April 24, 2024

Some ideas for bathroom access campaign:

• Municipal campaign for public-funded and supported bathroom services for drivers.
• Municipal by-laws requiring access to bathrooms for local delivery workers.
• Municipal investment in public bike charging points (especially near restaurant areas).
• Solidarity language in our hotel (and facilities like airports) contracts that force hotels to open lobby bathrooms to taxi (and other logistics) drivers.

Unifor outlined its position on cameras and digital/automated surveillance recently, incorporation of this analysis into our campaigns against automated surveillance should be a goal.

Automation in trucking and logistics is going to start to be a huge problem with the introduction of new regulations speeding-up the transition to lower-emissions vehicles. My concern is that without regulation of some of the technology, we are at the whim of truck manufacturing and tech companies.

Our recent supply chain submission to the federal government also outlined concerns the union has with regards to surveillance and support for right to strike.

A broader campaign on the right to strike in concert with our campaign of the banning of replacement workers is essential. Especially since we are seeing a broad attack on that internationally at the ILO right now.

This is an issue for us because transport is both federally and provincially regulated and the laws governing it are different.

Transport companies have been pushing for the elimination of the full right to strike and to be replaced with interest arbitration. This is a concern because some models of “Broader Based Bargaining” implement an interest arbitration system to replace the right to strike. Some of the labour-side lawyers pushing this model push this version of model without having a working class view of the outcome.

The DHL bargaining conference is mid-July and then bargaining will start. 1400 members.

The focus will likely include automation, surveillance, and wages.

Intelligence should include European operations of DHL. It might be fund to include some obvious common international proposals to put the company on notice that there is international solidarity.

Unifor continue to push for some enforcement in Canada around this. But, it is limited as a bargaining program for the Road group here as it is more of a fishing and ports issue.

Incorporating some of the language of enforcement should be considered.