The RadioLabour episode that carried this report can be found at: https://rabble.ca/podcast/the-ontario-government-plans-to-put-police-in-schools/
Top stories on our Canadian French- and English-language pages this week included fears that the federal government’s early retirement push as it reduces the size of the public service is placing pressure on pension plans, denying workers the information they need to make an informed decision about their continued employment and is going to leave behind many fewer public sector workers doing much more work.
Also amongst our top stories were NUPGE’s Cuba solidarity work, a number of AI-related job security items and of course a few crystal ball pieces that examine the future of the movement’s relationship with the NDP in light of Avi Lewis’ election as federal leader.
Other stories our volunteers found and posted were CUPE’s claim that the employers are driving the federal government’s look at unpaid labour in the airline industry, and a possible strike by long-term care workers, also CUPE, in Nova Scotia.
My favourite item among our Canadian stories was from the moon, sort of. Inevitably, the Artemis II space mission had some maple syrup aboard. I suppose we should be grateful that Hanson wasn’t forced to wear a plaid shirt to and from the moon.
But as it turns out, the Quebec supplier of the syrup is an organized workplace and the Steelworkers who produce the stuff have been on strike since the middle of March.
Steel jumped on the story and is managing to grab a fair bit of attention with statements like this one from Steel’s Quebec Director Nicolas Lapierre:
The “workers are not asking for the moon. They are asking for respect”.
This week’s international story of note is from Hong Kong where the China-imposed National Security Law continues to constrain trade union activism. The continuing imprisonment of trade union leaders like Lee Cheuk-yan is just the tip of the iceberg.
Sweeping changes to the Trade Unions Ordinance, the law governing unions in the territory, have recently resulted in the de-registration of the Professional Teachers Union after 50 years of militant organizing. Fully 10% of Hong Kong’s unions have been de-registered since 2021. As well, the registration of new unions continues to decline year after year as the national security noose tightens.
Over on LabourStart’s Working Women pages stories from Canada included coverage of the first Women of Steel conference since the union elected Roxanne Brown as its first women international president.
And we had a really disturbing piece from the FIQ, Quebec’s nursing union, about the impact on its members, who are still mostly women, of Bill 28. The Bill, which recently gained royal assent, excludes healthcare, social services and education, all predominantly female workplaces, from important provisions of Quebec’s health and safety laws.
The FIQ has joined with other unions to mount a constitutional challenge to the law. It’s important to note that the FIQ, like all nurses unions in Canada, is deeply concerned by increasing levels of violence in healthcare workplaces.
Among the Canadian items appearing on our health and safety page and newswire this week was some mainstream media coverage of the safety concerns expressed by SEIU members who clean BC’s Skytrains. Just as scary a workplace is the federal government building in Montreal where a member of the Association of Justice Counsel recently fell ill as a result of asbestos exposure.
LabourStart’s Photo of the Week, which you can catch on our main page until Monday, is from the Philippines the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) is actively campaigning for a ₱1,200 national minimum wage to address the rising cost of living and stagnant wages.
The labour movement’s history is what our current struggles are built on and this week we marked the anniversaries of these events:
In 1980 the Canadian Farmworkers Union held its founding convention at Douglas College in Vancouver. Delegates elected Raj Chouhan as president of the CFU, Canada’s first union of agricultural workers.
In 1937 In Oshawa, Ontario, 4,000 workers went on strike at the General Motors plant for recognition of the United Auto Workers. They won major concessions, and the strike is often considered the birth of industrial unionism in Canada.
And in 1983 a tractor trailer drove through a picket line at a strikebound Alcan plant in Scarborough, Ontario, causing the death of Claude Dougdeen, 51, a Trinidad immigrant and father of seven. Outraged union leaders unsuccessfully called on the province to bring in anti-scab laws.
LabourStart is also a campaigning website and one of our active campaigns is in solidarity with Algerian trade unionist Ali Mammeri, President of the National Union of Public Service Employees in the Culture and Arts Sector (SNFC). He has just been sentenced to ten years in prison in a case directly linked to his union activities. This campaign is sponsored by his union, and by the global union federations PSI, that’s the Public Services International, and the IUF or International Union of Foodworkers.
UN officials have expressed concern about his case, highlighting violations of fundamental freedoms and the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation against trade union rights.
Look for the prominent link on our main page and click through. Protest and solidarity messages are prepped and waiting for you. It’ll take just seconds to add your voice to the demand for Mammeri’s release.
This is Derek Blackadder from LabourStart reporting for RadioLabour.
Labour News Network 