The RadioLabour episode that carried this report can be found at: https://rabble.ca/podcast/what-no-federal-labour-minister/
This week the top stories sections on our Canadian French- and English-language pages included CUPW’s announcement of a ban on overtime as negotiations with Canada Post continue. Watch for the corporation’s response. Remember that CUPW’s strike last year was a rotating walkout that would not have shut down the postal service; it was the post office’s lockout that did that.
We also carried the story behind the successful organizing drive at an A&W restaurant in BC, the opening days of the CSN’s challenge to Amazon’s decision to close its Quebec operations after workers at one warehouse organized, and the end of the Lifelabs strike in British Columbia.
But my favourite item, among our Canadian stories at least, was from Quebec City, my home town, where the CUPE members who load and unload ship’s in the city’s harbour returned to work after a lockout that not only lasted 987 days but which is widely credited with contributing to the CLC and NDP’s long-standing campaign to ban scabs in federally-regulated workplaces. That campaign finally saw no-scab amendments to the Canada Labour Code after decades of effort.
The best bit? Workers from several unions formed a guard of honour to welcome them back to work.
As LabourStart is a global organization I should slip in at least one non-Canadian story worth being highlighted for you. This week that story is a survey of the repression experienced over the last 20 years by teachers union activists in, of all places, Iran. A country almost as intolerant of independent trade unions as is North Korea. But still they organize….
Canadian items appearing on our health and safety page and newswire this week included the fight by nurses who work at Hydro Quebec’s remote worksites to win a first collective agreement and what a possible strike would mean for the CUPE members who work at generating stations in northern Quebec. And a piece from the building trades in BC complaining that the new requirement for flush toilets at work locations still isn’t being universally enforced.
LabourStart’s Photo of the Week, which you can catch on our main page until Monday, is from Baghdad, where on May Day the Preparatory Committee of the General Union of Platform Workers was officially formed within the Federation of Iraqi Trade Unions (FITU).
The labour movement’s history is what our current struggles are built on and this week we marked the anniversaries of these events:
This week in 1975 a general strike brings out 100,000 protesters after police bludgeon striking workers at United Aircraft in Longueuil, Québec. Later, a new provincial government banned the use of strikebreakers in that province.
And in 1921 the Communist Party of Canada was founded at a three-day meeting in a barn in Guelph, Ontario. The party achieved its greatest influence in the 1930s and 1940s organizing unemployed workers and industrial unions, and in struggles against war and fascism.
There are lots more labour history items like this to be found at the bottom of our Canadian news pages. Look for them and be inspired.
Speaking of inspiration, is your dream job a staff position with a union? On our main page is a link to our jobs listings page where you’ll see openings at unions around the globe. If you’re looking for work with a Canadian union or perhaps one of the global union federations be sure and check it out.
LabourStart hosts online solidarity actions at the request of unions around the world. This week we’d like to highlight urgent appeals for online solidarity with trade union activists in Azerbaijan, Türkiye and Belarus.
If you can spare just a few seconds you can do your part in struggles like these by sending a solidarity or protest message.
Look for details on our site.
Before I go, a quick shout out to the news website Alberta Workers and to some workers doing unusual and interesting work in Edmonton. AW brought us the news that indoor skydiving facility workers in Edmonton are organizing with UFCW. Next time you’re in the neighbourhood, drop in. 😊
This is Derek Blackadder from LabourStart reporting for RadioLabour.
Labour News Network 