By Zaid Noorsumar Ontario’s new home and community care legislation will likely become law by the end of the month with virtually no public consultation, even as it impacts over 700,000 annual care recipients who require personal support services, nursing care, physiotherapy and other services. Instead of addressing the myriad problems that have plagued the Continue reading“We need a public, not-for-profit home care system”
privatization
By Zaid Noorsumar Premier Doug Ford and his PC government are moving ahead with their new home and community care legislation. According to the Ontario Health Coalition, the legislation will further enable privatization of home care and remove the existing provisions of public control and accountability. The legislation was being pushed through the Ontario legislature Continue readingFord government moving ahead with home care privatization bill
by Blake McCallHamilton bus driver and member of ATU Local 107 On Thursday December 12 the Amalgamated Transit Union Canada staged an info picket at the Voyago Headquarters in London, Ontario. ATU locals from across southern Ontario participated, as well as members of OPSEU and the London and District Labour Council. The action was called Continue readingVoyago drive is frontline against transit privatization
By Barbara Madeloni “Don’t start those buses tomorrow,” said Joe White, executive director of the West Virginia School Service Personnel Association. He was announcing the second statewide education strike in West Virginia in a year, alongside the leaders of the state’s two teacher unions. The next morning, February 19, buses throughout the state sat idle Continue readingWest Virginia Strikes Again, Defeating Privatization Bill in a Single Day
By Robert Devet Last summer Shirley Peck, a cleaner at CFB Greenwood, a military base in rural Nova Scotia, was told that she was to be laid off, and that her well paying job would be contracted out. She was devastated. The contractor offered Peck and her colleagues, all women, a job paying about $11 Continue readingThe union local that fought privatization and won
By John Bell In October 2014 the business press reported: “Carillion Canada fined $900,000 for not properly clearing QEW during two storms.” What then seemed an isolated bit of corporate irresponsibility takes on a different character with today’s news that Carillion’s British parent company, a world leader in Public-Private Partnership (P3) deals, has gone bankrupt. Continue readingCarillion crash
By Toby Sanger In their election platform and in ministerial mandate letters, the federal Liberals promised they would “establish the Canada Infrastructure Bank to provide low-cost financing (including loan guarantees) for new municipal infrastructure projects.” This had the potential to be a positive initiative. The federal government can borrow at very low rates — significantly Continue readingCanada Infrastructure Bank paving the road for privatization
by James Wilt It’s a tale of corporate extortion and government negligence that has become all too familiar. For the past six months, OmniTRAX — one of the largest private rail companies in North America — has been holding the tiny northern Manitoba town of Churchill hostage after unprecedented flooding damaged much of the company’s Hudson Continue readingChurchill, Manitoba’s privatization nightmare
We Own It! is a campaign launched by OPSEU in coordination with community groups in 2016 to keep public services public. The campaign is focused on battling privatization and strengthening public services across Ontario. They have been holding community forums and protests across the province.
Editor’s introduction: This is the second half a two-part series on how austerity has damaged public transit. In this article Blake McCall, a Hamilton bus operator and ATU Local 107 member, and Caitlin Craven, a CUPW Local 548 and local Fight for $15 and Fairness organizer, examine how decades of underfunding has undermined Hamilton’s transit Continue readingHamilton transit in the Age of Austerity
Editors introduction: This is the first article in a two-part series by Blake McCall, a Hamilton bus operator, and Caitlin Craven, a member of CUPW Local 548 and organizer with Hamilton’s Fight for $15 and Fairness. In this first article, McCall and Craven take a look at the big picture of campaigns against privatization and argue Continue readingKeeping Transit Public in the Age of Austerity
By Evan Johnston Transit workers in Hamilton have launched a new campaign to keep the city’s public transportation system — and specifically, the city’s newly approved Light-Rail Transit (LRT) — under public control. The campaign, “Keep Transit Public,” was launched on June 15 by Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 107, the union representing drivers, maintenance workers, Continue readingHamilton fights to keep transit public