Cédric Joly, Prevention Representative, United Steelworkers Local 7493, Rio Tinto Iron and Titanium, Metal Powders in Sorel-Tracy
United Steelworkers delegation at FTQ convention.
My main concern right now is about reaching out to young workers. We have spoken about it here at the Convention and in several places. It's a union issue. I was on the Quebec Steelworkers' Youth Committee when I was younger. I'm also active in recruiting them in my plant. We want youth delegates in our structure in order to reach out to other youth at our plant. It's something to be concerned about. We need them. We need to continue the discussions on this subject.
The labour shortage doesn't help because young people do not necessarily stay with us for long. They come and go and are not necessarily attached to the workplace.
Young people do not necessarily have the same goals as older workers. We have good conditions at our plant. At Rio Tinto we're in an industrial setting, we have good wages. The issues are not the same. The aim of young people is not to earn $50 an hour. They don't want to be working overtime all the time. Work-life balance is super important to them. Often youth do not complete the interview process because they're not interested in rotating shifts in maintenance or weekend shifts. Family life is very important to them. If it means $12 less an hour working somewhere else, they're willing to accept that.
We have to find a way to involve them. At the Youth Committee and during the Steelworkers' Youth Forum, young people need a say and feel that they are contributing, that they're important, that their work is useful. At the end of the day, they need to feel good about what they've done. They think green, they think about their health and happiness.
Young people are there, they want to get involved, they have the courage to assert and express themselves. Many young people at the Youth Forum had never spoken at the microphone. Lots of them spoke and passed the microphone around.
They need to talk, they need concrete things. They want to know what we can bring them as a union. It's a big issue and it's up to us to find out how to appeal to them. We may not have the magic formula yet. The communication channel is not the same as before. We have to work differently, adapt to them. I'm glad we're talking about this, at Steelworkers' conferences, at the FTQ, everywhere.
There are obstacles to this. First of all, as a union, we don't have enough time. We're busy with issues at work, with labour relations. Also, what's going on in society right now is creating a lot of things that keep us busy. It's not obvious how we should respond to everything that's going on.
Another issue, and we experience this a lot in our company and in others that are close to ours, is with employers who do as they please, who no longer communicate with the union. We discuss this a lot amongst ourselves. They no longer want to do things jointly with us, they do things on the floor without talking to us as a union. Rather than work with us and see the union as a partner in solving problems, they want to push us aside.
There are a lot of changes in health and safety, labour relations, technological changes. A lot of people are changing places, schedules, jobs, their lives are changing. This affects our workers a lot, and we have a lot of issues to manage as a result.
We have to accept that we are two parties, but that we have to be able to work together.
We will also have to have more time to deal with the youth and involve them. We need young people. With these multinationals, we need all the involvement we can get. We need to keep our strength as a union.
At present, the employer is managing everything as an emergency and is spending millions of dollars on training, but young people are leaving. Sometimes on weekends, we don't have enough people on the floor to make up a shift. Some people are there, but not enough to do the job.
Labour relations must be looked after as if you're a maintenance worker. You have to take action in advance, predict what is going to happen. You have to manage in an organized way, ahead of time, rather than in disaster response mode.
(Translated from the original French by Workers' Forum.)
This article was published in
Number 13 - March 15, 2023
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/WF2023/Articles/WO10133.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca