#canadian strike

[concerned-third-party]

Solidarity with the B.C. ILWU port workers strike.

[janieunknownwriter]

p In this week’s show, Prof. Wolff discusses the massive strike of Canadian public employees; economics of the unemployed; business owners,executives and lawyers dominate US state legislatures; and how rising interest rates push the most vulnerable to the margins of US capitalism. In the second half of the show, Wolff interviews Anand Giridharadas on his new book, The Persuaders./p

[serchive]

charles out in q2 and the strike of charles and max being the only drivers on pole for 15 races in a row ended too

[leveragehunters]

I was going through my great grandfather's memoirs (born 3 March 1880) and came across this part, which feels eerily similar to our current times:

Our biggest handicap was the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918. With men off sick we were lucky to have 50 staff. Some would come back and more would go off. I was off two weeks myself. There were many deaths in the city.   The war was over and the men were returning from France. We were working a fifty hour week. With the men returning, the trend was to repress wages and frown on a reduction of working hours. My responsibility had been increased so as I was next to the superintendent. This was fine, except my wages were the same as the day I started. They said, "You are doing a good job, but with the men returning that is all we can pay you." There was general upset. The returned men were dissatisfied with the wages offered, not only with our company and the warehouse business, but with what was being offered in general.

He then goes on to explain how they met with the Trade and Labour Council to form a union and present their demands (which were union recognition, basic wage of $180.00 a month, an eight hour day in a year's time, and a two year contract), but it all went to hell because of spies reporting back to the bosses and scabs who refused to honour the strike.

After the second day they flooded back like sheep. At Ashdown the travellers and buyers worked the warehouse without interruption of service. The strike was a washout. I was out of a job!

The night before the strike was scheduled to start the bosses even resorted to the closest they had to social media 105 years ago.

The Evening paper carried an advertisement, by all companies concerned, advising that all employees absent from work for three days, would be discharged.

(The memoirs are 180 typed pages, so I may post more bits as they catch my eye)

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Non-binary Montrealer Alexe Frederic Migneault entered day six of a hunger strike on Saturday as part of a bid to pressure Quebec’s public health insurance board to add a third gender option to its health cards. “It’s getting a little hard in the morning, especially,” Migneault, whose pronouns are they/them, said in a phone interview. “That’s the time when I have the least sugar in my blood and the least hydration, as well. So it’s always difficult.” Migneault says they’ve only ingested liquids — water, vegetable broth, sports drinks and the occasional hot chocolate — since they began their strike on Monday.

Continue Reading

Tagging @politicsofcanada

[chaoticlandworlder]

Max heard the streets say that he can't win races in places that start with 'm' and said 'aight, bet'

[sodrippy]

[ID: a header with the DNEG and IATSE logos. below this is an announcement reading "DNEG is unionizing. In a groundbreaking move, DNEG employees, including artists, production teams, supervisors, developers, and support staff, are banding together to establish two new IATSE VFX Local unions: Local 402 (British Columbia) and Local 401 (the rest of Canada). Their collective goal is to address pressing issues affecting the workforce, such as pay reductions due to strikes, the absence of performance raises amid inflation, and the burden of extended overtime. This initiative, supported by the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE)

end ID]

[drmajalis]

GRIND THIS COUNTRY TO A HALT! GENERAL! STRIKE!

[voice1101]

i know the meme is dead or whatever. but. well y'see.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"The category of race was also critical to the second pillar of the CFU’s [Canadian Farmworkers Union] organizing mission: ridding the industry of contractors. Contractors would supply the labour force for the farmers and, in many cases, they held as much power as the farmers. The contractor was responsible for hiring a workforce, maintaining discipline, and making payments. The farmer would not pay the workers directly; instead, the farmer would pay the contractor who, in many cases, would retain the money until the end of the season. In many instances, the contractor was also responsible for transporting workers between the field and their homes. Since labour contractors were trying to maximize profits, the vehicles they used to transport workers predictably violated many road safety standards. As Chouhan remembers, his first contractor: “came to pick me up in an Econoline van which had no seats in it, there were people sitting on the floor which was quite a shock [laughs]. No seat belts, no nothing.” Many workers have been killed due to accidents in these unsafe vehicles, and, as recently as 7 March 2007, three farmworkers died in a rollover accident while riding in an overcrowded vehicle between Abbotsford and Chilliwack. Often, contractors were from the same social and ethnic circles as the labourers whom they employed. Charan Gill identified a “colonial mentality” in comments made by farmworkers. Since the contractors who provided them with work shared familial and cultural ties with them, some of which could be traced back to Punjab, many farmworkers did not want to stand up to the contractors. Fears of losing jobs and housing were very real, and such losses could jeopardize their immigration status. Contractors who came from the same community as the workers could manipulate the latter into believing they were on their side, and, because of this, Gill notes: “in spite of our efforts, individual interests [of workers] sometimes invalidated collective interests [of their class]” because some of those workers aspired to be contractors. Simply getting safety information to farmworkers was also difficult. Since many of the workers could not read or write in English, and some were illiterate in their own languages, they were often dependent on information from the farmer and the contractor. Contractors could intentionally mislead, omit certain information, or outright lie to their workers about their legal rights. This delayed organizing efforts. To counter this information block, organizers would try to go to local temples on the weekends, where many workers went to pray. However, the labour contractors also had control over the temple executives, so organizers were often refused the right to speak. Frustrated, the organizers developed a two-part strategy. First, they would have “kitchen meetings” in which the organizer would contact one worker for a meeting in their home, and that worker would contact neighbours and friends, so “that way [they would] not [be] afraid to be seen by a labour contractor or in the temple or in a public place.” Second, because many families used the temples for social events, the organizers would ask family members to invite the CFU and thus circumvent the temple executives as organizers of social events had the “absolute right to invite anyone they want[ed].”

