Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Thomas Walkom discusses how the McGuinty Libs are going beyond imposing immediate pay freezes on the public sector, and instead passing what’s better seen as the War on Workers Measures Act – giving Ontario’s government the power to dictate labour outcomes by decree
Continue readingTag: labour.
Accidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Althia Raj reports on the Cons’ concerted effort to undermine organized labour in Canada (along with anybody else who might object to putting the interests of dirty oil and dirty money above the needs of citizens): Behind the rhetoric about “union bosses” and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – The CCPA’s Christopher Schenk offers up a detailed response to the Sask Party’s attacks on workers, featuring this conclusion: In a period of widening inequality restrictive labour laws are blatantly unnecessary and regressive. Indeed, their consideration is shocking when one considers that
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – The Economist adds a noteworthy voice to the chorus calling for greater tax enforcement to ensure the corporate elite pays its fair share: Characterising this steady financing as short-term lending is “the ultimate example of form over substance” and undermines a fundamental tenet
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
This and that to end your Saturday. – As pointed out by Paul Krugman, Kathleen Geier recognizes an obvious possible cause of a declining life expectancy for some less-wealthy Americans: I will offer an alternative hypothesis, one which is not explicitly identified in the Times article: inequality. In the U.S.,
Continue readingwmtc: now it can be told: why i have hated my job for the last four years
This is a post I’ve been waiting to write for years. I’ve been on an emotional roller coaster for the past few days. While the War Resisters Support Campaign was pulling out all the stops trying to keep Kimberly Rivera and her family in Canada, I was waiting to hear
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Ish Theilheimer highlights why the corporate right is so eager to snuff out organized labour – and why progressives need to fight back: Since the 1980s under Reagan, US Republicans have worked to “de-fund the Left,” going after advocacy groups, university student
Continue readingAlberta Diary: The only sector where you can’t have a union is the only one with no health and safety rules? Explain, please…
Alabama farm workers in 1935 – not so different from Alabamberta farmworkers in 2012. Below: Premier Alison Redford. LETHBRIDGE, Alberta Literally everybody – and that includes Alberta Premier Alison Redford – knows that permitting an industry to “voluntarily” self-regulate the health and safety of its own workers amounts to a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Jon Wisman and Aaron Pacitti put a price tag on the upward redistribution of wealth in the U.S.: Between 1983 and 2007, total inflation-adjusted wealth in the U.S. increased by $27 trillion. If divided equally, every man woman and child would be almost
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Jeffrey Simpson marks Peter Lougheed’s passing by discussing what he brought to Alberta’s political scene that’s been sorely lacking ever since: Mr. Lougheed, defending Alberta’s jurisdictional turf in conflicts with Liberal and Conservative governments in Ottawa, navigated his province through these shoals. The
Continue readingwmtc: this is what privatization looks like
The Harper Government has schooled us in austerity basics. Call it Privatization 101. Ottawa Citizen: DND to pay $100 million to private firm to replace laid-off workers Just months after issuing notices to public servants that their jobs were being eliminated to save money the Defence Department is looking at
Continue readingPeace, order and good government, eh?: Expect a lot of noise? Very well put!
The headline on John Ivison’s column in the National Post today is almost perfect. Expect a lot of noise about union dues disclosure bill Noise, indeed. …Mr. Hiebert’s financial transparency bill – which, among other things, would require unions to disclose how much money they spend on political activities –
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Pat Atkinson discusses the importance of unions in ensuring a fair deal for all workers: It’s because of unions and their tenacious advocacy on behalf of their members that workers not only in this province but also in other jurisdictions enjoy legislated workplace
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Dr. Dawg tears into the National Post’s gratuitous union-bashing: (W)hen it comes to unions, a careless disregard for facts seems to affect journos like a disease. They fall back on their prejudices, cutting and pasting their ready-made anti-union copy in their sleep.… Unions
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – There wasn’t much doubt from the recent storm of astroturfed Twitter messages that NDP candidate Catherine Fife stood to do well in tomorrow’s Kitchener-Waterloo provincial byelection. But I’m not sure anybody anticipated she’d have a sixteen-point lead over all comers – and the
Continue readingCanadian Progressive: RCMP Grounds Aircraft Carrying Anti-Harper Labour Protest Message
If your progressive message is truthful but critical of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, it automatically qualifies for a “threat” and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) won’t allow it to fly over Ottawa. Let me put it another way: Ottawa is no place for legitimate political dissent. That’s the message our-scandal-ridden
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Labour Day Links
Assorted content for your Labour Day reading. – The Star comments on the place of the union movement in the face of a determined push to silence workers: Given the challenges ahead, and all the ground that’s been lost so far, it remains to be seen if the new union
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Happy Labour Day! Push-polls prove it… Canadians hate unions … really, really they do!
Some of the participants in a recent Edmonton Labour Day picnic. If the union haters had their way, unions giving food to these guys would be illegal. Below, Merit Contractors Association President Stephen Kushner and the group’s weird website image. Some of my younger readers may not realize this, but
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Plenty of commentators are using the Labour Day weekend to discuss the place of workers in Canadian society. Sid Ryan notes that depressed wages are bad news for Canada’s economy generally. And Morna Ballantyne and Steven Staples point out the need for unions
Continue reading