http://rozworski.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Podcast150803-Labour-reporting.mp3 As unions and workers suffered defeats over the past few decades, so has labor journalism dwindled from a mainstay of major media outlets across Canada and the US to…
Last night, Andrew Coyne published a column in which he champions introducing a minimum income over raising the minimum wage as a radical policy suggestion for Alberta’s new NDP government.…
The votes had barely been counted in Alberta when stories purporting to herald capital flight, particularly from the oil sands, were already appearing in venues like the Financial Post. As…
I have a populist piece in The Tyee this morning on how last week’s paltry $0.20 minimum wage increase in British Columbia actually reflects stagnant wages across the economy and…
Here’s a few more notes on a point that seems to be made with increasing frequency: working for a wage has always been precarious. The current focus on precarity as…
Are wages in Canada stagnant or growing? The short answer is another question: do you live in an oil boom province? There’s a fairly common meme that while Canada, like…
Affordable housing in Vancouver within reach: Michael Geller Michael Geller says innovative design and financing ideas are key to creating more affordable Vancouver homes By Margaret Gallagher, CBC News Posted:…
I have a longer read in the newest issue of Briarpatch Magazine, which is dedicated to the world of work. If you don’t know Briarpatch, be sure to check out…
https://politicalehconomy.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/podcast-141102-china.mp3 The focus of today’s podcast is China: its development over the past several years, the situation of workers and unions as well as future directions. To get some perspective…
There’s lots of talk about “good jobs” these days. At the same time, the expectations for what makes work not only “good” but even a “job” keep falling. It’s hard…
Here’s a familiar refrain: “Someone’s wages rose faster than someone else’s: report”. This depersonalized version sounds about as cynical as it should especially since the first someone is usually not…
Here’s a familiar trope: immigrants are industrious and hard-working. Here’s another, opposite trope: First Nations are idle and lazy. And here’s a graph that beautifully calls into question this neat…
It’s relatively common knowledge that employer-run pensions have been scaled back over the past few decades. I’ve decided to dig some data on pensions for this post to see just…
By now, Thomas Piketty’s U-shaped graphs of wealth and income concentration are well known. What has received less attention are the differences between the last, early-20th-century inequality peak and today.…
On the same day one week ago, teachers in British Columbia began a full strike and the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline was approved by the Canadian government. With such telling…
Forget houses as a source of secondary income – that’s so 2007. After the latest recession, Americans are increasingly dipping into their retirement savings to fund on-going consumer expenses. Many…
It’s election time in Ontario and that means graphs and statistics, facts and factoids, some stale, some new come out of the woodwork. Take the tweet below as an example,…
This week’s convention of the Canadian Labour Congress was more eventful than it has been in some time. There was a change of leadership and an energy palpable even from…
The struggle for fewer working hours during the day, and by extension the week and the year, was long a cornerstone of organized workers. Both the struggle and the actual…
Inspired by this headline: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/stephen-harper-warns-employers-who-prefer-foreign-workers-over-canadians-1.2625964
