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Magazine
Tough conversations about Canada’s labour movement
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?
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Magazine
Filipinos across Canada respond to pandemic inequalities
From live-in caregivers to meat packers, Filipino workers have been at the front lines of COVID – but have received little protection or recognition.
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Magazine
Raising the floor
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.
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Magazine
Facing loss honestly
Defeat happens all the time in leftist campaigns, but very few leftists (including leftist media) have developed honest, helpful ways of talking about it.
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Online-only
The story of the union drives sweeping Indigo stores
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.
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Online-only
Amazon, McDonald’s, A&W, Sleep Country, TJX Linked To Anti-Union Conference
Top Canadian companies were among the sponsors and attendees of Canada’s largest union-busting event, according to photos and documents obtained by Briarpatch.
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Magazine
The labour of care
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.
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Magazine
New traditions
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.
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Magazine
Working while Black
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
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Online-only
How Honda’s anti-union monitor works
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.
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Online-only
It’s time to talk about police in our unions
Toward an abolitionist approach to decent work for all
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Online-only
As millions suffer from the pandemic, who’s getting rich?
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”
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Online-only
Collective action is essential
From socially-distanced protests to virtual union drives, five vital signs of worker organizing during COVID-19
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Sask Dispatch
State of the unions
Militancy, “negative solidarity,” and fighting to win in Saskatchewan and Canada’s labour movement
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Is Saskatchewan doing enough for workers during COVID-19?
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.
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Sask Dispatch
City’s body rub parlour decision risks worker safety
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.
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Online-only
Oshawa could be the engine of a Green New Deal in Canada
Workers want to nationalize the General Motors plant and build electric vehicles for Canada Post
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Sask Dispatch Briefs
CLC throws support behind locked-out Refinery Co-op workers
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.
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Magazine
“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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Magazine
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.