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Education workers lead but come up short: What lessons for labour?
At this moment in time, writes author and researcher Sam Gindin, the over-riding political question is how we to organize ourselves so as to build that kind of working class. The Ontario CUPE education workers gave us a glimpse of what is needed and what is possible. Will the labour movement in Canada build on this? There is much more to be done.
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Biden and the Progressive Caucus smash labour strike on behalf of railway barons
While there is no doubt that Joe Biden, whose administration has already been characterized by high inflation, had plenty of political motivation to prevent an even deeper supply chain crisis by blocking the rail strike, the confidence private capital interests had in his willingness to prevent it from happening exposes the president’s “union-guy” persona as a façade.
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Migrant worker rights are bigger than FIFA
If we want to improve and ultimately dismantle the systems which enable the exploitation of migrant workers, our focus and solidarity must be extended across the globe. That begins by acknowledging that the reality in Qatar cannot be divorced from the Western-led globalized capitalist market economy that strips vulnerable people of their basic dignity while undermining workers rights everywhere.
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A first post-pandemic political victory—hardly a ‘general strike that could have been’
Moments of struggle always provide openings to build and move forward, and for workers who are participating, to learn key lessons and develop deeper consciousness and understanding. But every struggle and every moment aren’t necessarily similar. As a socialist, one has to look at the particularities of the experience and the potentials, and build on them.
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The general strike that could have been
When the OSBCU strike started, thousands of labour activists across the province were filled with a sense of hope; something all too rare in the labour movement these days. Not only was a union finally defying back-to-work legislation, but they were being joined by other unions, tacitly defying both the bans on solidarity strikes and wildcat strikes. What went wrong?
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Blink! Ford backs off
The Tories set off a bomb. But they were really just following the neoliberal agenda they brought with them to Queen’s Park in 2018: privatizing or diminishing everything that supports the public good—not building it up or making it last. Good neoliberals don’t want to pay proper wages, or ensure that governments meet basic needs like health care, food security, housing and education.
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Ford, CUPE, class struggle and the Charter
Doug Ford’s use of notwithstanding thus becomes a declaration that he is engaged in class war. The legal niceties do not matter. He has unleashed a weapon of mass destruction. The right response is for CUPE, and all those who want to support them, to fight the fight in the same spirit. It is time to show the dominant class that without workers, they would not have anything.
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Ontario government greets education workers with an iron fist
Not content simply to suppress the wages of public workers across the province, Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government of Doug Ford has fired a fresh barrage in its ongoing war: it aims to curb the right of education workers to strike. The new front the Conservative Party has opened against Ontario workers occurs at a moment of impasse in a specific contract negotiation.
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The time is now for real resistance to Ford’s austerity agenda
The time has come for real political resistance to Ford and his austerity agenda, writes doctoral student Ryan Kelpin. At the heart of this specific union contract are the foundations of decades of anti-worker politics that must be confronted head-on. These are battles that are won in the streets by rank-and-file unionists and their allies. We must support them.
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Pandemic lessons for rebuilding Canada’s welfare state
Despite much discussion about ‘lessons learned,’ there have been few efforts at actually adapting our social protection systems in the pandemic’s wake, writes researcher Chris Webb. There has been alarmingly limited recognition that our income support systems remain ill-equipped to deal with both the changing world of work and future crises.