Month: December 2025

This week the top stories sections on our Canadian French- and English-language pages included a push from CUPE to build support for bill C-247 which would eliminate the vile s. 107 of the Canada Labour Code, and a nice analytical piece from The Tyee demonstrating the knock-on effects of the recent, very strategic BCGEU strike and predicting that we’ll see more of the same from BC nurses and teachers in the not-too-distant future.

Other stories included statements and actions in support of striking USian Starbucks workers from several unions here in Canada, coverage of a StatsCan report detailing the wage gap for trans and non-binary workers, and, the kind of story you’d think we wouldn’t being, a report from CUPE of a town employee and local union president in Newfoundland and Labrador who had been sacked because he had the temerity to exercise his right to participate in a local election.

But my favourite item, really many items but forming an obvious pattern, among our Canadian stories, was from Nova Scotia, where CUPE members at home after home after long-term care home are returning wildly positive strike votes as healthcare unions in the province gear up for a tough round of bargaining.

As LabourStart is a global organization I like to highlight at least one non-Canadian story for you.  This week’s is from Portugal where on the 11^th the two trade union centres joined together to mount a hugely successful general strike against a smorgasbord of austerity policies affecting all but Portugal’s rich.  Choosing this story to mention was a tough call because as I write this, a similar national general strike is underway in Italy.

Over on LabourStart’s Working Women pages stories from Canada included an angering report from the Centre for Migrant Worker Rights Nova Scotia on the ways in which the labour rights of migrant women workers are trashed in Novas Scotia.  Most of the women surveyed were working in the province’s agriculture and seafood industries.  Interestingly but not surprisingly, the Immigrant Workers Centre in Montreal just reached similar conclusions and we are carrying a CBC story with all the vile details.

And, making the painful point that co-workers can be hazards in the workplace, Shannon Welbourn had a piece in The Conversation on gender-based violence in the building trades that one of our volunteers picked up.

Last but not least, we carried a large number of statements from unions large and small on and about the 6^th of December.

Among the Canadian items appearing on our health and safety page and newswire this week was a piece from CUPE on the UCP government’s failure to protect care workers in Alberta, even in the aftermath of a worker’s death.

But the biggie on the safety front were appeals from unions representing retail workers aimed at consumers, that’s you and me, asking us to not go from trade unionist to workplace hazard when shopping for gifts in the run-up to Christmas.

LabourStart’s Photo of the Week, which you can catch on our main page until Monday, is from Bangladesh where last week 1500 garment workers were made homeless when the Korail ‘slum’ in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, was devastated by a fire. Their union, the National Garment Workers Federation, is raising money to provide for their immediate needs and to assist in rebuilding.

The labour movement’s history is what our current struggles are built on and this week we marked the anniversaries of these events:

In 1921 J. S. Woodsworth, a Methodist minister arrested during the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919, was elected as the Labour Member of Parliament for Winnipeg Centre. Re-elected five times, he is a founder, in 1932, of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation.

In 1970 The Royal Commission on the Status of Women released its report. Many of the 167 recommendations relate to the status of women in the workplace, including pay equity and access to childcare, education and training.

Not all inspiring history has to come to us from the distant past.  In 2023 A seven-day general strike began in Québec, led by a common front among union federations and involving more than 500,000 workers. With broad public support, the mobilization won strong wage increases and other gains.

There are lots more labour history items like this to be found at the bottom of our Canadian news pages.  Look for them and charge your batteries.

Or listen to our latest podcasts.  One’s an interview from the USA on the complicated labour market governing the lives of women migrant workers there.  The other is the first of our 60-second quickie pods and it focuses on Lee Cheuk-yan, the jailed leader of the Hong Kong Trade Union Confederation, whose trial starts next month.

This is Derek Blackadder from LabourStart reporting for RadioLabour.

The RadioLabour episode that carried this report can be found at:  https://rabble.ca/podcast/steelworkers-endorse-rob-ashton-for-ndp-leader/

This week the top stories sections on our Canadian French- and English-language pages included a whole lot of scary news from Quebec.  There the CAQ government is attacking the labour movement in two ways, with two pieces of legislation.

First, a new law gives the Minister of Labour the power to end a strike or to force a partial return to work without special legislation.

