Top N.S. labour leader reflects on 2021

When Danny Cavanagh was acclaimed president of the Nova Scotia Federation of Labour at the federation’s virtual convention in October, it was a hat trick of sorts.

The province’s top labour leader is now into his third term at the helm of an umbrella group that represents about 70,000 workers, people who are members of affiliated unions.

Cavanagh, 63, and a couple of federation staffers work out of an office in Halifax. Though the organization doesn’t get involved in collective bargaining, it does deal with other industrial relations issues across Nova Scotia.

CityNews Halifax recently asked Cavanagh to look back at 2021 from his perspective, and that of the federation. One development was on the political front: the labour group has a different provincial government to work with, as a result of the Conservatives’ victory in last summer’s election.

“Governments, as they do, come and go,” Cavanagh said. “So, then we just get in the mix and do our best to try to work with the government – whichever government’s in power. Sometimes that works well, sometimes it doesn’t work so well.”

An online, labour standards-improvement petition the federation is asking people to sign is aimed at the government of Premier Tim Houston, elected in August, though Cavanagh said efforts began during the previous Liberal rule.

The organization says it’s time the province’s worker-rights measures were modernized “to better reflect the realities of today’s workplaces.” Cavanagh said aside from a little tweaking, labour standards in this province haven’t been updated in 40 years.

He said the federation’s work toward modernizing labour standards “was part of a resolution and the work plan that came out of the convention” in the fall.

Some of the activity in the trade union movement in Nova Scotia during the past year, said Cavanagh, included progress made on increasing the minimum wage and addressing affordable child care.

However, Cavanagh acknowledged the goals of having a “living wage” for workers and universal, affordable child care weren’t reached.

“We were successful in the last year around in actually getting off the ground a child-care coalition – a working group – here in Nova Scotia,” he said in a phone interview on Dec. 1.

Cavanagh said the group is “connected with a national child-care organization . . . and they’re up and running now.”

Minimum wage in Nova Scotia is $12.95 an hour. One of the federation’s campaigns is to push government for an increase to a $15 hourly rate.

Cavanagh said the $15 mark is a starting point leading to a living wage.

“Now it seems to be that . . . there’s a huge movement – not just here, in Nova Scotia, but in other places – to have something better, that people need a living wage,” he said.

“I think the (coronavirus) pandemic has really shone a light on the fact that a lot of workers are just fed up with the environment of a low-wage economy,” Cavanagh said.

The enduring pandemic brought on by the spread of COVID-19 meant unions had to change how they did business.

“Everybody coped with it the best they could,” said Cavanagh. “Meetings still happened (online) through Zoom, or whatever. . . . We’ve had executive meetings where we were put under the health guidelines of this province (and did) those meetings face-to-face with social distancing and those kinds of things.”

As for rank-and-file union members, such as health-care workers who for personal reasons won’t get vaccinated against the coronavirus, Cavanagh said on a radio program that individuals decide for themselves if they’re going to lose their jobs for opposing the provincial government’s edict to get their shots.

“One can only hope that people will, for whatever reason, disclose their vaccination and get their double-vaccination that they need to get to keep their job,” he told The Todd Veinotte Show on CityNews 95.7 on Dec. 3.

“Everybody has a right to choose in this country,” said Cavanagh. “We all have a right to have our own beliefs,” which could include people “walking away from their jobs.”

Asked about workplace safety, Cavanagh told CityNews Halifax more rigorous enforcement of safety laws, and stiffer penalties for companies or individuals convicted of violations, are needed in Nova Scotia.

“There’s still far too many deaths in this province, where people . . . get up and leave and go to work in the morning and don’t come home at suppertime,” he said. “We need to change the whole culture around occupational workplace health and safety.”

Cavanagh noted May 9, 2022 will be the 30th anniversary of the Westray mine disaster in Plymouth, Pictou County. An explosion underground killed 26 coal miners.

In 2017, to commemorate the disaster’s 25th anniversary, the federation partnered with other groups to provide a series of public remembrance events. Cavanagh said next year the organization will work with the Westray Families Group and provincial government to mark the 30th with “a big event.”

He said commemoration plans are probably going to “connect more school kids . . . into those events.”

Cavanagh said an education fund the federation originally set up for the explosion victims’ children, who are now adults, has been opened up “to help any union members that may have been killed in a workplace accident, to help their kids further their education.”

Michael Lightstone is a freelance reporter living in Dartmouth