Thank you for having me here today.
I just want to take a moment to very quickly introduce myself. I will translate right after.
[Witness spoke in Sm'algya̱x and provided the following text:]
Tristen di waayu, Ts'msyenu, G_a_nhada di pdeegn ada Kxeen di wil 'waatgu.
[Witness provided the following translation:]
My name is Tristen. I'm Ts’msyen, and my clan is the Raven. I come from a small town up north here in B.C. called Prince Rupert.
[English]
I was thinking about what to say here for quite a while, and all I ended up preparing was a couple of speaker notes. The thing that sat in my notepad for the longest time was simply to remember who was really, truly a friend and what was there when you needed it. That has been my experience as a union member.
I started as a councillor in a BCGEU-certified job when I was quite young. At that time, I was still being granted the patience and the grace to learn things as I was getting going, to be introduced as a new union member, to join the local executive and to eventually get involved with my labour council. During all of that, in the background were many colleagues I hadn't yet met who fought for things like a low-wage redress, which significantly supported my own income at a time when I greatly needed it as I was going through things like medical transition and mental health concerns resulting from a long series of intergenerational traumas in my community and in my family and home.
What I learned from much of that experience back then was that the union is where the people who look out for you are. It's where folks invite you to a barbecue. It's the place where people come and help you pack up when you decide you need to move at the last minute and think you can do it entirely by yourself. I enjoyed much of my experience then learning that, as I was growing and adjusting, there were so many people fighting alongside me for the things that I needed to get through when I was young and new and fresh to start and that I did not know would be as important as I know them now.
I later ended up moving down to the Lower Mainland, where I live now, and I unionized my work site down here for a small non-profit. Coming in, I knew at that point already that my livelihood was meant to come from a unionized work site and that this is where I would receive gainful employment. As someone with disability, it's imperative to me that my job security is protected, that there are anti-discrimination policies in place and that I have a say in the structure of the conditions around my work.
We unionized to lock in much of the compensation that we already had, knowing that we wanted people doing equal work, out of the gate, as soon as they came in, to receive equal pay and benefits. We wanted to address wage parity. We had means of making sure our voices were properly heard when doing the work that impacted other communities, and we represented ourselves with doing the work that we knew we needed. Ultimately, however, what we truly came to together, upon coming down here, was realizing that the folks you organize with are the people who extend beyond just a contract.
Unionism is the collective bargaining regime. It is coming out of the law of contracts and coming into something where you have a little bit more equal say in power, but it's also about working to see your communities strive, smile and thrive. It's those whose labour upholds everything, and yet they find themselves still at the mercy of their paycheque at the end of each couple of weeks.
Worker power has the ability to secure equal pay for equal work. Worker power and solidarity have the strength to carry you forward when you need to fight for change so that you can do what matters in a way that's safe, that's accessible, that's informed and that keeps us up with the costs of what it truly takes to keep you going, whether that's spiritual, emotional, financial or physical.
I want to leave it there and keep it short and sweet. I'm so grateful for the other witnesses on this panel saying so much of what I had percolating in my head about the way in which unions can stand against things like two-tiering and the way in which we can stand and protect our fellow members against things like contract flipping. There are so many important things that have come to benefit all of us, unionized or not, as a rising tide raises all ships alongside it.
What I ultimately would like to impart is the knowledge that, as one big union all together, people, as workers, have the power to invoke change and make sure that all of us get home from work safely at the end of the day and keep it so that one job is enough.
Thank you.