The RadioLabour episode that carried this report can be found at: https://rabble.ca/podcast/amazon-workers-win-million-dollars-in-back-wages/
Top stories on our Canadian French- and English-language pages this week included a scary piece from CUPE which lays out the huge impact immigration cuts are having on already stressed service sectors like childcare.
2.3 million migrants working in Canada, largely in service and care positions, are about to lose their work visas.
You heard right. 2.3 million.
Calling this policy an own goal or a self-inflicted wound understates what’s happening. Over 2 million workers are going to be forced out of their jobs and out of the country some of them have been living in for decades.
And much, most of the important work they have been doing, from taking care of our kids and our elders to growing our food just isn’t going to get done.
Look for a wave of privatization and a contraction in public services as the impact of this unutterably stupid policy works its way through the labour market. A lack of available workers will be the excuse.
As I said, an own-goal.
Other stories our volunteers found and posted were a profile of Labour for Palestine from Press Progress, a celebration of the work of CUPE members at the National Fil;m Board as the NFB added to its Oscars collection last Sunday, and the many ways in which many unions have panned the latest Saskatchewan budget.
My favourite item among our Canadian stories was from Windsor Ontario where local Unifor leadership has provided a review of the federal Tories plan for the auto sector.
This week’s international story of note is from the US. The exposure of United Farmworkers founder Ceasar Chavez’s long history of sexual assault has been devastating for USian Latinx people, the USian labour movement and for trade unionists outside the US who admired the UFW’s organizing successes in a wildly hostile environment and may even have participated in a small way by joining the grape boycotts.
Over on LabourStart’s Working Women pages stories from Canada included some good news. Hamilton Ontario’s Interval House just received a substantial grant to work with local building trades unions to make construction safer and more welcoming for women. And from Canadian Dimension we carried a call for a more gender-inclusive construction industry as a key component of a Just Transition.
As well, look for summaries of presentations by representatives of Canadian unions at the UN’s annual Commission on the Status of Women. Some really thought-provoking high-level stuff there. I particularly enjoyed a contribution by CUPE’s Kimalee Phillip. Look for it.
LabourStart’s Photo of the Week, which you can catch on our main page until Monday, is from last June. We usually work at finding photos of events no more than a week old but this one was too good to ignore.
Back then the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain organized a protest by cleaners, security and catering staff against outsourcing and exploitative working conditions at University College London on student open day. Their slogan? “We clean your halls, you clean up your act.”
The labour movement’s history is what our current struggles are built on and this week we marked the anniversary in 1960 of what’s come to be known as the Hogg’s Hollow Disaster. Five Italian immigrant workers died in an underground tunnel at a watermain construction project in suburban Toronto. Their death drew public attention to the unsafe conditions in construction and the exploitation of immigrant workers. It was the beginning of a profound transformation of workplace safety in the province and marked the rise of a new safety militancy amongst workers generally and construction union most especially.
That’s the past. As for the future of Canadian unions, a fair bit depends on the renewal of the trade union bureaucracy, the staff who provide the support, administrative, technical and political, needed by rank-and-file members and national elected leadership alike.
If you’re interested in seeing what jobs are out there, what unions are hiring and what sort of jobs are on offer, do check out our Union Jobs page. A good proportion of the vacancies are Canadian and who knows, one of positions with a global union federation might catch your fancy.
This is Derek Blackadder from LabourStart reporting for RadioLabour.
Labour News Network 