Helmi Ansari started a successful business and understands what’s it like to worry about paying the bills – and knows that when you’re stressed about paying bills you’re not focussed at the job at hand. This is why he pays all of his employees a living wage. A living wage
Continue readingTag: labour.
Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Ed Finn reminds us how the economy as a whole – including the private sector – suffers when austerity is inflicted on public services: The public and private sectors have become so interdependent that one cannot be attacked or diminished without hurting the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Andrew Jackson writes about the opportunities missed when governments restrict their economic policy to propping up the corporate sector, rather than seeking to innovate directly in the public interest: The received wisdom among economists used to be that governments should just set
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Rutger Bregman writes that the most extreme wealth in our economy is based on rents rather than productivity: In reality, it is the waste collectors, the nurses, and the cleaners whose shoulders are supporting the apex of the pyramid. They are the true
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Julia Smith argues that one of the primary responses to the recent reports about banks exploiting consumers (and pressuring staff to carry out their plans) should be a drive to organize workers: Banking is often viewed as an industry offering secure white-collar
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Jordon Cooper writes that the Saskatchewan Party’s slash-and-burn budget confirms that for them, the poor don’t matter. CBC reports on the devastating effect the budget will have on municipalities, while Courtney Markewitch reports that Saskatoon’s city council is fighting back. And Joel Senick
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – David Olive offers his take on what a basic income should look like – and is optimistic that Ontario’s ongoing experiment should hit the mark: A UBI would be pointless in the absence of existing supports. In the Ontario pilot projects, the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading. – Brian Jones rightly argues that a fair tax system would go a long way toward eliminating any serious concerns about government deficits. And Marco Chown Oved offers some reason for optimism in the Canada Revenue Agency’s response to the Panama Papers. – David
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Fighting for union justice on the streets
Richard Dalkeith (L) and Mike Vanveen work on renovations at the SLOW office, November 2016. Photo: Dan Janisse/ Windsor Star. In Windsor, Ontario, when the Downtown Windsor Business Improvement Association paid to install iron-spiked railings where panhandlers sit, the organization which called attention to it was the Street Labourers of
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: What we need is a working-class politics
Photo by Daniel Perianu Reflecting on the state of our movement, we should be asking: Is the labour movement better positioned today to influence and affect meaningful change than under Harper? Are the prospects for workers in this country better than they were over the past 10 years? There is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Vicki Nash challenges the claim that unemployment in a precarious economy is generally a matter of choice rather than the absence thereof. And Jia Tolentino argues that we shouldn’t pretend there’s any value in being forced to work oneself to death: It does
Continue readingwmtc: ontario librarians: should the ola support staffless libraries?
This week, the Toronto Public Library announced plans to open libraries with no staff. Not just no librarians — we’ve seen that in many places — but no staff whatsoever. This was bad enough, but we were further horrified to see that the Ontario Library Association, a membership-based organization that is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – In the wake of a thoroughly disappointing budget day at both the provincial and federal levels, it’s worth taking note of Ivan Sigal’s view on the importance of building trust – rather than limiting citizens to either fake news or fake policies:
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Katie Allen reports on the growing gap between the privileged few and the working class in the UK. And Frank Elgar highlights how we all pay the price of inequality, even as our governments can’t be bothered to rein it in: For decades,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Josh Bivens explains why increased fairness would likely lead to improved overall growth for the U.S.’ economy: (O)ne key driver of slow productivity growth in recent years can be fixed: the remaining shortfall between aggregate demand and the economy’s productive potential. Running the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Heather Whiteside discusses how the privatization schemes being toyed with at all levels of government represent nothing more than reckless gambling with public money and goods: When a federal, provincial, or municipal government builds a bridge, a highway, a school, or a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Evening Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Linda McQuaig discusses the need to fight fake news about Canada’s health care system (and the corporate raiders trying to amplify it): (I)t was with some pleasure last week that I watched as a Republican congressman tried to insist that Canadians routinely flock
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on the Saskatchewan Party’s determination to make work more precarious – and pay and benefits harder to come by – in the public and private sectors alike. For further reading…– The history of the Skip the Dishes saga includes the government’s plan for millions of dollars in handouts; the
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: The Crisis in the ATU: Labour Shoots Itself in the Foot
Bob Kinnear, former president, ATU Local 113 A sign of the tragic disarray of the Canadian labour movement is the extent to which its misadventures keep piling up. As the turmoil within the union representing the Ontario government’s unionized employees (Ontario Public Service Employees Union – OPSEU) hits the press,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Chris Dillow examines a few of the reasons why neoliberalism hasn’t produced the promise of economic growth as the supposed benefit in exchange for dissolving social links. And William Berkson discusses the importance of an activist government in building a strong economy: The
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