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Fisheries Union to form Co-op
Big changes may be on the way as to how lobster harvesters in this province market their catch. The FFAW is now moving to form a co-op to buy lobster from local fishermen and market it themselves. Approximately 300 lobster fishermen signed up yesterday afternoon to become shareholders in a co-op that will purchase and sell lobster at prices established by the Standing Fish Pice Setting Panel. The decision was made during meetings in Stephenville, Harbour Breton and Marystown yesterday. This comes after the provincial Seafood Producers, representing two dozen buyers, announced they would not be buying lobster when the season opens this week. Union president Earle McCurdy says the union will lay out a strategy, including long and short term initiatives, to ensure lobster harvesters get a fair return. This will eventually include holding pens and the processing of lobster. McCurdy says fishermen will no longer be accepting only what the buyers are prepared to pay....
http://www.vocm.com/newsarticle.asp?mn=2&ID=22607
The countries which the Yanks could feasibly invade with a land army are fewer than people think. In Vietnam, for instance, the average U.S. soldier used about a ton of copper every year in firing bullets at the unseen enemy. That's not sustainable today.
The U.S. Army could conceivably invade and occupy Grenada or Guatemala for extended period of time. Any tiny defenseless country would be at risk if Warshington is so inclined. But they could never make a colonial outpost of, say, Tehran. All US wars from now on will have to be air wars and bombing raids. But they don't have a population willing to go do another Afghanistan or Iran much less another Vietnam. What the U.S. Military does now is mainly democracy prevention and "clean slate" bombing in countries at risk for self democratization.
And American labour will have to fund U.S. Military expansions now since China and Asian countries don't want anymore U.S. paper debt. So the pressure to fund military is now being turned on U.S. taxpayers and U.S. labour. I don't think it's sustainable. The military-industrial complex would much rather have the cold war era situation with petro dollar imperialism financing hundreds of military bases abroad( read expensive anchors). The American century has been reduced to idle threats and rumors of war. It's a sign of insecurity for an empire in decline.
Greater Victoria teachers are engaging in an illegal strike by refusing to prepare report cards, the Labour Relations Board ruled late Monday afternoon.
The board ordered the Greater Victoria Teachers' Association and president Tara Ehrcke to cease and desist "declaring or authorizing the unlawful strike" in violation of the Labour Relations Code.
The B.C. Public School Employers' Association filed an application with the board Monday morning alleging that Ehrcke and the union were advising teachers to hold off preparing report cards despite last week's board order that work begin immediately.
"Ms. Ehrcke for the GVTA has clearly counselled member teachers to continue to refuse to prepare report cards at least pending a GVTA meeting scheduled for today," the application said.
Greater Victoria teachers met in private to discuss the report card issue after school Monday.
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Victoria+teachers+illegal+strike+over+refusal+report+cards+ruling/6508115/story.html#ixzz1syz1BR8kThe Canadian State Helps Usher in a New Phase of Capital Accumulation
Saltis doesn't seem to mind the fact that Canadian manfucturing is majority foreign-owned and controlled and mostly by rich Americans. He doesn't even mention it.
I had no idea manufacturing in Canada was this rosy a situation. Maybe we could benefit by even more direct U.S. investment and ownership of Canadian manufacturing. Of course, Saltis doesn't go so far as to say that either. He does admit that we'ev lost 600, 000 manufacturing jobs across Canada since 2000. But surely it can't be down to so many absentee corporate landlords running Canadian manufacturing from corporate board rooms in America.
What's afta NAFTA?
Public service employees in at least six federal departments will receive notices advising them that their jobs will be "affected" by the government's spending cuts starting Monday, CBC News has learned.
On Friday, CBC News reported that diplomats and embassy staff at Foreign Affairs and International Trade are bracing for federal cuts, with at least four Canadian trade consulates in the United States and seven of the 18 international trade offices in Canadian cities and towns across the country seeing their doors shut next week.
CBC News has learned the unions representing employees at five other departments — Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, Library and Archives Canada, Statistics Canada and Transport Canada — received the required 48-hours notice of impending job cuts from the government on Friday.
quote:
The latest round of notices comes as one of Canada's largest unions prepares to meet in Ottawa for a week-long convention beginning Sunday.
The Public Service Alliance of Canada is meeting for the union's National Triennial Convention from April 29 to May 4. More than 500 delegates representing PSAC's 172,000 members will discuss the impact of the government's spending cuts, among other things.
PSAC president John Gordon's six-year term is coming to an end, and delegates will be asked to elect a new national president and a new vice-president.
Officials at PSAC told CBC News the union would be in a position to comment on Monday once members have been notified that their jobs are affected.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2012/04/28/pol-third-wave-public-sec...
Less than one month after Irving Shipbuilding received a $304-million aid package from the province, 83 employees were handed a pink slip this week. Eighty-three of the employees, the majority of whom worked as iron workers, pipefitters, engine fitters and riggers, were notified Friday. Most were left with some lingering questions about if or when they would be back at work.
“There is talk of layoffs every week.
It sounds like this will only be for a week, but there’s no way of knowing," a laid-off employee, who wished to remain anonymous, said Friday.
