Polarization is too often what governs the behaviour or people today. It seems a very long time ago that different political parties reached across the floor or across the aisle in acts of multi-partisanship or where employers and labour looked for places to collaborate.
Labour Council President, Kevin Smith, knows, “… that compromise is possible and that broad based progressive social activism is alive and with us even in this world where we always seem to be poles apart. Albeit it may be difficult to find, but thankfully partnerships are thriving in the world of organized labour and the friends and allies of labour.”
Smith goes onto say that, “One of our very own has been recognized as a leader in working with one of labour’s oldest and most revered partners, the United Way. The United Way has recognized the efforts of Josh Stewart of LIUNA by naming him a recipient of the Jim MacKinnon Builder Award.”
Dave Trumble, Labour Council VP for Bruce County, when questioned about such an award in the context of progressive social change said that, “Such social activism resulting in progressive social change is part of a continuum of labour and our allies that has been in place for over 100 years. Giving in the labour movement is not charity for the sake of charity, it was and is a fundamental cornerstone of labour as such caring for one another and collective action in the days when labour was just finding its voice may well have meant the difference between the family of a co-worker starving or not.”
“Often the actions of labour,” says Labour Council VP for Grey, Chris Stephen, “or people from labour such as Josh, especially when recognition of this type is given, move the dial in the halls of political power and this has often resulted in that very progress we so cherish in the labour movement. The change that benefits all citizens and not its cruel opposite when regressive change forgets all but the most affluent.”
“The Grey Bruce Labour Council and the thousands of workers that have their voice through the Council congratulate Brother Josh and in his recognition we know that the continuum of progressive social change is being stewarded in the best of hands,” says Smith.
