UNION ORGANIZING IN THE PHILIPPINES: Meet trade union leader Pete Pinlac from MAKABAYAN
PUBLIC MEETING AND OPPORTUNITY FOR SMALL GROUP MEETINGS
Limited seating, by donation.
Any unions or groups wishing to arrange a meeting with Pete Pinlac on August 3, 7, 8 or 9 should contact Bill Saunders at Bill256@me.com
BACKGROUND
Jose Eleuterio (Pete) Pinlac, a trade union leader from the Philippines, will in Vancouver in August on route to attend a conference in Toronto. Pete is an experienced and dynamic union leader, a very articulate activist and well informed on the current situation in the Philippines.
His trip to Vancouver August 1- 9 is being sponsored by the Vancouver & District Labour Council. While here, Pete is interested in meeting Canadian union and community activists to build links and develop international support for union organizing in the Philippines.
Pete is the chair of the KPD, a coalition of unions and community organizations aimed at broad based political organizing. He is also the former president of the Long Distance Telephone Workers Union in the Philippines and the former president of the MAKABAYAN trade union central.
MAKABAYAN hosted a VDLC delegation to the Philippines several years ago and we were greatly impressed by both their politics and commitment to union organizing under extremely difficult conditions.
MAKABAYAN is currently conducting two large and crucial union organizing drives. One is to organize call center workers in the Philippines, of which there are hundreds of thousands, including several thousand working for Telus.
On another front, MAKABAYAN has also been organizing for years at the giant Korean owned Hanjin shipyard near Manila. The union recently applied for certification to represent 18,000 of these workers and have been fighting in the courts ever since to obtain certification.
Please contact the VDLC at 604-254-0703 or Bill Saunders at bill1256@me.com for additional information or to schedule a meeting with Pete.
In solidarity Joey Hartman, President, Vancouver & District Labour Council
