May 12, 2025
Brynn Bourke – Executive Director
J.S. WOODSWORTH WROTE A FAMOUS grace that said: “What we desire for ourselves, we wish for all. To this end may we take our share in the world’s work and the world’s struggles.”
It’s so simple, and yet, so powerful. It is a call to action. A perpetual call to fight until all workers have the rights that we aspire to have for ourselves.
It’s become core to what we stand for in the labour movement. When we make an important gain, we don’t pull the ladder up behind us, we reach a hand down to lift our fellow workers up alongside us.
The BC Building Trades did this most recently when we fought for and won flush toilets on large projects for construction workers. That new regulation applies across the industry, and not just on union sites.
We also did this for workers on the construction of the Canada Line. When a crew of temporary foreign workers from Latin America were being paid only $4 an hour for 60-hour work weeks, LiUNA 1611 organized them, and the Building Trades took their case to court to recover millions in lost wages for the workers.
In that same spirit, in this issue, you’ll read about the incredible recent work done by the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades District Council 38 to support a group of temporary foreign workers and now union members.
The Temporary Foreign Worker Program is broken. This is an issue we have been raising ever since the Canada Line case and continue to lobby the government for major changes.
But our issues have always been with the exploitation of the program, not the temporary foreign workers themselves.
Within our calls for significant, system-wide reform is the belief that if you’re good enough to work in this country, you’re good enough to stay. We believe that workers in the construction industry should have a meaningful pathway to citizenship, and with it, access to rights and worker protections.
DC38 showed extraordinary determination in working with a group of non-union temporary foreign workers in the painting industry. Not only did they unionize them, but they sought and won an open work permit and recovered more than $300,000 in stolen wages.
You’ll be able to read the whole story in this issue of Tradetalk.
As workers, we are bound together. Some contractors will try to pit us against one another. But playing into those divisions is a trap. It’s a race to the bottom.
It’s only through solidarity that we gain strength and together we can achieve tremendous gains for one another.
Brynn Bourke,
Executive Director