Charles Boylan is a Canadian radio broadcaster and political activist. He is the former producer of Wake up with co-op and currently hosts the program Discussion, on CFRO 100.5FM; a community-run, co-operatively-owned, non-corporate radio station broadcasting from Vancouver, British Columbia. Boylan has also run for political office federally and provincially as a representative of the Marxist “Leninist Party of Canada and People’s Front respectively (He is currently running in the current federal election for the ML Party) in Vancouver.
Charles speaks about the the long struggle by Rolf Gerstenberger (former head of United Steelworkers Local 1005) and the workers in Hamilton Ontario,
Since 2003, under Rolf’s presidency, Local 1005 led Hamilton steelworkers to defend their rights and the rights of all, in tough battles against company demands for concessions, their phoney bankruptcy schemes, a brutal lockout, and the wrecking of steel production for the benefit of foreign monopolies. Local 1005 spoke on behalf of not just the Hamilton steelworkers, but the working class and all working people with the call to keep Stelco, Hamilton and Canada producing and to give Canada an aim on the basis of a modern nation-building project which provides the rights of the people, not the privileges of the rich, with a guarantee. Local 1005 also became known far and wide as a champion of the rights of the Indigenous peoples, injured workers, pensioners, women and all others.
The interview presents a model for the Union movement in this current era, how to carry on the fighting spirit of ’46 in the present conditions.
Music by Dana Lyons
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