"Labour Day 2024 affords us the opportunity to salute the 20 million workers who get up for work each day and make our economy and our country work.
For Manitoba workers the past year has been eventful. A new provincial government was elected and respect for free collective bargaining has returned to the public sector.
Workers have made gains at the bargaining table and in broad terms, their democratic rights to join unions have been strengthened. Legislation to ban the use of replacement workers is now before the legislature, which will also rebalance and strengthen workers' rights.
Federally, the Trudeau government has sided with employers in removing workers' legal and constitutional rights to free collective bargaining through moves to end railway and airline job action and forced arbitration. The right to strike is a Charter-protected right and we support those unions who have indicated their intention to challenge the liberal government's actions in the courts.
The federal Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) Program is being used to subsidize service sector employers and to keep wages down in low-paying sectors of the economy. This was never the intention of the TFW program and we are calling on the government to reduce this expansion of the program
Working people built Canada.
This Labour Day, as retired union workers we salute all workers and thank them for their efforts day in and day out."