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The class struggle in Vaughan: The Sears lockout and USW

In the last week of July 2010, workers of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 9537, who have been locked out of their workplace and on the picket-lines for nearly five months, found a big pile of shit sitting right smack-dab by their picket-line outside of a warehouse in Vaughan, just north of Toronto. One could not ask for a better symbol of retail-capital's attitude toward their workers. Workers at this supply warehouse have been locked-out since April Fool's Day after rejecting a concessionary offer. They have been fighting an uphill battle against a nefarious employer who has not shrunk from hiring scabs and pitting the warehouse workers against the retail workers.

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Postal Workers' Union: Get mail to Gaza on the boat

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers wants mail delivered to Gaza.

Following an announcement by Canada Post that Israel Post has suspended mail delivery to Gaza, the union is encouraging people who wish to send mail to Gaza to get their mail onto the Canadian boat bound for the blockaded Palestinian territory.

"As postal workers, we know very well that cutting off mail creates suffering and hardship for people, who are isolated from their loved ones," said Denis Lemelin, National President of CUPW. "How many more abuses will the people of Gaza have to endure?"

Numerous organizations are working together to endorse a Canadian boat to Gaza in the autumn. Others, including Independent Jewish Voices, have supported the idea of getting mail onto the boat.

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Columnists

Coca-Cola doc chronicles a bitter battle

A stunning documentary chronicles the efforts of American lawyers trying to take the soft drink giant to court over the killings of 10 union leaders in Columbia.

"As soon as the union was formed, the trouble started," intones the brother of murdered Columbian union leader Isidro Gil ominously at the start of The Coca-Cola Case, a documentary co-production by the NFB and Argus Films.

The 86-minute film chronicles the relentless efforts of American lawyers trying to take the soft drink giant to court over the killings of 10 union leaders, who represented workers at Coke bottling plant s in Colombia.

The documentary splits its time nicely between two battles: the court fight waged by Daniel Kovalik, lawyer for the United Steelworkers union, on behalf of Columbian union members and the public awareness crusade of Ray Rogers, who directed the Campaign to Stop Killer Coke.

ActNOW Newswire

LabourStart, an international trade union movement website, provides a newswire service that websites can use to include automatic updates on ActNOW campaigns and current developments in organized labour.  RSS feeds or HTML versions are available in over 15 languages.

Code for the ActNOW newswire can be found here.

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Columnists

Transparency for unions and other 'little people'

Change the conversation, support rabble.ca today.

I had a good old-fashioned knock-em-down drag-em-out debate with Ian Lee from Carleton University on CBC's Power and Politics about Bill C-377.

There were a number of "zingers" from Prof. Lee that are worth considering:

- He said "hundreds of thousands" of Ontarians have their salaries listed on the government's sunshine list (reporting salaries of those who earn over $100,000). Of course it's not "hundreds of thousands," and at any rate unions are not tax-financed organizations.

June 25, 2012 |
CAW members from Bombardier's de Havilland facility in Downsview, Ontario have ratified two new collective agreements that provide wage, benefit and pension gains as well as retirement incentives.
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