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Vol. 75/No. 17      May 2, 2011

 
‘My campaign stands in
solidarity with workers’
 
BY BEVERLY BERNARDO  
MONTREAL—“Whether we are in Wisconsin or Canada, we have the same interests as workers,” said Joseph Young, Communist League candidate from the Montreal constituency of Papineau in Canada’s May 2 elections, at an April 8 campaign event. “A worker at a recent international labor solidarity rally near the U.S.-Canadian border said this and it’s very true.”

Young was referring to an April 2 union rally his campaign participated in of some 1,500 U.S. and Canadian workers in Blaine, Washington.

“My campaign stands in solidarity with all working people fighting attacks on our class by the bosses and their government, like the workers at four Couche Tard convenience stores fighting to unionize,” Young said at the April 8 event. The company decided to close one of its busy Montreal stores after workers there voted March 14 to join the CSN labor federation.

Working people need class solidarity to confront the deepening worldwide economic crisis, Young explained. “Some 1.5 million workers in Canada are unemployed. The average household owes 1.5 times their annual income to the banks, and we face rising prices for gas and food.”

Young outlined some of the demands the Communist League platform raises: guaranteed unemployment insurance at union scale for all the unemployed, a massive federally funded public works program, and adjustment of all wages and social benefits to a cost-of-living scale set by the unions.  
 
 
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