Photo: Canadian Labour Congress

All eyes have been on Alberta this week, where Rachel Notley’s NDP are busy getting ready to show the rest of Canada what progress without austerity can look like.

While Notley’s sweeping victory has many of us excited and full of hope, this week’s labour roundup proves that we’ve still got our work cut out for us.

Sorry to be such a downer, but it’s time to keep mobilizing.

Here we go!

 

  • Rolling teachers’ strikes continue in Ontario, as secondary school teachers walk the picket line in Durham, Peel and Sudbury. Negotiations will resume in Durham, though the teachers will remain on strike until a settlement is reached. They may soon be joined by elementary school teachers in Ottawa, Waterloo and elsewhere.

 

 

 

 

  • In that same vein, U.S.-based freelancer (sorry for disrupting the Canadian content) Sarah Grey explains why freelancers are not entrepreneurs and should recognize that they share interests with the rest of the working class.

 

  • Bill C-51 passed in the House this week. The Bill now moves to the Senate with few significant amendments.

 

  • And while we’re putting all the bad news out there, you should know that Rogers Media Inc has announced that it will be cutting 100 jobs from its television division, mostly from Omni stations which produce news casts in Cantonese, Italian, Mandarin, and Punjabi. Unifor has condemned the move and is calling for more funding for local multicultural television programming.

 

  • To leave it on a more chipper note, it’s worth noting that the Alberta NDP has promised to raise the provincial minimum wage to $15 an hour. Let that be a lesson to the rest of you provinces!

 

Ella Bedard is rabble.ca‘s labour intern and an associate editor at GUTS Canadian Feminist Magazine. She has written about labour issues for Dominion.ca and the Halifax Media Co-op and is the co-producer of the radio documentary The Amelie: Canadian Refugee Policy and the Story of the 1987 Boat People.

Photo: Canadian Labour Congress

Ella Bedard

Ella Bedard

Ella is a historian-come-journalist with fickle tastes and strong progressive principles. She has written about labour issues for Dominion.ca and the Halifax Media Co-op and is the co-producer of the...