These strategies helped the CFU reach out to potential members and to provide valuable information regarding their legal rights. Unfortunately, despite the efforts of the CFU, contractors are still a part of the industry to this day, and anyone driving through the agricultural areas of British Columbia’s Lower Mainland can witness the painted-over shuttle buses that daily transport farmworkers from home to field."

- Nicholas Fast, ““WE WERE A SOCIAL MOVEMENT AS WELL”: The Canadian Farmworkers Union in British Columbia, 1979–1983,” BC Studies. no. 217, Spring 2023. p. 44-45.

[sylvies-chen]

I’m not a political blog, I am aware of this, but the strike situation with education workers in Ontario right now is insane and if you’re someone who can’t see why these strikes are so important, you are part of the problem.

My mother was an English teacher for 30 years but is now retired. She stays in touch with her former colleagues, many of whom are still teachers. She spoke with one of them the other day, who is still an Educational Assistant. This woman has $400 dollars in her bank account, and will be spending $150 for a car repair. She has bills that companies are hounding her for that she can’t pay. Her husband is trying to get more work but they will most likely need to go to a food bank to survive. One of the students she works with attacked her the other day (the product of a breakdown where he wasn’t in control of his actions, and she has repeatedly stated she doesn’t blame him which shows the kindness in her heart). She has a bruise on her leg the size of a football because the kid threw a chair at her. Those are the kinds of things she has to go through for her job, and she is still not getting paid enough money to pay her bills and buy food to fucking survive.

Conservatives who do not want to raise wages for education workers will claim that school needs to continue no matter the cost. They will try to enforce this very real possibility that the government, for the first time in history, use the notwithstanding clause to prohibit further protest by teachers. They will happily celebrate the suppression of unions without ever seeing firsthand what EAs, guidance counselors, teachers, secretarial staff, and support workers in classrooms have to go through every day. So if you live in Ontario, please go picket if you can and support the education workers in your community. They deserve some love— and they deserve to get paid.

[stephobrien]

Canadians who want to urge their government to support the ICJ ruling on Israel's attack on Gaza can find their Member of Parliament here:

[therinfal]

band shirt: $25 usd :-)

shipping: $23 usd :-(

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Ariane Lalonde pays more than $1,200 a month for a studio apartment she's converted to a two bedroom in Montreal — and she's had enough.

"We're all paying way too much," said Lalonde, who feels that she should be paying at most $800 or $900 for the space she's renting.

"My generation, we won't be able to have a house," she said. "I never thought I would not be able to when I was young. I took that for granted. It's insane."

Full article

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[survivingcapitalism]

“There is a cost of living crisis, there is a cost of housing crisis, there is a cost of food crisis”: A Q&A with labour expert Stephanie Ross

[...]

Tenants’ unions and associations are not new, but they are becoming more noticed as they take larger-scale actions to fight utterly unaffordable rents in major cities. While these are not “unions” in the same way that labour unions are—they aren’t negotiating working conditions and they don’t have legal standing to negotiate the way workers’ unions do—they are really important forms of collective action on the part of working-class people.  The amount of money people need to make to afford a modest one- or two-bedroom apartment in major Canadian cities is mind-boggling. I know a couple with two kids, both working professional jobs in Toronto, who were recently renovicted and whose monthly rent increased from $2,300 to $3,400 per month. There is no union powerful enough to get people a wage increase high enough to cover that increased rent, so the price of housing has to be directly targeted.