The Organizer is a 1963 Italian-French-Yugoslavian film about about the rise of labor protests in Turin’s textile industry at the end of the 19th century. Workers fight for higher pay and for a safer workplace. The protests seem to have no result whatsoever until an intellectual, Professor Sinigaglia, helps the workers to mount a strike. Continue readingWeekend Video: The Organizer
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This panel discussion invites Toronto labour leadership to respond to a comparative book on labour strategy and political action in Toronto and New York City, titled Unions and the City: Negotiating Urban Change. The book discusses how local unions in four sectors (hospitality, film, green energy and childcare) seek to advance organizing and collective bargaining Continue readingWeekend Video: Unions and the City
As Friend and Foe, a National Film Board short film from 1980, is a brief look at the Canadian federal government’s relationship to workers: “as friend and foe” in shaping the architecture of Canada’s labour relations from 1900 to 1980. The film ends by observing that after 1975, the federal and provincial governments have ordered Continue readingWeekend Video: As Friend and Foe
This short film depicts the act of collective bargaining common to Canadian industry and shows how it affected a union, a company and a community. In Strike in Town the events that led to a deadlock in negotiations between management and employees at a furniture factory are staged against the backdrop of a one-industry town. Continue readingWeekend Video: Strike in Town
The 1941 film How Green Was My Valley, directed by John Ford, revolves around the life of the Morgans, a Welsh mining family, as told through the eyes of its youngest child Huw. Over the years, the family struggles to survive through unionization, strikes, and child abuse. As they do so, their hometown and its Continue readingWeekend Video: How Green Was My Valley
The Ottawa Committee for Pension Security (OCPS) co-hosted a panel discussion with the Congress of Union Retirees about Bill C-27, a bill that will give employers the tools they need to dump their defined benefit pension plan guaranteed promises, including the benefits already earned and paid for by active workers and retirees. Please take the Continue readingWeekend Video: Bill C-27’s attack on pensions
Deena Ladd has been working to improve wages and working conditions in sectors of work that are dominated with low-wages, violations of rights, precarious and part- time work for the past 25 years. Deena is one of the founders and a co-ordinator of the Toronto Workers’ Action Centre. The Workers’ Action Centre organizes to improve Continue readingWeekend Video: Fighting precarious work
Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) hosted a panel discussion during the Convention of the Canadian Labour Congress. The panelists discussed their experiences working with various solidarity coalitions and the need for a national solidarity network that can bridge the divide between labour and social movements. How can a solidarity coalition be used to build Continue readingWeekend Video: Building a National Solidarity Coalition
The idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) has been championed by both progressives and conservatives. Not everyone on the left, however, is behind the idea. Is the UBI a means of redistributing wealth, attacking poverty and protecting workers from technological displacement? Or will basic income serve to advance an agenda of austerity and privatization? Continue readingWeekend Video: Debating Basic Income
On May 9th 1992 an explosion ripped apart the Westray Coal Mine in Pictou County, Nova Scotia killing 26 miners. The Fifth Estate and the Journal co-produced this story about the tragedy. The mine was opened the year before despite misgivings that the geology of the area was unstable and prone to large volumes of Continue readingWeekend Video: Westray
As an organizer with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), John Clarke has been involved in poor people’s movements for over 25 years. He first became active in anti-poverty struggles in 1983, when he helped form the Union of Unemployed Workers in London, Ontario. In 1989, he was among the organizers of a province-wide March Continue readingWeekend Video: Fighting back against austerity
In Sarnia Ontario’s Chemical valley, life can be end painfully because of industry’s silent killers. About 1000 workers a year die each year on the job in Canada. Many more die slow painful deaths. Sarnia is home to one of the world’s largest petrochemical complexes, cancer rates and deaths linked to industrial pollution have soared. Continue readingWeekend Video: Widows of Chemical Valley