Ken Georgetti, C.M., O.B.C. President Ken Georgetti’s career has taken him from pipefitter to president of the Canadian Labour Congress and from shop steward to start-up founder of labour-owned, multi-million dollar companies. What the Ottawa Citizen newspaper described as “Georgetti’s consensus- building West Coast cool” has led the Canadian Labour Congress to add 700,000 new members under his leadership since 1999, growing to represent a record 3.2 million workers. Along the way Ken has met world leaders like Nelson Mandela, Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Angela Merkel, Vladimir Putin and the Dalai Lama, and directly heard the plight of workers who have been horribly disabled in the sweatshop factories of China and developing nations. Ken Georgetti is a modern labour leader – someone who has walked countless picket lines to support striking or locked-out workers and has been a controversial but respected guest in corporate boardrooms and cabinet offices, in every situation strongly advocating for working people and their families. Ken combines the traditional militancy of the labour movement with a keen understanding of business developed through the creation of Concert Properties, western Canada’s largest unionized residential developer, and the Working Opportunity Fund, a major labour-sponsored venture capital investor. First elected at age 46 in May 1999 as the youngest president in the CLC’s history, Ken came from a family of union activists in Trail, BC. During his 13 years as President of the Federation of Labour, Ken earned a reputation for being innovative and outspoken while its membership more than doubled – from 218,000 in 1986 when he was elected to 450,000 members. At both the CLC and the BC Federation of Labour, Ken has helped modernize the organizations, ensuring that labour was more representative of the face of the workforce, by actively promoting women, visible minorities and youth. Ken’s record of accomplishments at the CLC includes: • Winning new federal legislation that for the first time protects workers in employer bankruptcies so their claims come first over any other creditors; • Gaining new federal health and safety improvements on ergonomics and violence in the workplace to help prevent injuries and deaths; • Seeing passage of the “Westray Act” that holds corporate executives criminally responsible where negligence is the cause of workers’ deaths on the job – following Nova Scotia’s Westray Mine tragedy where 26 miners died in a methane gas explosion in 1992.

As CLC president, Ken holds key positions with a number of important international organizations, including the International Confederation [ITUC], where he chairs the ITUC Committee on Workers’ Capital. He is a member of the Trade Union Advisory Committee (TUAC) to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD]. In Canada, Ken has founded the Shareholder Association for Research and Education – SHARE – which advocates for shareholder action, and the Columbia Institute – which fosters innovative community leadership and research. Ken is also committed to social causes, such as promoting adult literacy, fighting child labour and supporting the United Way. Ken’s contributions to labour and the community have earned him the Order of Canada and the Order of British Columbia.