“You don’t get me, I’m part of the union.” The Strawbs, 1973 Something is stirring among Canada’s workers. The percentage of unionized workers is up. This might seem surprising given the widespread closures and hundreds of thousands of layoffs due to COVID and the world recession. Jim Stanford (former economist at Unifor) wrote in the […]
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On January 28, Darwin Doloque, a 35-year-old Filipino worker, died from COVID-19. He was employed at the Olymel slaughterhouse in Red Deer in Alberta. Other workers from the slaughterhouse describe the fear of going to work, which they experience daily, as well as fear of reprisal for speaking out. At the peak in February there […]
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Capitalism’s COVID Disaster Women Organize Against Oppression Indigenous Struggles Continue The Struggle for Jobs and Climate US – China Cold War Will Continue Latin America: Struggle Returns Unite Here: A Fighting Local in BC Housing Crisis Ahead If you’d like to order paper copies, email us [email protected] Please make a donation towards our costs and […]
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Jason Kenney and the United Conservative Party (UCP) are driving Alberta over a cliff, their attention locked on the rear-view mirror as they focus on an ideological commitment to big business and an especially nasty addiction to fossil fuels. They have consistently underestimated COVID-19 and acted too little, too late. They have devastated the province’s […]
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Affordable Child Care Now! COVID-19, and the economic recession it triggered, has made it clear just how terrible the capitalist system is, particularly for working-class women and women-aligned folk. Women have been hit especially hard by the pandemic with the double-sucker punch of massive job losses and the ongoing lack of adequate childcare. There have […]
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There was that old Victorian, moralistic saying of drink being the curse of the working classes. Oscar Wilde wittily turned it around to read that work is the curse of the drinking classes. Can we consider work as a curse? A recent US survey found that 36 percent loved their job and was meaningful, nearly […]
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Update, November 25: Twelve days ago Kenney finally recognized the threat of COVID, and took some limited steps. However, it was too little and today he was forced to take more thorough actions. Even still his actions are too little and too late. Dr. Joe Vipond, a Calgary emergency room physician, stated “Now that our […]
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The Ford government in Ontario, using the COVID-19 crisis as an excuse, has launched an attack on the principle of union seniority as it pertains to the hiring of new teachers. The seniority principle, often simplified to “last in, first out” has been incorporated into the language of union collective agreements going back to the […]
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Among the many failings of our economic and political realities revealed by COVID-19, the most visible one is the fact that the pandemic is accentuating all the pre-existing inequalities. In fact, it has a much more devastating impact on oppressed sections of society who are already in fragile financial positions and living off precarious jobs. […]
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On Friday, October 2, a BC Supreme Court judge killed hopes of saving Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC). Usually courts rule in favour of the owners of property against other claims – such as granting an injunction to Coastal GasLink that led to the RCMP’s invasion of Wet’suwet’en lands. But in the MEC case the owners, the […]
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