The RadioLabour episode that carried this report can be found at: https://rabble.ca/podcast/extendicare-workers-fight-for-fair-contract-with-long-term-care-provider/
Top stories on our Canadian French- and English-language pages this week included, no surprise, the proposed changes to the Canada Labour Code that would give the federal Minister of Labour, not that the current government actually thinks enough of us to have one, the power to end strikes for pretty much any reason at all.
Like all bad ideas, this one will spread fast. Look for provinces to bring forward their own versions of the Liberal bill, using the same excuse: we need to crush workers and their unions to become prosperous. Cause, you know, somebody has to pay and it can’t be the rich and employers.
Other stories our volunteers found and posted were about more pleasant labour news. Top of my list and my favourite story of the week was a piece from the Spectator.
“Sisters of ‘78” is a play that opened this week in Hamilton ON that brings the historic 163-day Fleck strike to the stage and back to life. The Fleck workers, 80 women, faced down up to 536 cops and countless scabs on their picket lines. And they won. Not just for themselves but for all Ontario workers. Just one example: the Rand Formula was incorporated into the Ontario Labour Relations Act as a direct result of the Fleck workers struggle.
They did it back then; we can do it now.
Resisting the urge to link the Fleck strike to what’s coming from our federal and soon provincial governments, here’s this week’s international story of note.
This week 25 political prisoners, many of them imprisoned for their trade union work, were released by the government of Belarus. Hundreds more remain in jail. You can read more about the how’s, why’s and where’s in the piece we’re carrying from global union federation IndustriALL.
Over on LabourStart’s Working Women pages stories from Canada included a piece from the CLC marking Gender Equality Week, a report from the IAM’s international women’s conference in Chicago, and some early and very positive reviews of Sisters of 78.
Among the Canadian items appearing on our health and safety page and newswire this week were the PSAC’s reaction to the death of a member in Montreal this week and its efforts in bargaining mental health supports with Parks Canada.
LabourStart’s Photo of the Week, which you can catch on our main page until Monday, is from New Zealand where 10,000 public service workers across that country walked off the job in a one-day warning strike on 9 September. In a country that size, that’s a major show of strength in support of the union’s bargaining position.
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 1980 some 10,000 federal clerical and regulatory workers walked off the job – 9 days before being in a legal strike position. Women made up 76% of the bargaining unit, and 57% were under the age of 35.
In 1873 The Canadian Labour Union was founded in Toronto. This first attempt to organize a Canadian labour central found limited support, mainly from skilled workers in Ontario.
And today we wish a happy birthday to the Canadian Union of Public Employees, now Canada’s largest union. It was founded on this date in 1963 in Winnipeg through a merger of two earlier organizations.
And in 1995 Canadian unions supporting the Liverpool Dockers Solidarity Campaign participated in national actions using the internet. This is believed to be the first time the net was used to organize an international labour solidarity action.
LabourStart is also a campaigning website and we currently have three active online solidarity actions, one each in solidarity with workers in Hong Kong, Turkiye and in Taiwan. Sadly, the Hong Kong and Turkish campaigns both involve workers jailed for their union work. In other words, for doing the kind of things you and I likely do almost every day.
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 those of thousands of trade unionists around the world who have already taken action. This is Derek Blackadder from LabourStart reporting for RadioLabour.
