Thousands joined the Jan. 21 rally against Electro-Motive Canada in London, Ontario.
labour issues
CUPW: A cautionary tale of union-busting, with a little help from the media
With 16 straight years of profitability, including record profits in 2009 and postage rates lower than almost all other industrialized countries, the Canada Post negotiations should have been relatively easy. But it's Tory times in Canada and what better way is there for a right-wing government to attack the labour movement than by going after the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, a national and historically militant union?
CUPW keeps its options open in strike negotiations
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Finance minister's office occupied by Ontario Federation of Labour president over private pensions scheme
WHITBY, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - Dec. 17, 2010) -- Ontario Federation of Labour President Sid Ryan, unions and community members have just occupied Jim Flaherty's office, 701 Rossland Road East, Unit 204, Whitby, stunned by his last-minute betrayal of Canadians' retirement security.
On the eve of the Kananaskis provincial finance ministers' meeting, Flaherty has dumped the expansion of the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and put all Canadians at the mercy of the banks, mutual fund and insurance industries.
The hidden costs of Canada's banana market
Murder. Paramilitary death squads. Exploitation. Torture. Child Labour. Toxic chemicals. At first these words are not readily linked to a soft, sweet and innocent fruit, a staple in the majority of our homes, but rather to the actions of a tyrant operating in a forgotten corner of the world.
Asbestos: Quebec labour's shame
It is too often the case that history highlights important developments that current affairs seem to miss. That unfortunately seems to be the case with what will certainly be recorded as one of the most shameful moral failures of the Quebec labour movement in its history. I am speaking of its blind support for the asbestos industry in that province, support that contradicts almost every important tenet of trade unionism. Asbestos kills more people
worldwide than any other industrial material by far. And that includes Quebec where 55 per cent of all worker fatalities in 2009 were caused by asbestos.
Canada is a nation led by political managers, not leaders
Where are the leaders? It's a question I hear from people more and more.
People are looking for inspiration, hope, some sense that someone at least has some ideas of where the country should go -- not go this afternoon or tomorrow or next week but in the next 20 or 50 years.
Someone who is at least partly a visionary and not just a strategist and tactician. Canadians, I think, are desperately looking for someone who can demonstrate that they have done some serious and thoughtful thinking about what kind of country we want to build.
But political leadership of that kind seems to be a thing of the past. They don't make Tommy Douglases anymore or even Pierre Trudeaus. Why?
Governing as business
What will it take to win the lockout at Electro-Motive Diesel?
LONDON, ONT. - It was a loud and boisterous scene outside the massive Electro-Motive Diesel (EMD) factory on Jan. 21 as more than a thousand trade unionists joined the picket line in solidarity with 465 workers who have been locked out by the company for the past three weeks. With a punk rock band blasting music from a makeshift stage by the front gate, hundreds of workers disrupted traffic by crossing back and forth across the road regularly. A lone London police officer pleaded with them to keep things moving. It was the second show of support that day; earlier, an estimated 7,000 workers from across Ontario and the Midwest United States rallied at Victoria Park in downtown London.
Economic justice in the service industry
Though the first workshop in this guide is based around the film "Eyes on the Fries", it's not essential to have to hold the other workshops on economic justice in the service industry featured. Try replacing it with your favourite service-industry documentary.
The guide includes tips for facilitators, activities for the workshop and different scenarios of workers for participants to relate to. Some stats may have to be adjusted for a Canadian audience but the goal is the same: to empower service industry employees to organize. The workshop covers:
The importance of the informal economy
Factors that exploit workers