Second, Bill 3 splits union dues into two categories: ‘principle’ and ‘optional’.  Unions will need to account for how each penny is spent and workers will have the options of paying or not paying to support those activities that the government, not the workers through their union but the government, decides are optional.

Leaving aside the inescapable conclusion that this move is straight from the US ‘right to work’ playbook, the accounting nightmare alone will cause problems.

And those are just the two biggies.  There’s lots more.  Our current Canadian top story is an excellent explainer from Press Progress.  Look for it.  Bad ideas travel fast, even if you don’t live in Quebec you need to know what’s headed your way.

Other stories included the Steelworkers’ endorsement of Rob Ashton for federal NDP leader.  Ashton is a dockworker and a union member for over 30 years, the National President of the International Longshore Workers Union (ILWU) Canada.  The Steel announcement cites Ashton’s plans for decent work as a ley plank in his platform.

But my favourite item, among our Canadian stories at least, was the really excellent news that the Operating Engineers is the new home for hundreds of Alberta workers who left CLAC, the Christian Labour Association of Canada.  Some of the coverage makes the claim that this is the largest single ding the Clackers have ever taken.  If true let’s hope it’s not so for much longer.

This week’s international story of interest is from Hong Kong.  What wasn’t noted in most of the coverage of the horrific apartment buildings fire there last week was the fact that many of the dead were domestic workers, all of them women, and that the surviving workers are now unemployed and at risk of deportation.

Over on LabourStart’s Working Women pages stories from Canada included a stunning report from the Social Planning Council of Toronto on the extent to which migrant women workers subsidize homecare in Ontario.

Or at least that’s how the report describes it.  My take would be that these women are the target of a huge wage theft operation run by for-profit homecare contractors with the encouragement of the Ontario Ministry of Health.

Another was about some good news from BC where the HEU-CUPE has reached a spectacular agreement with BC’s NDP government.  How spectacular you ask?  This spectacular: More than 5,000 unionized workers in eligible long-term care and assisted living facilities will transition to the provincewide Facilities Collective Agreement over the next two years, giving them higher wages and improved benefits.

As with Ontario homecare workers, the affected care staff are overwhelmingly women and a large proportion are migrants.

Among the Canadian items appearing on our health and safety page and newswire this week was PSAC’s take on an arbitration award won by the Sudbury Professional Firefighters Association.  The arbitrator ruled that the death of a Sudbury firefighter qualified as an accidental death under his collective agreement. The award found that the employer violated its obligations by purchasing an Accidental Death & Dismemberment policy that excluded coverage for suicide, despite the well-established recognition that PTSD is an occupational illness for firefighters.

The Alliance is right, this is a biggie and deserves to be tabled at every joint health and safety committee table everywhere.

LabourStart’s Photo of the Week, which you can catch on our main page until Monday, is from India where on 27 November the country’s trade unions staged nationwide protests after the government of India unilaterally implemented four labour new codes without any consultation with workers’ organizations. The new codes have been condemned by unions and their allies as anti-worker.

And we released a new episode in our podcast series last week.  In it we interview Pawel Rudzki.  Pawel has not worked for the Albert Heijn supermarket chain for some two months now. An exemplary worker, never late, with a spotless record, he was bullied and lied about, given warnings he could not reply to — and then summarily sacked. His union, the FNV, together with UNI Global Union, has been campaigning for his reinstatement claimning that he was sacked for his success in organizing migrant workers and not for any performance problems.  Pawel is the subject of a major campaign on LabourStart – click here to learn more and show your support.  In this interview, Pawel tells his story in his own words — and ends with a message about the importance of solidarity.

The labour movement’s history is what our current struggles are built on and so it’s crazy that this week we marked the anniversaries of absolutely no events in the movement’s history.  Get in touch if you know of a past event that we can add to our database.

Finally, a bit of a shout-out to Luc Boissonneault, president of CUPE 1638.  At a meeting with the Quebec Minister of Labour over the provincial government’s attack on the labour movement he very publicly invited the Minister to attend a local union membership meeting to see what real democracy looks like.

This after the Minister admitted to not knowing that many of “democratic reforms” being imposed on unions were already in place.

Here’s hoping we get to carry the video of the meeting sometime soon.

This is Derek Blackadder from LabourStart reporting for RadioLabour.