The RadioLabour episode that carried this report can be found at: https://rabble.ca/podcast/how-a-democratic-socialist-became-mayor-of-new-york-city/
Top stories on our Canadian French- and English-language pages this week included the news that the Nova Scotia Supreme Court has decided, inevitably, that the provincial government violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms with its Bill 148. The story behind the story is an old and tired one.
It goes like this.
Government violates the Charter with so-called ‘wage restraint’ legislation. Government is challenged in courts. Years later, government is given a slap on the wrist by the courts. Government appeals to the Supremes. More years later, unions have to fight yet again to get compensation for years of ‘wage restraint’.
Nova Scotia’s public and broader public sector workers are waiting to see if the province appeals to the Supreme Court of Canada. If it does it will only be delaying the inevitable.
Other stories our volunteers found and posted were about the CUPE academic workers strike at NSCAD, PSAC’s fight against the Liberal government’s cuts to federal government services, and calls from Ontario education workers for an early re-opening of school board collective agreements as a way of dealing with the system’s crisis.
My favourite item among our Canadian stories was from Alberta where the AFL is moving to organizing Alberta workers to confront the UCP government. Not only is the fed calling for demonstrations on 29 May, which is an actual workday and not a Saturday, Sunday or stat holiday, but the AFL has announced the establishment of what it calls the Fight Back Academy.
The Academy is an apprenticeship-style training program designed to grow organizing, mobilization, and leadership capacity across the Alberta labour movement and civil society.
I take back all the things I normally think when the subject of Alberta comes up in conversation.
This week’s story from outside the country is from pretty much everywhere as unions, from local branches around the world to the global union federations and the International Confederation of Trade Unions, call for a ceasefire in the war between the US and Israel and Iran.
Over on LabourStart’s Working Women pages stories from Canada included lots of pre-IWD announcements and statements of course.
But we also carried celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Ontario Federation of Labour’s Women’s Committee, and a piece from the Asian Pacific Post on the horrendous conditions endured by the women, most of them migrant workers, who work for food services contractor Compass Group at Simon Fraser University.
Among the Canadian items appearing on our health and safety page and newswire this week was some good news from BC where the NDP is adding eight cancers to the ‘presumed work-related’ list for wildfire fighters and some bad news from Saskatchewan where library workers continue to experience incredible levels of workplace violence.
LabourStart’s Photo of the Week, which you can catch on our main page until Monday, is from Chile, where unions marked the 44th anniversary of the assassination, by military intelligence officers of Tucapel Jiménez Alfaro, General-Secretary of the financial sector workers union.
The labour movement’s history is what our current struggles are built on and this week we marked the anniversaries of these events:
In 1986 workers in Newfoundland and Labrador’s Transport and Public Works departments began an illegal strike in response to a law that required public sector unions to designate 49 per cent of their members as essential before taking strike action.
This week in 1937 Polish and Italian migrant workers started a sit-down strike at the Holmes Foundry in Sarnia, Ontario. A mob of 300 “Canadian-born” men evicted them and also attacked their homes. Fifty workers are injured.
Soldiers are workers too and so this week we marked the 1919 riot by Canadian soldiers waiting for demobilization at an army camp in Wales against delays in returning them home. Five were killed and dozens arrested before the mutiny was suppressed, but plans for demobilization were quickly speeded up.
And in 1925 Nova Scotia coal miners shut down the mines after the British Empire Steel Corporation refused to continue contract negotiations and cutsoff credit at company stores. It is the beginning of an historic five-month strike.
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 Algerian trade unionist Ali Mammeri, President of the National Union of Public Service Employees in the Culture and Arts Sector (SNFC), has been sentenced to ten years in prison in a case directly linked to his union activities.
The United Nations and global union federations Public Services International and the International Union of Food Workers have joined with his union to demand his release.
The GUFs, of course, have asked LabourStart to host an online action on his behalf and so we’re asking you to take just a few seconds out of your busy day to send a prepared solidarity message.
Look for the prominent link on our main page and click through.
This is Derek Blackadder from LabourStart reporting for RadioLabour.
Labour News Network 