Labour News Network

Brampton, ON – After a strike threat, Brampton Transit Workers, represented by Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 1573-Brampton, ON, have reached a tentative agreement with the transit agency yesterday afternoon.

The deal was reached only weeks after the more than 1,400 Union members threatened to strike after overwhelmingly rejecting a previous contract offer from Brampton Transit that had significantly reduced wages from their previous offer, while also adding new concessions. In March, as contract talks stalled, the Union members voted to authorize a strike if necessary. The two sides returned to the table, but talks once again broke down.

“We are pleased to announce that after negotiations yesterday afternoon, Local 1573 has reached a tentative agreement with Brampton Transit,” said ATU International Vice President Ken Wilson.

“The transit agency recognized the important role our members play in the community by putting forth a contract with wages and benefits that put our members on par with transit workers in the Greater Toronto Area.”

“Our members’ unwavering unity is the reason we have a tentative agreement they should be proud to vote on,”

said ATU International President John Costa. “Our members now have a pathway to the middle class for the essential public service they provide. This agreement represents our efforts to ensure that transit workers across Canada are treated with the respect and dignity they deserve.”

Local members are expected to vote soon on the deal at a ratification meeting. Details of the settlement will not be shared with the media or public until it is presented to the Union’s membership.

The RadioLabour episode that carried this report can be found at:  https://rabble.ca/podcast/unions-say-no-to-the-notwithstanding-clause/

This week the top stories sections on our Canadian French- and English-language pages included a few interesting analytical pieces regarding the federal election and how working class interests aren’t, for the most part, being represented.  And of course lots of reminders from unions to get out and vote and even some suggestions that they should vote according to those interests which are not much represented.

If that makes any sense.

We also carried a piece from the CLC on the anniversary of the Rana Plaza Disaster.  The name is probably burnt into your memory but just in case…Rana Plaza was a garment factory in Bangladesh that collapsed, killing 1134 workers, most of them young women, and seriously injuring over 2500 others.  A massive industrial homicide.

In part, the CLC marks the anniversary each year, as do several major Canadian unions, because there is and was a Canadian connection to the disaster:  Several Canadian clothing brands used and still use, contractors in countries like Bangladesh, Nicaragua, Ethiopia and Indonesia to produce the clothes that they sell.  There’s often little or no monitoring of working conditions in those factories even though the brands have the power to force improvements.  Some, at the very least, are Rana Plazas waiting to happen.

The Congress’ article is worth a read.  Among other things it provides a short summary of what the labour movement here has been doing in solidarity with workers facing down Canada-based corporations.

Also a top story this week was a report on the inclusion of a no-discrimination on the basis of caste provision in the new PSAC agreement at Queen’s University, a first as far as I can recall.

But my favourite item, among our Canadian stories at least, was the news that Canadian comedians, members of The Canadian Association of Stand-up, Sketch & Improv Comedians (CASC) have joined my local union, Unifor’s Canadian Freelance Union.  Welcome comrades!  This should be fun.  And funny.  Look for our next membership meeting at Just for Laughs.

As LabourStart is a global organization I should slip in at least one non-Canadian story worth being highlighted for you.  This week that story is the Rana Plaza anniversary and we have lots of coverage on our main page and on our H&S site.

This week’s LabourStart podcast is an interview with Dr Debbie Goldman.  She worked for 28 years at the Communication Workers of America (CWA) and is an expert on the subject of call centre workers.  She and our editor, Eric Lee, discussed her new book, Disconnected: Call Center Workers Fight for Good Jobs in the Digital Age.  They talked about issues like surveillance in the workplace, how the CWA won impressive victories in defence of call centre workers’ rights, and how employers export call centre jobs abroad only to run-up against international trade union solidarity.  We ended with a discussion about whether the much-touted “momentum” of unionisation in the USA in 2024 has continued under Trump.

