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
Videos
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
At a packed meeting at the COP21 Paris UN climate conference in December 2015, Naomi Klein and UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn talk about how the trade union movement and the climate movement need to work together for a better world. This year on April 29, unions and the climate movement will be taking Continue readingWeekend Video: Trade Unions and Climate Change
A short documentary about Niagara Falls’ image to the world and the reality of life in the city. This 4 minute documentary was made by Ryerson students, who wanted to examine the impact that years of Liberal and Tory attacks on social programs and good jobs had on the region. The President of Ryerson apologized Continue readingWeekend Video: Niagara Falls
This past week was global asbestos awareness week. The community of Peterborough, once known as the “Electric City”, has been struck by generations of occupational cancer produced by General Electric. The Widows of Asbestos documentary captures the plight of the workers and widows in their struggle for justice, revealing the impact of occupational cancer, asbestos, Continue readingWeekend Video: The Widows of Asbestos
This documentary traces the history of the United Farmworkers Union and the life of its founder, Cesar Chavez, from his birth in Arizona, his education into organizing and non-violence, his formation of the union, to his death in 1993. It includes newsreel footage of the Delano grape boycott, Senate hearings conducted by Robert F. Kennedy, Continue readingWeekend Video: The Fight in the Fields
Director Min Sook Lee’s award-winning documentary follows the story of migrant workers who come to labour in Ontario greenhouses as part of Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program. Many are women recruited by brokers who illegally charge fees upwards of $7,000, with greenhouse owners complicit in the scam. The film examines the lives of a group Continue readingWeekend Video: Migrant Dreams
As months of protests and labour disruptions topple South Korea’s right-wing President Park Geun-hye, we look back at the 1997 strike wave which rocked the country. As a massive economic crisis swept East Asia in 1997 workers and students took to the streets, occupied factories and fought corporations and the government which tried to offload Continue readingWeekend Video: South Korea’s 1997 strike wave
An educational film by the Canadian Union of Public Employees made in 1975. “My husband, at first, he didn’t think much of my involvement in [the] union. He was quite displeased with my involvement. And, at one point, during negotiations after being away eleven says, when I got home he was real depressed and he Continue readingWeekend Video: Don’t call me baby
Harlan County, USA is a 1976 Oscar-winning documentary film covering the “Brookside Strike”, an effort of 180 coal miners and their wives against the Duke Power Company-owned Eastover Coal Company’s Brookside Mine and Prep Plant in Harlan County, southeast Kentucky in 1973. Directed and produced by Barbara Kopple, who has long been an advocate of Continue readingWeekend Video: Harlan County, USA
In December 2011 Bristol Radical History Group were invited to participate in a ‘history’ meeting in Detroit, USA. This gathering included ex-members (such as the late General Baker) of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, the radical black working class organization. Also present was Marvin Surkin, one of the authors of Detroit: I Do Mind Continue readingWeekend Video: League of Revolutionary Black Workers