More than 2,000 UFCW leaders and activists have pledged to devote themselves to a unity program that strives to grow the union to 3-million members by 2018. UFCW International President Joe Hansen issued the call for a renewed, aggressive, and coordinated commitment to doubling the size of our union’s membership in the next 10 years.

His message was delivered on the second day of the UFCW’s Sixth Regular Convention, held in Montreal from August 18 to 22. “We must have a program that unites us together, that combines our resources, that has a strategic plan to guarantee that we coordinate our actions and build on our strengths. That is the One Union, One Voice program. That is the foundation of our future,” President Hansen said in his keynote address to the hundreds of delegates and alternates who packed Montreal’s cavernous Palais de congrès.

The One Union, One Voice program involves UFCW members and officers looking far beyond their local unions and taking an active role in issues and campaigns that affect the union and the worker movement as a whole. “I am extremely proud of the UFCW Canada caucus for enthusiastically embracing President Hansen’s ambitious challenge,” says UFCW Canada National President Wayne Hanley. “There are hundreds of thousands of workers in Canada who want and need a union. Through pooling the insights, energies, and faith of Canadian local unions and the National Office, we can reach our objective of making UFCW Canada 500,000 members-strong by 2018.” More than 2,000 UFCW leaders and activists have pledged to devote themselves to a unity program that strives to grow the union to 3-million members by 2018.