Tag: Labour

Where can we speak honestly about the weaknesses of the labour movement, offering constructive criticism and debating paths forward, without making the movement vulnerable to bad-faith attacks by neoliberal columnists and far-right ghouls? 

From live-in caregivers to meat packers, Filipino workers have been at the front lines of COVID – but have received little protection or recognition.

Celebrating the 40th anniversary of CUPW’s 1981 strike, which won postal workers paid maternity leave, and raised the floor for maternal benefits throughout Canada.

Defeat happens all the time in leftist campaigns, but very few leftists (including leftist media) have developed honest, helpful ways of talking about it.

Four Indigo stores have unionized in less than five months. It’s a lesson in how workers can play the pandemic to their advantage – leveraging social media and relying on community support to fight for lasting changes in their workplace.

Top Canadian companies were among the sponsors and attendees of Canada’s largest union-busting event, according to photos and documents obtained by Briarpatch.

When the pandemic took hold in March, the nature of my work as a doctor in remote communities in northern Quebec and Ontario changed drastically. The practice of medicine is defined by coping with uncertainty, but few had experienced the scope of the ambiguity through which we lurched. 

As precarious work becomes the norm, labour activists need to combine the best of our traditions with new approaches that respond to the changing realities of work. To do that, we look to the history of community unionism, worker centres, and whole worker organizing.

Amid COVID-19 and a global uprising against police brutality, the already intense demands and pressures that Black women face at work have become crushing. Hawa Mire convened a roundtable on Black women’s labour during these times

At a manufacturing plant in Ontario, Honda management maps out vulnerable “hot spots” on the shop floor as part of an effort to stop its workers from unionizing.

Toward an abolitionist approach to decent work for all

Who’s making bank off COVID-19, and who’s fighting back? A summary of Resource Movement and Briarpatch’s webinar, “Pandemic Profiteers & the Movements Trying to Stop Them”

From socially-distanced protests to virtual union drives, five vital signs of worker organizing during COVID-19

Militancy, “negative solidarity,” and fighting to win in Saskatchewan and Canada’s labour movement

Saskatchewan’s freezing evictions and Trudeau’s promising $2,000 to laid-off workers. But activists are calling for cancelling rent and more protections for workers.

City council voted to restrict body rub parlours to industrial areas, citing safety as a reason. But some workers say the decision will make their work more dangerous.

Workers want to nationalize the General Motors plant and build electric vehicles for Canada Post

After Unifor National president Jerry Dias was arrested on the Refinery Co-op picket line, the president of the Canadian Labour Congress flew in to support locked-out Unifor 594 members. It comes almost exactly two years after a bitter split, when Unifor disaffiliated from the CLC.

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.

In Honduras, women maquila workers are fighting back against the multinational garment companies that they say are endangering their health and safety.