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Canadian Dimension May/June 2011
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May/June 2011: Precarious labour: a special issue

Volume 45, Issue 2

Mayday is the day each year when workers around the world celebrate working-class movements and commemorate our historic struggles for a living wage, safe working conditions, and reduced work time. This issue of Dimension analyzes Wisconsin’s magnificent protest movement to defend public sector unionism, the campaign of Ontario’s Coalition Against Poverty to “raise the rates” and Hamilton’s Steel Workers Local 1005 battle to protect workers’ pensions.

This issue also offers a special focus on precarious work, by far the fastest growing category – comprising 35-40 percent – of all jobs in Canada. They pay way less, draw no benefits, call in workers only as needed, and they are non-union. No wonder employers favour them. Our articles cover a wide array of precarious labour, from tree planters to care givers and from students to temp work.

This past year has been an extraordinarily active one for labour and social movements in Canada. Harsha Walia gives an inspiring account of the campaigns for environmental justice, boycott divestment sanctions to end Israeli apartheid, shutting down the tar sands and the Enbridge pipeline, the nine month strike against the mining giant Vale, the protests against police brutality and racist immigration policies; and the establishment of workers assemblies, the rise of a young feminist movement, independent media including participatory media through media co-ops, bookfairs, legal defense networks such as the Movement Defense Committee, organic gardens and farms, autonomous peer-run safe spaces and drop-ins for street and queer/trans youth.

  • Harper’s Drive to Demolish Dissent
    Editorial
  • Around the Left in 60 Days
    Karen Macintosh
  • Chief Ralph: 1947-2011
    David McLaren
  • Labour Report
    Herman Rosenfeld
  • Emperor’s New Cloths
    Judy Deutsch
  • Rebelles
    Erin Vosters
  • Québec Communiqué
    Roger Rashi
  • Precarious Labour
    Cy Gonick
  • Precarious Workers, Precarious Lives: Ontario’s Private Health Care Secret
    Chris Webb, Adrie Naylor and Euan Gibb
  • The Plea for the Planter: Time to Clean Up Bad Labour Practices in B.C. Forestry Camps
    Ken MacDiarmid
  • Students and Precarious Labour
    Elise Thorburn
  • The Making of a Global Disposable Workforce: The rise of Canada’s “Renta- Worker” Program
    Macolm Guy and Marie Boti
  • Cafe Culture in an Era of Precarious Employment
    Tonya Davidson and Georg Rafailidis
  • Working Through the Loopholes Undermining Workplace Gains, One Temp Worker at a Time
    Joey Calugay, Mostafa Henaway and Eric Shragge
  • 2011: Reflecting on Social Movement Successes in Canada
    Harsha Wallia
  • Bringing a Struggling Ideology to its Knees
    Michael A. Lebowitz
  • Harper’s Hitlist
    Dylan Roberts
  • Raise the Rates
    John Clarke
  • Their Struggle is Our Struggle
    June Corman and Chris Walsh
  • Stop the Keystone XL
    Dave Coles
  • Media as Insurgent Art
    Chris Webb
  • Book Marks
    Dylan Roberts, Ashley Titterton and Judy Deutsch
  • On the Edge
    Lesley Hughes
Noam Chomsky, linguist and author

With the world veering from one potential catastrophe to another, in many different domains, it has never been more important to have clear, critical thinking and analysis that is not restricted by dominant ideologies. Canadian Dimension has performed that function very effectively; a contribution of unusual importance.

— Noam Chomsky, linguist and author. SUBSCRIBE NOW!