The RadioLabour episode that carried this report can be found at: https://rabble.ca/podcast/tariffs-unions-and-free-trade-in-north-america/
Top stories on our Canadian French- and English-language pages this week included Labour Day statements from unions, including a particularly good one from NUPGE. I’m flagging that one because after decades of reading the damn things it isn’t often that I come across one that gets the union juices flowing.
Other stories our volunteers found and posted included a challenging piece from Judy Haiven on the CCU website. She looks at the positions taken by international unions on the tariff war and concludes that the US sections of those unions are trying to walk a fine line, reflecting memberships that often support the Trump regime’s policies.
My favourite item among our Canadian stories was the news that IAFF local 730 is endorsing candidates in the Victoria municipal election for the first time in its 168-year history. Though ya gotta wonder what took them so long.
This week’s international story of note came from the European Union. Workers will demonstrate in Brussels later this month over the ‘EU Inc’ law which risks undercutting national labour rights and starting a race to the bottom across Europe. European unions are calling for real solutions to the problems faced by working people through a strong Quality Jobs Act.
The legislation the labour movement is cranky about would create a parallel EU-wide corporate rulebook which could be used by companies of any size to opt-out of national labour law, collective bargaining structures and worker information, consultation and board-level representation rights.
A corporate exec’s dream in other words.
The reason I selected this international story to summarize today is because next week our federal government is going through an exercise with corporate Canada that promises to produce similar results.
It’s a small world and bad ideas travel real fast.
Over on LabourStart’s Working Women pages stories from Canada included the commitment a newly-elected PSAC leader from Cape Breton has made to find ways to further include indigenous women in the union’s decision-making processes.
Among the Canadian items appearing on our health and safety page and newswire this week were a really useful, angering and sad piece from The Tyee entitled “Why do workers keep dying on the job?”
We also covered yet another attack on injured workers from the repugnant policy-makers at Ontario’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board. I guess that those effers took time away from implementing the AI-induced layoffs of hundreds of frontline WSIB workers to come up with this one.
LabourStart’s Photo of the Week, which you can catch on our main page until Monday, is from the US. Nurses in California and Nevada will walk out for a day next week in solidarity with striking comrades in Chicago. Other nurses in Chicago and in Maine will be organizing information pickets at their workplace. All are employed by Prime Healthcare, all are concerned that the company puts profits before care. 7 nurses have been suspended for speaking out on behalf of patients.
The United Nurses of Alberta might want to take note and start organizing for their own strike. UNA has a proud strike history that it might want to consider dusting off as Smith’s medicare machinations continue.
Podcast-wise we’ve recently posted a short, ten minutes or less, interview with Chanyoung Heo. He is leader of a small union in South Korea that represents workers at Kuehne+Nagel, a German-owned logistics company.
Listen to the podcast to learn more, including about the company’s new manager, imported from Europe, who told the union that he did not feel bound by a collective bargaining agreement which he did not sign. Yes, really. He said that.
And last week our pod dropped an interview with Sean Sweeney, the founder and coordinator of Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, a global network of trade unionists who are trying change the way we deal with the global climate crisis. Instead of failed neo-liberal solutions, TUED is pushing for ‘public pathways’ to confront the climate emergency.
The labour movement’s history is what our current struggles are built on and this week we marked the anniversaries of these events in Canadian labour history:
This week in 1886 The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, Saskatchewan Division No. 322, formed in Medicine Hat. It is the first union chartered in what later becomes Alberta.
In 1916 a second disaster struck the huge cantilever bridge under construction at Quebec City. Another 13 lives were lost in addition to the 75 deaths in the first collapse in 1907. The bridge, completed in 1917, is still standing today.
And in 1991 more than 100,000 members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada launched a general strike to defend job security for federal public service workers.
LabourStart is also a campaigning website and we currently have four active online solidarity actions, from Türkiye, Taiwan, the Philippines and from Hong Kong.
The latter just went live today at the request of the International Trade Union Confederation, the Building and Wood Workers’ International, the Education International, the International Federation of Journalists and Hong Kong Labour Rights Monitor.
On 21 August 2026 the High Court of Hong Kong convicted Lee Cheuk-yan of incitement to subversion under the National Security Law (NSL). On 11 September, Lee was given a sentence of seven years. Lee is a founder and leader of the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions, the largest independent trade union confederation that was forced to disband under the NSL. His only crime has been his courage. Lee has stood up fearlessly for the rights of working people and for democracy. Our message — the message of millions of trade unionists from around the world — could not be clearer: Free Lee Cheuk-yan now.
Look for the prominent links 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 those of thousands of trade unionists around the world who have already taken action.
This is Derek Blackadder from LabourStart reporting for RadioLabour.
Labour News Network 