Month: February 2026

The RadioLabour episode that carried this report can be found at:  https://rabble.ca/podcast/taxing-canadas-ultra-wealthy/

Top stories on our Canadian French- and English-language pages this week included reactions to the Tumbler Ridge shooting from education unions around the world.  At a time when workplace violence is a growing concern, schools and the staff and students in them stand out as targets for this kind of horror.

Other stories our volunteers found and posted were announcements with few details about the arbitrated new collective agreement for the CUPE members working as flight attendants at air Canada, some good news about Amazon for a change as the BC Labour Board nailed it for extending raises to all its employees in BC save for those Unifor had organized, and also from BC, the news that another bunch of CUPE members, the province’s ambulance workers, brought home a 97% strike vote.

But my favourite item among our Canadian stories was Steel’s announcement that it and US and Mexican unions will be meeting in a kind of alternative to the CUSMA review discussions to which no workers’ representatives were invited.

This week’s international story I want to flog is from Belarus, where Gennady Fedynich, a recently released and then exiled trade union activist, summed-up his years in prison this way: “I was not a prisoner, I was hostage of the system”.

The latest episode in our podcast series is a doozy.  Eric Lee managed an interview with two global union federation leaders whose attempt to meet with Palestinian unions in the Occupied West Bank was frustrated by the Israeli army.  Ambet Yuson from Building and Wood Workers’ International (BWI) and David Edwards from the Education International (EI) — were there, leading delegations.  Together these two GUFs as they are known, have affiliated unions with a total of 45,000,000 members, including affiliates in both Israel and Palestine.

If you only listen to one of our pods this month, this is the one to look for.

Over on LabourStart’s Working Women pages stories from Canada included background, the how and the why, to PSAC’s claim that the federal government’s decision to force a return to the office and end working at home will disproportionately affect women.

Another was from CUPW which wins the prize this year for being the first Canadian union website with an International Women’s Day statement out.

Among the Canadian items appearing on our health and safety page and newswire this week was another first-past-the-post item from CUPW, this one a Pink Shirt anti-bullying statement.

And we also, sadly, carried a number of stories about the Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg where more than 1600 weapons were taken from members of the public entering the hospital in just 8 months.  The icing on this nasty news was a similar statement from the children’s hospital where in the same period 300 weapons were confiscated.

Manitoba healthcare workers will soon resemble Nova Scotia teachers in that they’ll all be wearing Kevlar vests. 

LabourStart’s Photo of the Week, which you can catch on our main page until Monday, is from India where last week 300 million workers organized by several major union centres, some of which don’t normally get along terribly well, struck in a protest against the far-right Modi government’s policies and new labour laws that attack labour rights including the right to strike.

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

In 1949 n defiance of provincial laws, asbestos workers in Québec began a four-month strike for better wages and workplace safety. With strong public support for the miners’ cause, the strike became a forerunner of the province’s Quiet Revolution.

In 1912 male garment workers at the Eaton’s factory in Toronto were locked out when they protested changes that deprived women workers of jobs. More than a thousand employees joined the protest. Solidarity marches and public boycotts continued for several months.

If you’re in Newfoundland and Labrador you may have attended the annual remembrance of the 1982 Ocean Ranger sinking.  All 84 crew on board were lost when the oil-drilling rig capsized and sank in a storm on the Grand Banks. The Ocean Ranger disaster is attributed to failures in structural design and inadequate safety measures.

And in 1944 wartime labour unrest convinced the federal government to bring in an emergency order, P.C. 1003, which required employers to recognize and bargain with unions supported by the majority of employees. This breakthrough set the standard for postwar labour relations.

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.

Finally, a bit of a shout-out to the emerg nurses at the Rimouski hospital.  Tired of having their concerns about working short, workplace violence, mandatory overtime and cancelled time off, ignored or minimized, they and their union, the FIQ, have started filing grievances on larger and larger sheets of paper.  The latest is over a metre tall and 80cm wide.  Their media-savvy logic is that if the grievance forms get to be as big as the issues, management will have to start paying attention.

