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Yes, you should just delete your apps
The only thing certain about the future of third-party delivery is that we cannot predict the next steps from these companies. But it’s a corner of the restaurant industry where we can take simple, direct action through our choices. For diners who love their city’s restaurants and want to see them survive, to make dining choices that put money directly in the pockets of restaurants, there is something we can do.
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Without care, we lose
Organizations can’t function effectively unless people tend to unstated tensions. Protest organizers can’t sustain militant direct action without people providing first aid and legal support. Parents and caregivers can’t participate in events unless people make intentional space for kids. In short, the success of movements frequently rests on their collective capacities to do caring labour consistently and well.
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Canada’s militant working class history
Returning to the graveside of trade unionist and a coal miner Joseph Mairs in Ladysmith, British Columbia, we are reminded of a powerful and inspiring history of working class people refusing to submit to exploitation and repression or give in to despair. Not only can we can learn from this history, but we can build on it at this challenging juncture.
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Alexa McDonough and the Third Way
Alexa McDonough began and ended her time as federal NDP leader presiding over the defeat of a left challenge. Her record with the Third Way was not one of resistance or subversion, but of alliance and collaboration with the steady rightward march of the party. Rather than mend ties with organized labour, she made an open turn to the business class.
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America’s new class war
There is one last hope for the United States. It does not lie in the ballot box. It lies in the union organizing and strikes by workers at Amazon, Starbucks, Uber, Lyft, John Deere, Kellogg, the Special Metals plant in Huntington, West Virginia, the Northwest Carpenters Union, Kroger, teachers in Chicago, and the members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees.
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Labor unions, environmentalists, and Indigenous people unite to defeat mining interests in Argentina
A zoning law would have opened up the southern Argentinian province of Chubut to large-scale mining by multinational corporations. But the law was defeated in just five days by an alliance of environmentalists, workers, youth, and indigenous people. Their fight points the way forward for other movements around the world.
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Swords into ploughshares
Simon Black, lead organizer with Labour Against the Arms Trade, speaks to Sam Gindin, former research director of the Canadian Auto Workers and co-author of The Making of Global Capitalism (with Leo Panitch), about the promise of repurposing the Canadian arms industry’s resources for socially useful production—and winning a just transition for arms industry workers.
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The neglected toll of violence against health care workers
When health care workers call a Code White, it’s an emergency response for a violent incident: a call for help. But it’s one that goes unanswered in hospitals, clinics, and long-term care homes across the country. In this excerpt from their new book, researchers Margaret M. Keith and James T. Brophy expose a shocking epidemic of violence that’s hidden in plain sight.
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No, unions aren’t job killers
On Monday, November 8, Matthew Lau, a right-wing writer who works for the Fraser Institute and Montreal Economic Institute, wrote a piece titled “Conservatives are wooing unions and killing jobs as a result” for Postmedia’s flagship paper. The piece suggests that Canadian conservative parties have abdicated traditional right-wing economics by cozying up to labour unions. This couldn’t be more mistaken.
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Loblaw sees ‘profit improvements’ in wage and benefit cuts
Twice since the pandemic began, the billionaire CEO of Loblaw Companies Ltd. has risked job action by the company’s low wage workers in a bid to cut their $2 pandemic premium pay. More than just cutting costs, this is about keeping workers desperate or—in the company’s words, “flexible.” Desperate workers tend to tolerate wage cuts to make them more desperate still. Every cut won will be used to aid the next one.