Canada's Labour Movement with Sharleen Stewart and Lana Payne

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail and Google Canada.

Greetings you curiouser and curiouser, Herle Burly-ites. Welcome to the pod. I think today’s going to be a really interesting, continued conversation. What I mean by “continued” is this: If you’re a regular listener, you may remember our episodes with Labour Ministers McNaughton and O’Regan, within the last year. We got a heavy dose of governments’ perspective on critical labour issues.

Today, the flipside: We’ll hear the union perspective on all the key issues, with two of our country’s most progressive labour leaders … Sharleen Stewart and Lana Payne.

Ms. Stewart is a friend of this pod, not only because she was raised in the glorious province of Saskatchewan, but because she made a pre-pandemic appearance in 2019 as we – presciently, as it turned out – talked about vulnerabilities in the long-term care industry. She is International Vice-President for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and President of SEIU Healthcare. The SEIU is one of the largest unions in North America, representing 2-million members across the United States, Puerto Rico and Canada.

Ms. Payne’s roots are from The Rock … Newfoundland! She is the newly elected National President of Unifor, Canada’s largest private sector union, succeeding Jerry Dias, who was also a guest on the pod in 2019. Lana’s election this August makes her the first woman to hold the position at the union where she now leads more than 315,000 members across the country.

Today, we’re gonna dive right in:

• Bill 124 and the state of public sector negotiations in Ontario, including healthcare, education and playing fast and loose with the Notwithstanding Clause.
• Cost of living issues and inflation, and the labour movement’s position with respect to the Bank of Canada
• And the role of today’s organized labour in creating good jobs, gig-work, strikes and political advocacy. 

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