This is Derek Blackadder from LabourStart reporting for RadioLabour.

The RadioLabour episode that carried this report can be found at:  https://rabble.ca/podcast/35-long-term-care-locals-in-nova-scotia-vote-to-strike/

Top stories on our Canadian French- and English-language pages this week included coverage of what seems to be a new and developing legal definition of our Charter right to collective bargaining as the Ontario Court of Appeal issued a decision on CUPW’s challenge to the latest back-to-work legislation that union has been subjected to.

Other stories our volunteers found and posted were

But my favourite was the announcement that CUPE, Unifor and Steel, are banding together as an alliance of telecommunications workers’ unions to fight the offshoring of telcom work.  Over the last ten years, almost 20,000 jobs in the telecommunications sector have been outsourced abroad to the United States, India, the Philippines, Egypt, and others.

The alliance intends to stop the outflow of jobs and ensure the protection of Canadians’ data.

This week’s international story is from Spain where rail workers struck over safety issues after years of complaints and warnings resulted in 47 deaths and countless injuries in the past four weeks.  After just one day of a national rail system shutdown, UGT and CCOO won an historic safety agreement.

We didn’t have a new podcast episode for you but it’s worth reminding new listeners that all our past episodes are available to download or to stream.  Just follow the link on our main page.

And be sure and check our site on Monday as by then a new pod that will knock your socks off is about to be published.

Over on LabourStart’s Working Women pages stories from Canada included news from the line in an Ontario care home strike.  OPSEU members, the workers haven’t seen a raise since 2020 while this year the agency’s CEO managed to subsist with the help of a 9.9% raise.

After their employer pitched a ‘raise’ of 1.38% over six years the workers walked and have been picketing for 12 weeks.

Another was from AUPE’s provincial women’s committee as it announced this year’s winners of its Dove Award. The award recognizes women whose compassion, courage, and leadership have created lasting change for women, AUPE members, and all Albertans.

Among the Canadian items appearing on our health and safety page and newswire this week was CUPE’s denunciations of the toxic working environment at the SQI, Quebec public infrastructure agency and a CTF item spelling out the impact on teachers of increasingly complex curriculums.

And, of course, we carried a bunch of stories about the rising levels of violence workers who interact with the public are facing.  They are all worth noting but as time is limited and we don’t get stories from PEI as often as we would like, I will mention just one:  a warning and a demand for change from the PEI nurses union.

The hazards it describes and the impact on healthcare workers that it details could be seamlessly transposed to Nunavut, BC or any other province and territory.

LabourStart’s Photo of the Week, which you can catch on our main page until Monday, is from the US.  It’s a shot of activists with Students for International Labour Solidarity as they go public with their campaign to shame the Gap retail chain into pushing one of its suppliers to reinstate Haitian garment workers terminated for being pregnant and for attempting to organize.

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 2012 eleven farmworkers, including nine migrant workers from Peru, were killed in a highway crash at Hampstead, Ontario. The tragedy highlighted and exposed unsafe conditions in the sector and the exploitation of seasonal workers.

In 1869 James Bryson McLachlan was born at Ecclefechan, Scotland. As a union leader in Canada he became the champion of the Nova Scotia coal miners and a leading spokesman for the cause of labour radicalism.

And in 1963 At Reesor Siding, near Kapuskasing, Ontario, eleven union members were shot, three of them fatally, in a confrontation over pulpwood supplies for a strikebound mill. Three of the attackers are later fined for possessing dangerous firearms.

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, we are currently campaigning on behalf of workers in an occupation that’s new to us:  the military.

