Unions seems okay with a COPE-Vision split in next municipal election

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      Unlike in previous municipal-election campaigns, Vancouver’s left-wing party doesn’t seem to be under pressure from organized labour to partner with ruling Vision Vancouver.

      According to Coalition of Progressive Electors treasurer Paul Houle, a COPE delegation led by former councillor Tim Louis appeared before the influential Vancouver and District Labour Council in December to plead for fair consideration. “There seems to be a different attitude now…and the Vancouver and District Labour Council has said that they’re looking more at the quality of individual candidates,” Houle said by phone.

      Houle indicated that if COPE runs candidates strong on labour issues, they’ll get a shot at VDLC endorsement. Last year, COPE members voted to run a mayoral candidate and a majority slate for council, school board, and park board.

      VDLC president Joey Hartman said that a multi-union committee is being set up to evaluate candidates in November’s municipal election.

      “We will be going through our quite strenuous vetting process before making any decisions about which individuals we’re going to be recommending,” Hartman told the Straight in a phone interview.

      Leanne Toderian, president of CUPE Local 15, told the Straight about COPE and Vision, “I can’t really ask a party to get along with another party. I would hope, though, that if there’s common ground, that they would identify with that common ground. If that is labour stability, then that would be awesome.”

      In the 2011 campaign, unions donated more than $285,000 of the more than $361,000 in contributions to COPE. Toderian’s local donated more than $70,000.

      Comments

      3 Comments

      Mark

      Jan 22, 2014 at 11:17pm

      I've never been a fan of municipal unions, much less COPE or Vision. It's funny to see how all these unions who directly support Vision and COPE with so much money can't ask the ruling party to hike taxes on properties of foreign owners, in order to alleviate some of the pressure faced by their working class members.

      RUK

      Jan 24, 2014 at 1:10pm

      Unions exist, or in my thinking should exist, to advance and protect working conditions. In that sense, unions are partners with capitalists.

      Capital in Vancouver likes to go to construction of condos, which tells us that there is a market for these things. If that market is offshore, why would a union support a tax hike that may plausibly inhibit the market, and therefore construction jobs?

      However I am also at the point of wanting the question put to all levels of Canadian politicians as to why they do not have an aggressive offshore investor tax.

      SouthVancouver

      Jan 26, 2014 at 8:42am

      We have to balance condo construction jobs against the reality that Vision is rapidly selling off Vancouver's limited land mass to overseas investors, leaving no where to live for local working people with regular salaries. Future generations will pay a severe price for the short term profit machine that is making developers rich, everyone else poorer, and the city ever more unaffordable. Despite well funded progressive sounding spin, the reality is that Vision is a simply a development greenwashing machine. They are not in any way progressive, democratic, or the friend of anyone other than those making obscene profits by bulldozing Vancouver's character, culture and history. The city needs a real progressive alternative in the next election.