“They thought they was gonna play with these amigos, and they said, ‘aw yeah, we rise together, homie.’ And they leaving! And they not bullshitting!” On July 31, over a non-union hundred workers, led by Latino workers, walked off the job at an Indiana UPS superhub. The workers, mostly contractors (millwrights, welders, conveyor installers and Continue readingWeekend Video: “The Mexicans shut this motherfucker down”
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“If they don’t win the struggle here, it’s just going to get worse across the country. I think we’ve just seen the tip of the iceberg…” The right-wing assault On July 7 1983, British Columbia’s newly re-elected Social Credit (Socred) government brought forward an unprecedented “restraint” budget (aka austerity) and 26 pieces of legislation to Continue readingWeekend Video: BC’s Solidarity movement
It is often hoped and assumed that union stewardship of pension investments will produce tangible and enduring benefits for workers and their communities while minimizing the negative effects of what are now global and intensely competitive capital markets. At the core of the book The Contradictions of Pension Fund Capitalism is a desire to question Continue readingWeekend Video: The Contradictions of Pension Fund Capitalism
Goodbyes are a ritual for Delroy. A migrant worker from Jamaica, he spends six months of every year working in the tobacco fields of southwestern Ontario. He is the only breadwinner for his wife and six children. His family’s survival hinges on his annual departure for Canada each spring; a journey he has made for Continue readingWeekend Video: Babe, I Hate To Go
Between 1949 and 1956 the small town of Dresden, in South Western Ontario, Canada, was the scene of an aggressive campaign by the National Unity Association to end anti-black racism and discrimination. The courage and determination of folks like Hugh Burnett and his allies in the Labour Movement resulted in the passing of the Fair Continue readingWeekend Video: Welcome to Dresden
The night before his assassination in April 1968, Martin Luther King told a group of striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee: “We’ve got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point in Memphis. We’ve got to see it through”. King believed the struggle Continue readingWeekend Video: I Have Been to the Mountaintop
The Last Pullman Car follows the efforts of the United Steelworkers Local 1834 to prevent the Pullman-Standard Company from shutting down operations in Pullman, Chicago. The plant had opened in 1864 when George Pullman began selling his famous railroad sleeping cars. Yet in 1981, the industrial empire began to break down, leaving the Pullman workers Continue readingWeekend Video: The Last Pullman Car
In Toronto, Izabel, Bebeth, Natasha, Benoît, Grace and Jean, members of Ontario’s “working poor” directly affected by the economic crisis, agree to take part in group sessions organized by filmmaker Geoff Bowie. They talk about having to work multiple jobs to get by, describe the stress generated by financial vulnerability, and courageously explain their strategies Continue readingWeekend Video: Courage
A Matter of Survival, a 1969 short narrative film produced by the National Film Board of Canada. The film looks at the impacts the introduction of a computer has in the workplace. Managers and workers deal with their anxiety and fears about job loss and changing nature of work due to automation. A Matter of Continue readingWeekend Video: A Matter of Survival
On October 16 12,000 faculty, librarians, and counsellors, represented by OPSEU, at 26 Ontario colleges went on strike. The three core demands of the strikers were a 50:50 ratio of full-time to contract faculty, job security for partial-load faculty, and academic freedom. The three proposals would be beneficial to both faculty and to students, as Continue readingWeekend Video: Ontario college faculty strike
This documentary by acclaimed filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin introduces us to Randy Horne, a high steel worker from the Mohawk community of Kahnawake, near Montreal. As a defender of his people’s culture and traditions, he was known as “Spudwrench” during the 1990 Oka crisis. Offering a unique look behind the barricades at one man’s impassioned defence Continue readingWeekend Video: Spudwrench – Kahnawake Man
A clear-eyed documentary look at the rise of the Union movements in Chicago during the ’30s, combining archive material and contemporary interviews with three women union organisers. The women, two white, one black, talk separately with clarity and conviction about working conditions during the Depression and the need to organise into unions. In the ensuing Continue readingWeekend Video: Union Maids