In the past few weeks the already very publicized loophole of the Foreign Temporary Worker Program (aka FTWP), which was already a hot issue in […]
Tag: Labour Issues
Conservative Sabotage: Why we need Canada Post
There’s really no other way to put it; Canada Post is being sabotaged. It’s politically expedient for the Tories to do so as recently announced […]
Free Trade with US and Canada Means Busier Days for Port Buenaventura and Colombian Workers
The 5000 port workers who move 1200 containers of cargo per day are not the only contributors to the portside throng. There are truck drivers, stevedores, private security hired by companies and government agents who are in place to check area regulated by the Port Authority for narcotics and smuggling…
Caterpillar Crawls Away
The locked-out Electro-Motive plant in London, Ontario has decided to close the plant permanently. The announcement comes just over a month after Progress Rail decided to lockout its workers citing operating costs as its main motivation. Progress Rail Services Corp., a subsidiary of U.S. construction equipment conglomerate Caterpillar that owns the Electro-Motive plant had locked out its unionized workers on New Year’s Day…
June Rants: Posties aren’t the only ones looking for work
Good Tuesday folks, It’s been a month or so since I’ve written a rant, so I may seem a slight bit rusty at it. Here goes nothing. The month of June has so far been quite eventful, from doing the spoken-word and visual art shows, along with Car Stories and Infringement Therapy, in the Montreal Infringement Festival this year to getting attacked by a gorilla named Ace at the fringe. Crazy days. The month of June has also caused me some suffering at the hands of the Federal government and the postal service…
Labour unions under attack
On Saturday, the House of Commons led by Stephen Harper and his Conservative Party passed back-to-work legislation in order to force urban postal workers to return to work. I’m not opposed to back-to-work laws in general; virtually all unionized public workers are susceptible to these types of laws when there is a prolonged failure to reach a bargaining agreement. However, I am a little bitter at the speed and manner with which it was imposed this time around…
The Night Shift: NDP attempt to fillibuster back to work legislation
As I write this it is twenty past seven in the morning Friday and the night shift has just ended at the House of Commons. I speak not of the doubtless dedicated cleaning crew, but rather of the night shift of NDP MPs who will, in the words of a poet, “rage against the dying of the light”….
Solidarity with posties! Why you should be supporting your postal workers…
It’s on! The Canadian Union of Postal Workers has officially embarked on a series of rotating strikes throughout Canada. The strike, the first in almost 15 years, began Thursday night in Winnipeg. It then continued on to Hamilton, Ontario on Friday and then to Montreal Sunday night. The strike will hit another Canadian city every few days indefinitely until an agreement with the Canada Post Corporation (CPC) is made.
The reasons for the strike concern major issues associated with the corporation’s…
Wisconsin: The battle for the soul of America
Have you heard about Wisconsin? This Saturday crowds estimated at up to 100,000 descended on the state capitol of Madison to protest the most earth-shattering attack on unions and the middle class since Reagan fired the Air-Traffic controllers in 1981. Support demonstrations numbering in the tens of thousands were held in cities across the country. But you would be forgiven if you missed the news…