THUNDER BAY — The Thunder Bay District Labour Council hosted its annual Labour Day Picnic in Current River Park on Monday.
The free picnic featured several food options, music, vendors and family-friendly activities.
“Today is a celebration of our accomplishment in the last year or so, but also an opportunity for labour to get together and start developing from a stronger tie because the question is not why we are doing it, but why we feel compelled to celebrate Labour Day,” said Carlos Santander-Maturna, the Thunder Bay District Labour Council’s president.
With the picnic marking the end of summer, many people are coming to celebrate the last day of summer before returning to school, Santander-Maturna said, but there is also a sense of identity with the union.
“They realize that unions are fighting for them. They are fighting for their right and they are fighting in order to improve (the) living and working conditions of (the) family,” Santander-Maturna said.
“And so we are very glad that they are coming here and a lot of the people who are attending the Labour Day Picnic might not be family from a unionized workshop, but they are here because there is a sense of identity with the issue(s) that organized labour is fighting for.”
He explained that they feel compelled to celebrate Labour Day because of the challenges that working people are currently facing, including housing, which poses a serious problem for the majority of workers, and skyrocketing rental fares.
“There is no real plan in order to do some serious rental control and no plan for housing that is going to be affordable,” Santander-Maturna said, adding that workers also need to be allowed to have access to employment insurance when they need it.
Employment insurance is currently at almost seven per cent, he said, but 27 per cent of people who are unemployed have been unemployed for the last year or so and they are unable to do anything, as there is no manufacturing moving, very little economic planning and inflation is skyrocketing.
At this point, only two out of five workers are receiving unemployment insurance, which is outrageous, Santander-Maturna added, because workers and employers are paying into the fund.
The federal government only does the administration of employment insurance, he said.
“These are the issues that workers are facing and as a labour council, we are not just fighting for issues of (the) organized worker but for everyone, in particular those who don’t have access to unions and therefore they cannot do a free collective bargaining to improve their working and living conditions,” Santander-Maturna said.
Expanding to a universal pharmacare was also among the council’s goals.
“Families are suffering and we need to raise awareness,” Santander-Maturna said.
The big problem is how the economy, he added, affects racialized people, Indigenous people and those who are on the fringes of society.
“The people who are on social welfare, who are just barely making a living, they are spending most of the money that they get on welfare to pay for a silly room and they have to rely on soup kitchen(s) in order to survive,” Santander-Maturna said, adding that anyone could be unemployed.
“So, these are significant issues that are very dear to us as a labour union because they are affecting our workers.”
In accordance with the food served, Santander-Maturna said that roughly 1,800 to 2,000 people attend the picnic every year.
“Hopefully, this year is going to be a good one and the weather is going to cooperate until the very end,” Santander-Maturna said.
