Happy Labour Day!

Hello, Friends. We hope you can find some time for yourself this Labour Day weekend, as we prepare our families to start a new school year or the rest of the year ahead. Labour Day is our time to recognize the contributions we, as union members, have made to our communities and reflect on what it means for us to be in a Union.

This past year we’ve seen a continued resurgence of labour activity across the country. Workers coming together to find their collective power at the bargaining table or on a picket line — and winning!

Unions never win alone. We win because we support each other in ways that are easy to see, like showing up to a picket line. We also show support by teaching each other and setting standards so that gains made on one contract spread to workers across the country. This is how we have won so many of our most cherished rights, like maternity and paternity leave, and why it is essential we show up with our solidarity for the labour movement.

When we witness rail workers being locked out, pilots or mechanics preparing to strike, and other public sector workers taking job action, it’s easy to overlook the deeper connection we share by only seeing the differences in our day-to-day work. But when we listen to the pressures those workers are facing on the job, the similarities in our struggles become clear.

Inflation is eroding our hard-fought wages. The demands of our jobs are increasing due to short-staffing and insufficient efforts to retain staff. This cycle of more work but less capacity is creating unsafe working conditions and unacceptable mental health impacts. These themes are present in every Union taking job action, and we hear these issues from HSAA members everywhere we go. Every win by other Unions on these common challenges makes it easier for us to make our own specific wins in our collective agreements. That is why it is crucial that we show our solidarity for fellow union members taking a stand.

We also need to be active with our solidarity inside our union and choose to see our connections, not our differences. We have more disciplines than almost any union in this country. We are unique, with over 200 different health-care professions. We need to make this our greatest strength and not let the visible differences in our daily work distract us from our common cause. If you were just to compare the day-to-day challenges of a paramedic to a psychologist, you would see people who work in two different work environments with very specific issues. But if you were to ask them about the most challenging part of their job, you would find the themes could not be more similar. They will tell you about a pace of work where they cannot keep up with demand, feeling like they cannot bring their full set of skills to the needs of their patients because there is not enough time. They will tell you about the mental strain of continually being exposed to people at their worst or at their greatest need. They will tell you about the burnout caused by the urge to work longer to compensate for short-staffing or guilt over a long list of people needing help. This is just one example, but you will find the same common themes true if you ask a laboratory technician, public health inspector, social worker, physiotherapist or any of our many disciplines.

When you look beneath the day-to-day realities of our jobs, we have far more in common as health-care professionals than we have as differences in our disciplines. We must focus on these common threads that bind us and remember that we are stronger together.

Thank you for everything you do at work, for your patients and your communities. We hope you have a great Labour Day weekend.

In solidarity,

Mike Parker,
President

Leanne Alfaro,
Vice-President