If you’re enjoying a long weekend, take a moment to acknowledge the blood, sweat, and tears of the women and men who made that possible. This page from a regional AFL-CIO affiliate has a partial list of what we enjoy thanks to organizing labour. 36 Reasons Why You Should Thank
Continue readingTag: labour.
Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading. – Katie McDonough reports on new research showing the devastating effects of poverty on an individual’s ability to plan and function: According to researchers at Harvard University and the University of British Columbia, people living in poverty experience reduced cognitive functioning as a result
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Tim Harper writes that Stephen Harper’s “lone gunman” argument – already implausible in light of the number of Senators and staffers required to cover up the Clusterduff – is falling apart at the seams. But Gloria Galloway notes that the Senators can bail
Continue readingwmtc: today! right now! fast-food workers on strike throughout the united states
Today, fast-food workers all over the United States are standing up for their rights, demanding a living wage, demanding to be free from harassment and intimidation. From New York to Seattle, from Maine to Texas, from Los Angeles to Chicago to Raleigh, low-wage workers are on strike. Please show your
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Polly Toynbee reminds us that a precarious living for much of the middle class is nothing new – and neither is a cacophony of reactionary voices claiming that a desperate struggle for survival is the natural and proper state for most of humanity.
Continue readingwmtc: this thursday, august 29: national strike of low-wage workers
If you are a fast-food worker, go here for more information on the national strike to say: Low Pay Is Not OK. For the rest of us, on August 29, visit a picket line, send an email, sign a petition. In New York City, join rallying low-wage workers at Union
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Simon Enoch nicely challenges the City of Regina’s blind faith in “risk transfer” by pointing out how that concept has typically been applied elsewhere: So what price should we put on such a risk transfer? This is where things can get dicey. How
Continue readingwmtc: fifty years later, king and his most famous speech are transformed into patriotic mush
Today, Americans will march on Washington in commemoration of the most famous March on Washington: August 28, 1963, when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his now-famous “I Have A Dream” speech. The meaning of that speech, like the man who delivered it, has been purposefully misremembered, and so, is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Jenny Carson asks what governments are doing to lift poor workers out of poverty. (Spoiler alert: the Cons’ answer is “why would we want to do that?”). – Meanwhile, Kemal Dervis and Uri Dadush discuss the desperate need to rein in inequality
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Glenn Greenwald, David Atkins and Simon Jenkins all discuss the U.K.’s detention of David Miranda – with heavy emphasis on the Cameron government’s apparent belief journalism and terrorism are synonymous. And Ian Welsh points out the need to fight back against a pervasive
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – The Economist takes a look at the effect of a “lean in” philosophy toward work – and finds that we’d get better results encouraging creative development rather than needless busy work: All this “leaning in” is producing an epidemic of overwork, particularly in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
This and that for your weekend reading. – Mark Leiren-Young shares Corky Evans’ perceptive take on how the B.C. NDP has lost its way – and the message is one which we should apply elsewhere as well: I remember when one of the Leaders I worked for asked some guys
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Joseph Stiglitz comments on the wider lessons we should take from Detroit’s bankruptcy: Detroit’s travails arise in part from a distinctive aspect of America’s divided economy and society. As the sociologists Sean F. Reardon and Kendra Bischoff have pointed out, our country is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Lana Payne comments on the biggest of the Cons’ many lies about the role and capacity of the federal government: Canada’s $18.7-billion deficit has (its) roots in failed economic policies, decisions made before the world financial crisis, including reckless corporate tax cuts. Remember,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Henry Blodget recognizes that the systematic corporate squeeze on mere workers represents a deliberate choice rather than an inevitability: One of the big reasons the U.S. economy is so lousy is the American companies are hoarding cash and “maximizing profits” instead of investing
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: New Leadership Team Proposed for Unifor
The CAW and CEP have created a team of union leaders proposed to lead Unifor, Canada’s new super union, after its founding convention on September 1. The post New Leadership Team Proposed for Unifor appeared first on The Canadian Progressive.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Stephen Beer argues that the UK’s Labour Party should take the lead in arguing for a financial transactions tax oriented toward reducing inequality: The banking sector is incorrigible. It cannot alone reform itself or repair its relationship with the rest of society.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Matthew Yglesias sums up the effects of four decades of U.S. union-busting, and points out how the supposed benefit from pointing a fire hose filled with money in the general direction of the corporate sector hasn’t materialized: If you turn back 30 or
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Michael Harris offers a theory for the Cons’ handling of the Clusterduff – from their willingness to pay him off to their subsequent decision to cut him loose: Why were the CPC and the PM’s chief of staff willing to risk what
Continue readingwmtc: what i’m reading: clarence darrow, attorney for the damned, by john a. farrell
I last wrote about Clarence Darrow in early 2012, after reading a piece by one of my favourite New Yorker writers, Jill Lepore. Two new biographies of Darrow had been published, and Lepore wrote a tribute to the great defender, and mused on the state of North American labour movement.
Continue reading