to secure our rights in Canada. It was more than 50 years ago when a group of determined women from Vancouver formed the Abortion Caravan and travelled to Ottawa to land on then-Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau’s doorstep to demand abortion be removed from the criminal code. Let us draw inspiration from this, and other brave moments in history, to give us renewed energy for the fight.

Unifor represents 118,000 women, representing a third of our membership. This year we made our own mark on Canadian labour history for women by electing Lana Payne as our first woman president. We are still pushing to break through barriers and make our own working class history. More women are sitting at bargaining tables, are elected to their Local Executive Boards, and taking leadership roles. But, more can be done.

We must ask more women to run, invite more women to participate, and support more women to lead.

Together, we can make history and create a brighter, more equal future.

For Unifor, Black History Month isn’t an event we only acknowledge in February.

This year, Canada recognizes Black History Month as February and Forever: Celebrating Black History Today and Every Day.

The Canadian government first recognized Black History Month in December 1995 in the House of Commons, following a motion introduced by the Honourable Dr. Jean Augustine.

Unifor has long been advocating that it is vital to acknowledge and recognize Black members everyday.

As a union, we featured Black members from locals for the past few years and allowed the different regions to see the remarkable leadership within our union.

We are committed to more than statements and more than a month of solidarity. We know that Black Canadians have made tremendous contributions and possess the skills, talents, intelligence, innovation and determination to have meaningful impacts within Unifor, across Canada and throughout the world.

It is our daily choices and actions that matter.

This month, we ask our local unions and workplace union representatives to celebrate Black Unifor members and safely support community events.

We also ask them to recognize Black Unifor members, not only in February, but each day of the year, in order to combat anti-Black racism and to continue to remove barriers in institutions that prevent Black members from fully participating.

We need to ensure physical and emotional health for all Black Canadians and continue to celebrate, appreciate and acknowledge Black communities across the country.

Information about Black History Month events can be found here.
***

More than 230 Unifor members in Pictou, Nova Scotia lost their jobs in January 2020 after the Northern Pulp mill was forced to close.

Their pensions, their jobs and as many as 11,000 forestry and related jobs across the province hang in the balance as the company prepares plans for a modernized mill.

Support Nova Scotia forestry workers

We have demanded Northern Pulp and parent company Paper Excellence honour Unifor Local 440 members’ pensions and submit plans to government and to community stakeholders that meet government standards.

What remains a challenge is identifying the standards Nova Scotia’s Department of Environment (NSE) will accept.

Unifor supported the previous Environmental Assessment document submitted by the company to the government, because the stated impacts were well within federal Pulp and Paper Effluent Regulations (PPER) and existing Canadian Ambient Air Quality Standards (CAAQS). Indeed, it would have been a solid improvement on the previous mill, which also met those federal standards.

In December 2021, Nova Scotia Environment released its revised Draft Terms of Reference (DTOR), which is supposed to serve as a framework to guide Northern Pulp’s creation of an Environmental Assessment for the updated mill project. (The Draft Terms of Reference can be found here on the Nova Scotia government website).

Unifor continues to believe in a solution that will maintain thousands of good, rural forestry jobs, protect the environment, and respect Pictou Landing First Nation.

Read the letter below and submit to Nova Scotia Environment to support Unifor members and workers in the broader forestry sector.

Support Nova Scotia forestry workers

Every year, Unifor marks the World Day for Decent Work on October 7.

As a trade union, we believe that good jobs, fair wages, and improving the many conditions in which people go to work each day is the way to achieve a better world for everyone.

Amidst the challenges and difficulties of working and living through the ongoing pandemic, Unifor’s young workers take this opportunity to remind all Unifor members that our collective future is worth the fight!

Even before the pandemic, the climate crisis was looming and income inequality had reached critical levels. The pandemic exposed our world’s biggest inequalities, and made everything so much more challenging for everyone, including young workers’ and their prospects for the future.

This time last year, our union was calling to support essential rights for essential workers. Throughout the pandemic, many young workers got laid-off. Some did not get their jobs back. Many young workers were looking after their young children while schools were closed. Today, some are still worried about the risks of exposure to the virus in schools across the country. Young workers did their best – just like all workers – to navigate a crisis and to come out of it safely. Some did not.

Young workers today are seriously worried that the world they are inheriting from previous generations is in far worse shape than the one their parents lived through.

Through this pandemic, young workers have come to better understand that safe workplaces, barrier-free access to good, green jobs, and well-funded public services are essential to a better and brighter future.

Today, on the World Day for Decent Work, we face a choice: we can live to see the devastating impacts that will inevitably result from today’s crises, or we can pick up the fight and build a better future.

This week, Unifor’s young workers held a series of online events to gather, strategize, and commit to the long-term fight for a better world. Through virtual events and an email conference, they shared stories of activism, exchanged tools and best practices and were intentional about creating space in our union to foster hope.

They invited young artist Hana Shafi to design three images that represent the commitment of young workers to our collective future. Unifor members can download, print and share these images today.

Let’s not let our young workers hope and fight on their own. Today, and every day, let’s remember that our future is worth the fight.

