Across the country Canadian workers will soon be enjoying a well-earned long weekend with family and friends to celebrate Labour Day.
While the day has always been one for the labour movement to reflect on the progress it's made improving the lives of working people, this year the minds of many union activists are clearly focused on the future and what is in store for the newest generation of Canadian workers.
Jobless rates among young workers are more than twice those of older adults. Those with jobs are three times more likely to be in precarious and insecure jobs. The number of young workers relying on temporary, casual or parttime employment has never been higher.
It's one thing to expect young people to work their way up the workplace ladder - but it is simply unacceptable to require a worker to endure precarious and unsecure employment for more than a decade (and often far longer) before having any sense of job security, let alone finally getting ahead.
And that's after struggling to just to get in the door at their first job. Tuition rates have tripled in the last 20 years at more than five times the rate of inflation, and show no sign of easing up.
And thanks to the rising costs of housing, and decades of stagnant wages, the prospect of a young workers today getting an actual mortgage for their own home is becoming just a dream for many.
The spread of two-tier workplaces and government austerity are adding to this difficult labour market for young workers, with damage that will stretch right into their retirements. The Conservative government raising the eligibility age for Old Age Security to 67 means today's young workers will have to work longer.
Of course, the ultimate insult of these austerity measures is that employers and governments are justifying them because of decisions made long before most young workers were even out of elementary school.
Faced with all of this it would be understandable for young workers to simply give up, accept their grim futures and lose all hope of building a better livelihood than their parents and grandparents.
But they aren't giving up.
Far from it.
In both the public and private sectors, young workers are starting to realize the benefits of being union members.
Many polls show younger workers have an increasingly positive impression of unions. And we've seen a growing number of
high-profile and successful union organizing drives in workplaces not traditionally unionized that are dominated by younger workers - such as digital media outlets.
Our political leaders should also take notice, particularly in this federal election.
Many of the key issues in this campaign resonate with young workers.
Affordable and accessible child care is top of mind for young workers who are also young parents.
Their young families and aging parents are in growing need of a stronger public health care system. And while it may seem a long way off, many young workers are acutely aware that an expanded Canada Pension Plan will help them most.
Following this Labour Day long weekend we will be in the home stretch of this unusually long and incredibly close campaign.
While much has been made in past elections on low voter turn out among young people, any political party that dismisses the concerns, and resolve, of young workers does so at its peril.
Paul Moist is national president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees. Mark Hancock is president of CUPE BC. Representing more than 630,000 members across the country, including 116,000 in BC, CUPE is Canada's largest union.
