Leslie interviewed a worker about her job in the time of COVID-19. Carol started at her company in a manual labour role. It was a full-time union job – a job she enjoyed. She’s now a sales representative, which is a more lucrative position. She needed to take on this non-union role to support her […]
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Canada is opening up after varying degrees of restrictions due to COVID-19. Retail stores, cafes, bars and restaurants, hairdressers and many workplaces are restarting operations. Of course, many businesses and workplaces deemed essential (some rather dubiously, like building luxury condos or pipelines) never closed. Schools in most provinces are closed, apart from provision for some […]
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Written by a BC teacher. After weeks of hearing about the nightmare of states in the US reopening their economies amid the COVID-19 pandemic, we knew it was coming. The reopening of the Canadian economy! Granted, the pandemic has not been as devastating in Canada as in the US, but that doesn’t say much. The […]
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The word “hero” is in vogue these days. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the importance in our society of nurses, cleaners, and grocery store workers to millions. Most Canadians are rightly grateful for the labour of these workers, who are doing their best to contain the pandemic and keep the country fed, often at great […]
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In 1983, The Police, recorded a song called “Synchronicity.” Some of the lyrics: We know you, they know meExtrasensorySynchronicityA star fall, a phone call,It joins all,Synchronicity The word synchronicity generally has positive connotations and is briefly defined as a “meaningful coincidence.” Could it be a coincidence, meaningful or otherwise, that the Ontario Minister of Education […]
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The path to remote teaching starts with cautious curiosity, goes through enraging frustration and ends with a tired, tenacious and uninspired slog. The Cautious Curiosity COVID-19 has shutdown physical K-12 classrooms across Canada. In BC spring break ended on March 30, not with a return to school but with teachers logging onto their computers to […]
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One of the most blatant examples of capitalism’s relentless pursuit of profits at all costs is being played out in High River, Alberta. Cargill’s meatpacking plant in High River has had the largest single-site outbreak of COVID-19 in Canada. With links to more than 1,200 COVID-19 cases as of April 29, 821 workers have tested […]
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Foodora Food delivery company that worked with 3,000 restaurants in 10 cities across Canada has announced the closure of its operations, effective mid-May. Foodora said it was unable to keep operating “without having to continually absorb losses.” It further said that it has not been able to reach a level of profitability in Canada that’s […]
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The COVID-19 pandemic is exposing all the more clearly the fundamental failings of the capitalist economic system that we live under. Even before the pandemic, capitalist states have allowed for growing inequality, mass poverty, environmental destruction, and oppression of poor and working-class people both at home and even more so in places subject to colonialism […]
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On April 3, the Canadian government awarded Amazon the contract to distribute personal protective equipment and supplies during the COVID-19 disaster.A couple of days earlier Amazon had fired a New York worker, Chris Smalls, for helping to organize a strike over the lack of safety provision in Amazon’s Staten Island warehouse. On April 14, Amazon […]
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