Read this statement online

Download the shareables

In solidarity,
Jerry Dias

***

May 17, 2021

Unifor marks the 2021 International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia (IDAHOT) with solidarity for people of all sexual and gender minorities.

Unifor remains resolved to continue the fight against homophobia and transphobia through social change and the fight for human rights for all.

As we resurface from the pandemic and begin to build a better world, we must do away with the inequalities and oppression that lead to discrimination.

Unifor calls upon governments of all levels to recognise LGBTQ workers in recovery efforts and for the federal government to finally pass legislation to adopt a ban on so-called ‘conversion therapy’.

Conversation therapy is a dangerous, unfounded practice that often involves minors’ abuse and leads to lifetime trauma. The basic assumption that a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity or expression is something to be altered or corrected, threatens LGBTQ workers’ dignity and well being. This runs against the union’s position on supporting the rights of all workers.

Unifor is opposed to conversion therapy in all forms and supports efforts to put a stop to the practice through municipal, provincial, and federal bans.

The International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia and Pride will look different this year. Many local unions are organizing online events to unite community after an isolating year.

Email pride@unifor.org with information about Local Union events, to have your events added to a Pride 2021 Calendar.

This year for IDAHOT, Unifor encourages local unions, committees and members to create original digital posts, memes, and videos to counter homophobia and transphobia and to share positive stories from queer and trans members.

Post these stories online to share with your members, and use the hashtag #UniforPride.

Download the shareable.

Download the poster.

Read this statement online

***

On April 22 we celebrate Earth Day.

This year, we mark Earth Day in a context where the COVID-19 pandemic continues to create an unfair burden on working people all over the world. As a trade union, we know all too well that the devastating impact of COVID-19 on the lives, livelihoods and well-being of working people in Canada and abroad. Similarly, the climate crisis, and our society’s failure to plan for it, will result in a disproportionate weight on working people, especially racialized communities and their families.

This is a day to reflect on the importance of our environment and the clear connection that it shares in the lifelong health of all of us and our families. As well, we recognize with solemn consideration how social activism, humanity and overall concern for a safe environment will ensure our victory over the threat of COVID-19 virus and all other global health challenges to the human race.

We are well aware of our need to build back a green economy and have recognized this in our Unifor Build Back Better campaign.

We are committed to making existing jobs more environmentally sustainable, while simultaneously advocating to create more decent-paying, full-time, safe and healthy green jobs in all sectors of society.

Our recent success in auto bargaining bringing billions of dollars of manufacturing investment to Canada for electric vehicles is proof of our commitment.

Our members demand that we protect their jobs and incomes. At the same time, our members also demand that we work hard to improve the environment. Both demands are reasonable ones and we understand we cannot accomplish this alone.

Therefore we have joined with other labour unions and climate justice organizations in Canada, the United States and Mexico working together to make a green economy reality.

The North American Solidarity Project is a joint effort to transform the labour movement in North America based on democratic, militant, and social unionism, and true internationalism between workers in the United States, Mexico and Canada.

The North American Solidarity Project is inviting union members, activists and allies to attend an online exchange called COVID-19 to climate, workers respond to crisis.

The online exchange will take place on Thursday, April 22 from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time on Zoom. Advance registration is required.

The panel will aim to define crisis as experienced by working people today. The panel will seek to envision what labour climate action looks like now and for future generations.
Register here

Dear members,

Every March 22 Unifor enthusiastically participates in the United Nations’ World Water Day. In recent years, we have joined the nationwide mobilization to fight for safe drinking water in Indigenous communities.

March 2021 marks an important milestone in our campaign. It was this month that the Trudeau government set as its self-imposed deadline for resolving undrinkable water in Indigenous communities.

Despite this explicit election promise, 57 Indigenous communities remain under a water boil advisory.

This upcoming World Water Day, please join other Unifor member in the U.N. campaign to “Value Water”.

1. Participate in Unifor’s webinar on World Water Day (Register here)
2. Add this Facebook frame to your profile photo.
3. Share this graphic in your social media networks.
4. Write Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and demand he fulfil his election promise to Indigenous communities.

Thank you for taking action and please share this email with your friends and family.

In solidarity

Jerry Dias
National President

**

Dear members,

United Nations World Water Day falls on March 22 every year. World Water Day celebrates water and raises awareness of the people around the globe living without access to safe water. It is about taking action to tackle the global water crisis.

Unifor is proud to host a webinar about the state of safe water in Indigenous communities across the county. Join this powerful discussion hosted by Gina Smoke, Unifor Indigenous Liaison with Pam Palmater, Mi’kmaq lawyer, Ryerson Professor and activist.

Learn about actions that Unifor members can take to push the federal government to live up to its Treaty obligations and ensure that all Indigenous communities have clean, safe water.

March 22, 2021 1:30 p.m.–2:30 p.m. EST

This workshop will be hosted online through Cisco WebEx. Participants will be emailed information on how to join. You must RSVP online.

In solidarity,

Jerry Dias
National President

**