May Day rally marches in solidarity with workers
Asmall group of local union workers participated in the first May Day Solidarity walk to take place in Lethbridge in years along 5 Avenue South on Sunday afternoon.
The group marched from Civic Centre Park to the Galt Museum as an act of celebrating solidarity for workers.
“So every May 1 in various places around the world, especially outside the US and Canada, workers will get together in acts of solidarity — whether it’d be parades or marches or other events — to celebrate worker solidarity with one another,” said Kim Siever, local May Day Solidarity organizer.
“It’s been awhile since Lethbridge has had something like this. Lethbridge has a long labour history, but that seems to be diminishing and so this was an opportunity for us to come together as workers and be together and show solidarity for one another.”
Siever thinks there is a growing gap between the working-class people and companies who employ workers in terms of inequality, increasing levels of poverty, and increasing difficulty in meeting living expenses.
“So, I think it’s important for workers as a whole to get together and stand with one another and try to be able to leverage what power we have together in order to make lives better for one another,” said Siever.
Siever pointed out that unionization is at all-time low and has been decreasing for a very long time.
“It’s just what’s affecting workers everywhere is also being felt here in Lethbridge,” he said.
Siever said there is an ongoing desire from owners of corporations — especially large corporations — to try and extract as much value out of worker labour as possible.
“But at the same time, being able to pay the workers as little as possible for that value and as a result then they increase the amount of profits that that they’re able to get off the worker labour,” he said.
Krysty Thomas is the president of the Lethbridge and District Labour Council and thought it was important to participate in the act of solidarity because it advocates for all workers.
“Lately, it’s been a difficult situation when it comes to workers’ rights and some of the legislation that’s been coming down with the unions,” said Thomas.
“The big thing to mention is the health and safety regulations. So just last week we acknowledged the national day of mourning for workers killed on the work site and Alberta actually lost 178 workers and that was the highest per capita in all of Canada. Days like this are really important to make sure we come out and we’re still continuing to push forward and making lives better for all working Albertans.”
Thomas said the current government has passed some legislative bills that actually are trying to weaken unions, making it more difficult for us to call into question some of the actions the government is taking.
“They’re trying to remove the ability for us to collect dues in an appropriate manner and they really want to limit us on certain things that we can spend our money on,” she said.