
Labour Issue
Our annual Labour Issue has stories about the risky business of sex work in the gig economy; airport workers organizing in Canada’s biggest workplace; how a Canadian garment company is fleecing women maquila workers in Honduras; the reinstatement of Canada’s prison farms; a planned economy for a just transition; Alberta’s public-sector unions rising to meet the challenge of a UCP government; and student journalists reviving the labour beat. Plus a book review, comic, and interview with writing contest judges.
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Magazine
The climate case for working less
The argument for a reduced work week asks: why do we work to produce so much more than we can possibly use? Why not work less, waste less, distribute better, and enjoy the age of abundance that we’ve been promised?
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Striking for the common good
Teachers bargaining for the common good contains the seed of radical change – and I mean “radical” in the same way that Angela Davis uses it, meaning “grasping at the root.”
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The literal – and literary – futures we build
Briarpatch editor Saima Desai talks to two judges of our Writing in the Margins contest about Idle No More and MMIWG, ethical kinship, writing queer sex, and their forthcoming work.
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“At least hookers get wages”
If sex were factored out of the equation, sugaring would look a lot like the precarious gig economy jobs of Uber drivers or bike couriers. And – like in other web-based jobs – sugar babies in Montreal are struggling to develop collective strength with their fellow workers.
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The cost of a T-shirt
In Honduras, women maquila workers are fighting back against the multinational garment companies that they say are endangering their health and safety.
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Milking prison labour
Canada’s prison farms are being reopened. But when prisoners will be paid pennies a day, and the fruits of their labour will likely be exported for profit, there’s little to celebrate.
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Planes, trains, and workers’ gains
Toronto Pearson Airport is Canada’s largest workplace. There, workers are building up an organization that aims to match the airport’s power.
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Taking sex workers seriously
How have restrictive new laws like America’s FOSTA/SESTA and Canada’s PCEPA impacted sex workers’ labour conditions? Lindsay Blewett reviews Red Light Labour: Sex Work Regulation, Agency, and Resistance
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Bringing back the beat
In mainstream media, labour journalism has been replaced by financial reporting and business sections. But journalism students are raising the labour beat from the grave.
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A just transition requires a planned economy. But whose plan?
Corporate, for-profit planning, aided and violently enforced by the settler colonial state of Canada, will not bring about a just transition.