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Suffocated by the steel giant
Tony Buttaro is a Hamilton steelworker who injured his back at work. He later became a supervisor who had compassion for his workers. Tony paid dearly for these two things. He ended up physically and mentally traumatized. The retirement he had long dreamed about was destroyed.
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Toronto Labour Council Organizes Stewards’ Assembly
In an environment where working people in Ontario have suffered major setbacks, organized labour’s response has so far been disappointing. The May 7th coming together of over 1,600 stewards, workplace representatives, staff, and other union reps in Toronto around the necessity of fighting against attacks by employers and governments was an unprecedented and impressive exception that brought some hope for forward motion.
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In pursuit of leisure: A political imperative
What were to happen if we were to challenge our existing social structure by demanding a shorter working day? With more time to pursue personal creative efforts and desires, society could move away from a state of near-constant fatigue and towards a more just society; a society that could focus on more grave concerns that the planet’s neglected majority face on a daily basis.
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On the 90th anniversary of the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike
Canadian mythology holds that this is a peaceful country. There¹s no class struggle here, we never had a revolution. The Canadian way is discussion, compromise and mutual respect. We have evolution, not revolution. But if Canada is such a peaceful place, how to explain the revolts, rebellions, uprisings and pitched battles that dot our history? How can they explain Mackenzie, Papineau, Riel, Poundmaker, and other rebels whose actions have disrupted the peaceful flow of Canadian development?
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The Winnipeg General Strike
The Winnipeg General Strike is a landmark in North America by any measure. From mid-May to late June 1919 – for six weeks – about 35,000 workers – the bulk of Winnipeg’s labour force – walked off the job and risked hunger, blacklisting, and potential police and military repression. The event has often been commemorated by the labour movement in the city as it is this week; and sometimes more widely. There was, for instance, a tremendous exhibit in 1994 at the Manitoba Museum to mark the 75th anniversary, and a long-standing bus tour that many of you will have taken.
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Setting the Record Straight
Tyler McCreary’s Tough Union, Tough Lessons would be a useful contribution to the important post-mortem of a strike ended wrong, if not for the fact that most of the evidence upon which his arguments are premised bears little resemblance whatsoever to the historical record.
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Mayworks
Everything labour across Canada. Festivals of “workers as artists” are happening across the country this May and we have the only national calendar of Mayworks events. From Vancouver Island to Ottawa, head out to a film screening, art-exhibit, May Day march, or workshop and help support worker creativity.
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Tough union, tough lessons
Over the last three decades in Canada, governments’ neoliberal policies have created a crisis of under-funding in post-secondary education. With steep funding cuts, universities and colleges have looked to other measures to balance their books: increasing tuition and ancillary fees, soliciting greater private funding and implementing cost-reduction measures like increased reliance on contract faculty to teach courses. The present economic crisis has further exacerbated the financial situation at many universities, as cash-strained investors restrict their donations, universities’ sizable endowment funds bleed with investment losses, and deficit-laden governments balk at increasing education funding.
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York University’s get of jail free card
The longest university strike in English Canada came to an unhappy end on January 29, 2009, in a manner that should send a wake-up call to an entire labour movement already on the defensive. After 85 days on the picket line in an effort to reverse the trend towards casualized teaching in post-secondary institutions, the contract professors and graduate-student workers of CUPE 3903 were legislated back to work by a Liberal-Conservative coalition. One by one, MPPs stood up to vote for Bill 145, as picketers outside could be heard singing the words, “we’ll not stand for this.” Within days, there were reports of imminent legislation forcing Ottawa transit workers back on the job. Within a week, 70,000 elementary school teachers accepted a tentative agreement after being told to “watch the situation at York very closely.”
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Thinking through the York University strike
The recent strike by CUPE 3903, which represents the contract faculty, teaching assistants and graduate assistants at York University, has left deep divisions in the union and on campus. In a heated discussion about the merits of the two articles we commissioned, the Dimension collective generated a number of questions over which no agreement emerged. We thought it would be useful to share these questions with our readers.
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