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Graphic novels for leftist readers
Leftist reads are often dense and difficult to understand. Thankfully, there are many graphics novels that cover the same issues in a more accessible format.
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A Marxist reader for disorienting times
A reading list to help leftists face the conditions within which we organize without consolation or despair.
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Magazine
The case for a prisoners’ union
Organizing prisoner workers is the first step toward abolishing prisons.
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Magazine
A reading list on labour’s role in a just transition
A transition to a sustainable economy is a monumental task that will require transformative change. Whether this transition is just, democratic, and reflective of the scale of the crises we face is still to be determined.
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Magazine
Indigenous labour struggles
From leading one of British Columbia’s earliest strikes to fighting against low wages and racist bosses, some pivotal moments in Indigenous labour history.
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Magazine
How Quebec workers won – and kept – anti-scab laws
If anti-scab legislation is to be extended across Canada, the NDP’s best efforts and the Liberals’ reluctant co-operation might not be enough. The history of the Quebec labour movement can show us how to fight for anti-scab legislation.
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Magazine
Building farm worker power
Across Canada, farm workers are facing hotter summers and extreme weather, while being denied basic labour protections like a minimum wage. The farm workers organizing within the National Farmers Union want to change agriculture’s unsustainable conditions.
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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