Soldiers and civilian employees in the Serbian armed forces are organizing!  But they face an escalating campaign of repression, intimidation, and retaliation for exercising their fundamental right to organize. Leaders of the Military Trade Union including President Ljubiša Milošević and General Secretary Dragan Simonović, have been subjected to disciplinary proceedings, transfers, demotions, surveillance, and arrest following their efforts to defend workers’ rights and report irregularities within the Ministry of Defence.

Here’s your chance to get in on the ground floor in a kind of labour rights campaign we don’t often see, though of course unions representing members of the military are far more common around the world than most Canadian trade unionists might think.

Finally, a bit of a shout-out to

This is Derek Blackadder from LabourStart reporting for RadioLabour.

The RadioLabour episode that carried this report can be found at:  https://rabble.ca/podcast/ontario-government-told-to-pay-compensation-for-illegal-wage-controls/

Top stories on our Canadian French- and English-language pages this week included the release of a poll that shows strong support for trade unions in Quebec, even as the provincial government mounts a legislative attack on them, moves by the CLC to get workers at the table as global trade re-alignment picks up speed, Unifor’s response to the federal government’s new auto sector strategy.

Other stories our volunteers found and posted were efforts by federal public sector unions like PSAC and PIPSC to highlight the effects layoffs are having and more importantly, will have on public services. 

They also gathered stories about how McGill University, which is in the midst of cutting $45 million from its annual budget, is still able to find cash to fight union organizing on campus.

Speaking of universities, it seems that Yukon U. would rather bow-out of hosting the Arctic Winter games than reach a settlement with the Yukon Employees Union.

My favourite item among our Canadian stories came complete with photos of an ambulance upside down in front of the Quebec National Assembly.  A junker that the CSN had purchased, it helped make the point that emergency medical services in the province are in desperate straits.

And my least favourite was the news that school staff in Nova Scotia have taken to wearing Kevlar body armour in response to rising levels of workplace violence.

This week’s international story that got my attention more than most was from Palestine where representatives of BWI, the global union federation for builders, woodworkers and allied trades was refused entry to the occupied West Bank by Israel.

In a statement responding to the Israeli action Shaher Saed, General Secretary of Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU), said: “Denying entry to international worker representatives confirms a broader reality: exclusion is being built into the process before rebuilding even begins. It reflects the Occupation’s deliberate policy of isolating Palestinian workers and blocking their engagement with the international trade union movement.”

Over on LabourStart’s Working Women pages stories from Canada included how the OFL’s Women’s Committee is marking it’s 50^th anniversary for IWD.  It’s hosting an open to all hybrid ‘craft-in’ on 6 March.  Participants will “stitch, bead, weave and colour, while discussing the political and social justice issues shaping women’s lives and workplaces today.”

And among the Canadian items appearing on our health and safety page and newswire this week was the news that a CUPE member working for Manitoba Hydro at its HQ in Winnipeg was assaulted.  Yet another reminder that providing services to the public is an increasingly dangerous occupation.

LabourStart’s Photo of the Week, which you can catch on our main page until Monday, is from one of the dozens of candlelight vigils held across Canada, one of thousands around the world, organized by unions like the CFNU, to honour the memory of Alex Pretti, the nurse executed by ICE in Minneapolis in late January.

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

In 1939 the first group of Canadian veterans of the Spanish Civil War disembark at Halifax. Of the almost 1,700 Canadians who fought fascism in Spain, more than 400 were killed. Most of the volunteers were union activists, radicalized in the 1930s.

And in 2012 eleven farmworkers, including nine migrant workers from Peru, are killed in a highway crash at Hampstead, Ontario. The tragedy highlighted unsafe conditions in the sector and the exploitation of seasonal workers.

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.

Finally, a bit of a shout-out to striking CUPE members who work, when not picketing, for the City of Montreal.  Though just a warning strike lasting 24 hours, those hours were more than a bit chilly.  The walkout signals that the fundamental rebuilding CUPE 301 has been engaged in is complete and after a bad patch the union is back on track.

This is Derek Blackadder from LabourStart reporting for RadioLabour.