The politicians, employers, and the wealthy say there’s never enough money for better wages, better services, infrastructure expansion…and while governments contract out millions in public money to the likes of consulting firm KPMG to investigate cost saving measures in public services, KPMG is facilitating tax avoidance by the wealthy. Here is the CBC’s investigative program Continue readingWeekend Video: KPMG & Canada’s wealthy tax avoiders
Videos
Set in the early 20th century, The Killing Floor portrays the story of Frank Custer, a black sharecropper who leaves his family in Mississippi in search for work in Chicago. He ultimately finds work on the “killing floor” in one of the (in)famous slaughterhouses, where he befriends Bill Bremer, a German immigrant who is determined Continue readingWeekend Video: The Killing Floor
Bill Fletcher Jr. gave the keynote address at the 4th Annual Conference of the Canadian Association for Work and Labour Studies. Bill Fletcher Jr. has been an activist since his teen years. Upon graduating from college he went to work as a welder in a shipyard, thereby entering the labour movement. Over the years he Continue readingWeekend Video: Trump and the future of the labour movement
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
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