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Fragmentation in Toronto’s Hotel Sector
LabourIndeed, for hotel workers – largely immigrants, women, and people of colour – raiding is an expensive distraction that divides workers and gives employers an advantage. What several of these commentaries fail to acknowledge is that in the current structure of organized labour, fragmentation is actually the norm and unity is the exception. Fragmented union representation in the hotel sector is a prime example of this reality and has been this way for some time.
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Workers strike back: Ontario’s minimum wage
LabourThe business backlash to the minimum wage increase has sparked a desire to broadly organize those in low-wage, precarious work, and to reform legislation so as to make that process more feasible. And while the developing news around UNIFOR’s disaffiliation from the Canadian Labour Congress could stymie the collaborate efforts of local activists to push back against the bosses, there is hope that a new era of organization might be just beginning.
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Amazon Is a 21st-Century Digital Chain Gang
GlobalizationWhen Amazon announced plans to locate a $5 billion complex as its second headquarters somewhere in North America, state governments fell over themselves offering billions in tax abatements and corporate subsidies to secure the prize. It might behoove the remaining 20 cities that have made the final cut to heed the warning from Virgil’s Aeneid: “I fear the Greeks, even when they are bearing gifts.” Especially when the gifts come in the form of a modern-day digital chain gang.
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Crisis in the Canadian Labour Movement
LabourOn January 17th, 2018 the Canadian labour movement was plunged into a crisis with the exit of Unifor from the Canadian Labour Congress and the launching of raids on bargaining units of UNITEHERE Local 75. This open letter is intended as an urgent call for leaders in our movement, at every level, to strive to find a solution to this potential rupture before it becomes irreparable.
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Skip the Dishes: Poster child for precarious work
LabourLow pay and instability keeps workers wondering if there isn’t a better deal somewhere else. Capitalism from the beginning has been driven by monopoly, efficiency and the elimination of expenditure. The digital job brokers of the sharing economy embody that same ethos. So while companies like SkipTheDishes suggest the inevitability of indentured digital labour, it’s up to the rest of us to organize and demand a future where technology and work are not needlessly contradictory terms.
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Precarious workers fight for their rights!
LabourUnhappy about a potential loss of earnings and increased precarity, angry Deliveroo drivers gathered outside the company’s London headquarters to protest. Bosses maintained this new contract offered increased flexibility and opportunity to boost wages, but due to the over-employment typical of gig economy companies, workers feared they could end up earning less than half the National Living Wage (the United Kingdom minimum wage for workers 25 or over).
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Why is Canadian labour so slow to support BDS?
Human RightsIn the South African anti-apartheid struggle, the tide turned when rank and file activists organized in union halls and on convention floors in support of the international boycott movement. Today, Palestine solidarity activists within the labour movement must come together, chart a strategy to educate, mobilize and organize workers to support the Palestinian people
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Defending the rights of injured workers
LabourThe struggle for decent work and workers’ compensation are inextricably linked. We must fight for employment standards that treat workers with dignity and respect, and we must also struggle for workers’ compensation that supports people through their injuries. This is a powerful moment for the injured worker movement and $15 and Fairness to join forces in the rising tide against austerity.
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$15 and Fairness Shakes Up Ontario
LabourWorkers in Ontario are now realizing that they can fight and win significant changes in the workplace. The union movement should double down on this victory by putting its resources into organizing, effective contract campaigns and properly funding campaigns that speak to the broader working class. Passively sitting back and waiting for the election would be a fatal mistake.
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Fifteen plus: the minimum wage & austerity in Québec
LabourAt a time when the people of Québec have been repeatedly demonized in English Canada for being more susceptible to racism and Islamophobia, it is critical to remember how deep class politics runs in Québec. The fight for decent wages and working conditions is part and parcel of the “trampoline” of resistance to the capitalist agenda in Québec and the scapegoating politics of those who benefit from exploitation and racism.
