Thursday, August 11, 2011

2 Local Labour Councils' have had their operations suspended

From the Rush - Tuesday, August 9th:

THE SOUTH CARIBOO LABOUR COUNCIL AND THE QUESNEL AND DISTRICT LABOUR COUNCIL HAVE HAD THEIR OPERATIONS SUSPENDED.

THE CANADIAN LABOUR CONGRESS TOOK THE ACTION LAST THURSDAY. IN A LETTER TO THE SOUTH CARIBOO LABOUR COUNCIL THEY SAID IT WAS DUE TO A FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH AUDIT AND COMPLIANCE REQUESTS.

NORM PREVOST, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE SOUTH CARIBOO LABOUR COUNCIL, DISPUTES THE CLAIM, AND SAYS THE MOVE IS AN ATTEMPT BY THE CLC TO CENTRALIZE UNION OPERATIONS OUT OF AN OFFICE IN PRINCE GEORGE.

HE SAYS IT WILL IMPEDE LOCAL UNION ORGANIZING, POLITICAL ACTIVISM, AND ASSISTANCE TO LOCAL UNIONS WHEN IT COMES TO STRIKES.

THERE ARE ROUGHLY 6,000 UNION MEMBERS THROUGHOUT THE CARIBOO.

Now - Greg Fry (Anchor/Reporter - The Rush) reports this via Twitter this morning:

CLC regional director says move to suspend labour councils in Williams Lake and Quesnel was made by CLC President Ken Georgetti

This is certainly a scary development for our local Labour Councils in Quesnel and Williams Lake as they've been at the forefront for raising labour issues and for assisting labour candidates for civic office (School District Trustees and City Councils) as well. For one that is not in the labour movement - it will be interesting to follow exactly why the national Canadian Labour Congress made this move to suspend operations of the Quesnel and South Cariboo Labour Councils and how the 2 Labour Councils' can resume operations so they can continue to promote the interest of the roughly 6,000 labour workers in the Cariboo-Chilcotin

SBF

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