“We have a ton of work to do here on the dock. . . . There’s this big contract, the coast guard ships are in there and the navy ships and they’re all behind schedule. The work is there."
With additional commercial repair work set to arrive in the next two weeks, Irving spokeswoman Mary Keith said the layoffs are business as usual and likely only temporary.
“Halifax Shipyard will complete a commercial project this week and does not expect its next commercial project to begin until the week of May 7," Keith said Friday. “As a consequence, the company will temporarily lay off 83 employees, and expects most to be recalled."
The $304 million in provincial funding was to generate jobs and economic growth, Premier Darrell Dexter said from the shipyard at the official announcement on March 30.
The money came by way of a forgivable loan of $260 million for upgrades to help Irving handle building the $25 billion worth of combat vessels over the next 30 years.
Another $44 million, in the form of a repayable loan, was made available to strengthen human resources, technology and industrial development in the marine industry.....
http://thechronicleherald.ca/business/90876-irving-lays-off-83-shipyard-workers
The president and CEO of Taseko Mines Ltd. wrote to Canadian Environment Minister Peter Kent asking the federal government to limit First Nations participation in the review of Prosperity Mine, a project opposed by the Tsilhqot'in National Government.
On Nov. 7, 2011, the federal government announced a review panel would be appointed for an environmental assessment of Taseko's revised proposal for the mine. A previous federal panel advised against the earlier version of the project, which would have had "significant adverse environmental effects."....
http://thetyee.ca/Blogs/TheHook/Aboriginal-Affairs/2012/05/01/KentLetter/
The world needs to create 50 million jobs to return to pre-crisis employment levels, according to the ILO, but fiscal austerity and tough labour market reforms threaten a true jobs recovery.Geneva (02 May 2012) – Governments should adopt more worker-friendly approaches in dealing with fiscal austerity, according to the recently released International Labour Organization (ILO) World of Work Report 2012. Such a change in policy could result in adding around two million jobs in advanced economies over the next year, as opposed to only about 800,000 if current approaches persist.
The report charged that the combination of fiscal austerity and tougher labour market reforms – or deregulation – adopted by many advanced economies have proved devastating to job creation, in particular and largely ineffective in reducing fiscal deficits.
"Countries that have chosen job-centered macroeconomic policies have achieved better economic and social outcomes," according to Raymond Torres, the director of the ILO's International Institute for Labor Studies and the report's lead author. "Many of them have also become more competitive and weathered the crisis better than those that followed the austerity path."....
http://www.nupge.ca/content/4972/global-job-recovery-threatened-fiscal-a...
According to the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC), banks will no longer be required to resolve customer disputes through the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments (OBSI). The Minister of Finance made this announcement yesterday indicating that the government will publish new rules allowing multiple consumer banking arbitration services — effectively allowing Canadian banks to choose their own judge.
"The Minister knows regulations can't fix this. He had to pick between consumers and banks. He chose the banks," stated John Lawford, Counsel for PIAC. "The Minister has betrayed financial consumers by giving in to the bullying of banks."
Despite the Minister signing the G20's Final High-level Principles on Financial Consumer Protection. This agreement supported the common principles on financial consumer protection prepared by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Financial Stability Board (FSB) that require signatories to have "recourse to an independent redress process."....
http://www.nupge.ca/content/4979/harper-government-chooses-let-banks-pic...
New rules allowing employers to fast track Temporary Foreign Workers (TFWs) and pay them less than Canadians will have far-reaching and profoundly negative effects on the Canadian labour market, says the president of Alberta's largest union organization.
"With these changes, the federal government is allowing employers to use TFWs as pawns to drive down wages and conditions of work, even at a time when our hot economy here in Alberta suggests that they should be going up," says Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour.
"This is bad news for foreign workers because they'll get an even worse deal than they've already been getting. And it's horrible news for Canadians because it means that employers will start saying 'don't complain and don't demand more because if you do, we'll replace you with foreign workers.'"
McGowan's comments came in support of a joint statement made today in Ottawa by a number of national labour, religious and immigrant settlement organizations.
The statement, delivered by Hussan Yussuf, Secretary Treasurer of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), says that allowing employers to pay TFWs as much as 15 per cent less than the prevailing wage rate paid to Canadians for similar work will pit Canadians against foreign workers and, in the process, create a "permanent underclass" of TFWs....
http://www.afl.org/index.php/Press-Release/new-rules-allowing-employers-...
Canada was built on immigration of cheap labour. Nothing new there.
The rampage continues. Labour Day 2012: Get ready to rumble
In Ottawa, the Harper Conservatives have been drawing up war plans. When Parliament returns in a few weeks, a committee will be considering a Conservative private member's bill that would force unions to reveal unprecedented financial information, handing employers intelligence that could be used against their employees' unions.
On the provincial front, several parties have proposed U.S.-style "right to work" legislation. In Ontario, Premier Dalton McGuinty is circumventing the bargaining process and forcing new working conditions on teachers and other education workers.
The conflicts ahead will be hard-fought, and according to our research, those unions that are prepared to reach out beyond their membership to engage Canadians stand the best chance of success.