Earlier this year, District 3 took an important step toward truth and reconciliation through our Indigenous engagement project by appointing Julia McKay, an Indigenous member, as a full-time district co-ordinator.
Julia is reaching out to locals and other Indigenous members to learn about best practices and how to better hear from and involve Indigenous members in our union and the communities where we live and work. We are also holding “Unionism on Turtle Island” education sessions throughout the district and at our annual District 3 School in September.
Our district continues to organize sawmills and mines, as well as workplaces in the communications, technology and service sectors. We now represent over 225 members in eight Starbucks stores, with more on the way, and we have just achieved the first contracts at Foothills Forest Products and the Red Chris mine.
With the help of our worker-friendly government in B.C., we now have a fairer Labour Code and there have been positive changes to the Workers’ Compensation Board (WCB) and occupational health and safety regulations, employment standards, sick days, minimum wage and the implementation of Truth and Reconciliation Day as a statutory holiday.
While B.C. has made positive changes, workers in other provinces are falling further behind. That is why we were proud to mobilize our Steelworkers Vote team during the Alberta election, where Steelworkers helped to elect new worker-friendly MLAs to the Legislature. We look forward to mobilizing this summer in by-elections in B.C. and Saskatchewan and again this fall by electing a Manitoba NDP government led by Wab Kinew.
Along with our work at the bargaining table and servicing our collective agreements every day, our expanded efforts to organize, educate our members and engage in political and legislative action make a difference in the lives of workers and their families.
In solidarity,
This article appears in the Summer 2023 issue of USW@Work magazine.
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