2007: DILEMMAS REGARDING THE SETTLEMENT OFFER
Susan Keeley was a daycare worker for 10 years before becoming a full-time union official with CUPE, including many years as a national representative. At the time of the laundry strike, her duties included providing services for Local 8. Emphasizing the grassroots character of the laundry strike and the wave of support it received, she is of two minds about whether the laundry workers had any real option but to accept the half-a-loaf settlement that ended the strike. Many workers wanted to continue the struggle but an effort to win support from other unions for a general strike foundered.
2008: WHY THE LAUNDRY WORKERS STRUCK
Long-time CUPE official Susan Keeley elaborates as to why the laundry workers were so adamant about the need to go on strike. She emphasizes the cutbacks that they had already willingly accepted and their resulting sense of betrayal by Ralph Klein’s government when the hospitals announced that the workers’ jobs would be privatized. In this interview, Keeley also talks about women workers’ struggles both to make unions more women-friendly and to get them active on issues affecting working women.