Conservatives court Labour
During the recent railway dispute, the federal Conservatives were strangely silent. A work stoppage of... The post Conservatives court Labour first appeared on Views from the Beltline.
workers
What’s a CEO worth?
Some French lawmakers are pursing a goal that needs to be more widespread. They are seeking to cap pay for corporate executives at 20 times the earnings of a company’s…
Labour’s big Southern win
Employers in the American South have long had a thing about cheap labour. In fact, for the first 90 years of the country’s history they got it for free, and…
Can unions restore a stable America?
A stable US is important to all of us. A very imperfect democracy but nonetheless by far the most important, it is the central pillar of global liberty. Recently that…
UCP to loosen reins on unions … charitably
Alberta’s UCP government likes to keep a tight rein on labour unions. One of the first pieces of legislation brought in after their election in 2019 was the infamous Bill…
The brilliance of the Sustainable Jobs Act
Last week the feds tabled Bill C-50, the Canadian Sustainable Jobs Act, in the House of Commons. The bill would create a Sustainable Jobs Partnership Council to advise the government…
Congratulations to Ms. Payne
In the first contested election in a decade, the members of Unifor elected Lana Payne their new president last week. Representing over 300,000 workers, Unifor is the largest private-sector union…
Unionizing Apple
I have long been a fan of Apple products. In fact, I have never bought another desktop. I am also a great believer in labour unions. So reading about an…
Smalls vs. Amazon as David vs. Goliath
The recent success of employees at Amazons’s New York fulfillment centre in forming a union might be the best example of David defeating Goliath since the biblical incident. The union,…
Oil workers at the centre—getting transition priorities right
“They will not be left behind.” So said Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan at a news conference this week. The “they” he was referring to are workers in the oil…
UK: Uber Drivers are Employees not Individual Entrepreneurs
Uber drivers in the UK will now get better treatment from Uber thanks to the courts ruling the company can’t as robustly exploit their drivers. The way drivers get gigs…
Workers deserve a 32 hour work week with no loss of pay
Share this: Since the industrialization of the world, workers organized in unions have fought for many key rights Canadians enjoy today. In the early days of Capitalism, it was not…
Amazon VP Resigns to Protest Poor Working Conditions
Amazon has grown from an online book retailer to the seller of all things and destroyer of established businesses. It also treats humans like robots and gives them no respect…
Happy International Workers Day #MayDay
Billy Bragg We’ve been experiencing what we refer to as ‘Andy Warhol Weather’ here today: fifteen minutes of rain, fifteen minutes of sun, fifteen minutes of hail etc etc. As…
A Union in the Kitchen will Improve Your Life
Thanks to the efforts of billionaires, and other corrupt individuals, union workers have been portrayed as lazy and inept. If anything, the opposite is true. Workers in unions have different…
It’s Time the Gig Economy Paid
Foodora workers are looking for justice for the way they have been ripped off and poorly treated by Foodora. Foodora is like any other gig economy company insofar that it…
May Day: When Rules Don’t Apply
Unions have got a bad reputation in North America for reasons I don’t understand. Counterintuitively, large corporations have convinced millions of workers that their jobs are negatively impacted by workers…
Is this the best they can do? The weak case against $14 in Ontario
Today the libertarian Montreal Economic Institute think tank released a short report claiming that Ontario’s $14 minimum wage is costing thousands of young workers their jobs and raising prices for…
Unions Help Every Worker Earn More
Unions have a bad reputation thanks to years of corporate lobbying and companies blaming workers for executive-induced problems. Despite the negative view of unions they have helped all workers get…
Labour’s fate and revival in the US and Canada
This week, two labour historians talk about their new books on Canadian and US workers’ movements in the 20th century, books which offer important and practical lessons for unions today.…