James Clancy, National President

James Clancy is the National President of the 340,000-member National Union of Public and General Employees, one of Canada's largest unions. The National Union represents workers in both the public and private service sector, including health care, educational institutions, social service agencies, arts and cultural industries, marine and banking, and the hospitality and brewery industries.

He is also a General Vice-President of the Canadian Labour Congress and he serves in an international leadership capacity with Public Services International (PSI).

Clancy, first elected as president of the National Union in 1990, has been acclaimed for five consecutive terms. Previously he served as president of the 100,000-member Ontario Public Service Employees Union for six years. He was first elected at OPSEU in 1984 at the age of 34, making him the youngest leader to head a major Canadian union.

Under his leadership, OPSEU led all Canadian unions in collective bargaining results. At the same time the union established the capacity to build strong community support around key public policy issues, including workers' rights to co-manage their pension plans.

Clancy has provided the Canadian labour movement with a unique and bold style of leadership. Defending the interests of working people has had a much broader meaning to Clancy than just standing up for 'bread and butter' issues at the bargaining table.

Clancy is a social activist - a unionist committed to maintaining and strengthening quality public services for all Canadians. His aggressive defence and endless promotion of the value of public services and the workers who provide them is consistent with his vision of a Canadian society which is caring, compassionate and just.

Clancy has been a strong advocate of social unionism throughout his life. His approach to unionism was developed during his time as a social worker in the streets of downtown Toronto in the 1970s. He was the first Canadian union activist to build a strong alliance between front-line workers and their clients (the poor and the dispossessed) to take on government policies that hurt the most vulnerable members of society.

As a social unionist he has campaigned on many issues, including: public financing, international solidarity, Medicare, the environment, Canadian unity, peace and security, anti-privatization, labour rights, human rights, the abolition of Apartheid in South Africa, the role of public services in democratic societies and HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Clancy has a degree in political science and sociology. He resides in Manotick, Ont., with his wife and three children.