Among the Canadian items appearing on our health and safety page and newswire this week were, of course, stories about upcoming Day of Mourning event across the country.  Several provincial federations of labour provide listings of events so it’s easy to find one near you.  And while the Day of Mourning started here in Canada it’s now marked around the world.  So even if, like me, you’re currently out of the country you can still join in.  If you happen to Sunday’s ceremony in Olhao Portugal, look for the old guy in the International Brigades bucket hat and ‘Workers Rights Are Human Rights’ tee.

Another Canadian invention is LabourStart’s Photo of the Week.  This week we carried a photo from Brussels where last week leaders of the European Public Service Union held an anti-fascist action during an Executive Committee meeting, in the 80th year of the defeat of fascism.

Delegates visited and cleaned the memorial stone (Stolperstein) of Richard Lipper, a young Belgian resistance fighter executed by the Nazis in 1944. Francoise Geng, EPSU President spoke at the ceremony: “Richard Lipper stood against fascism with courage and conviction. Today, as trade unionists, we remember that resistance is not just history – it’s a responsibility. Our message is simple: no to fascism, not then, not now.”

It’s impossible for me not to add a comment to the effect that celebrating the end of fascism these days may be a little premature.

Labour’s history is what our current struggles are built on and this week we marked the anniversaries of these events:

This week in 1974 and as part of a targeted campaign for pay equity, postal workers began a seven-day illegal strike that wins women postal code machine operators the same pay as male postal clerks.

In 2023, after more than a year of bargaining, 155,000 public service workers across 30 federal government departments went out on a successful strike, marking one of the largest strikes by federal employees in Canadian history.

And in 1956 more than 1600 delegates attended the founding convention of the Canadian Labour Congress, a merger of the Trades and Labour Congress and the Canadian Congress of Labour. They called for a national health plan, full employment and a guaranteed annual wage.

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.

LabourStart hosts online solidarity actions at the request of unions around the world.  This week we’d like to highlight urgent appeals for online solidarity with trade union activists in Azerbaijan who have been jailed for attempting to organize unions that don’t toe the government’s line.  That line being no unions as they interfere with profits. 

If you can spare just a few seconds you can do your part in struggles like these by sending a solidarity or protest message.

Look for details on our site.

Before I go, a quick shout out to all the labour candidates carrying the NDP banner in the federal election.  Thanks.  Get some rest.

This is Derek Blackadder from LabourStart reporting for RadioLabour.

The RadioLabour episode that carried this report can be found at:  https://rabble.ca/podcast/american-scholars-moving-to-canada-eh/

This week the top stories sections on our Canadian French- and English-language pages included more strike dates for 13,000 Quebec daycare workers and the threat of warning strikes evolving into an open-ended walkout, Unifor’s plan for building solidarity through supply chains, and something rarely see:  A joint declaration from two major unions, in this case CUPE and Unifor.  The statement is about, you guessed it, the US attack on Canadian workers.

We also carried news of a transit strike in BC over a 19^th century issue:  access to clean and safe washrooms, personal care workers in Manitoba protesting because their employer hasn’t paid them, another 19^th century problem, and the end of the BCGEU inland ferry strike.

But my favourite item, among our Canadian stories at least, was about the call for solidarity with Telus workers in Türkiye (Turkey).  Yes, Telus…in Türkiye.  Most of us are probably not aware that Telus is way more than a Canadian telecom.  It has contracts to provide everything from human resources services to Ontario hospitals to content moderation of posts on some of the most popular social media platforms on earth.

Which is the horrendous job Telus workers in Türkiye are doing for TikTok.  Traumatized by their work, they are organizing but face an employer that terminates workers for supporting  Çağrı-İş, an independent union representing call center workers.  This is something that these workers share with other content moderators around the world and is why they are networking globally while organizing locally.

But what makes this a Canadian labour news story?  Steel does.  The Steelworkers represents most Telus workers in Canada and Steel, as Steel is wont to do, is trying to engage Canadian workers in support of our comrades in Turkiye.  So pay attention.  And send a solidarity and protest message via the online action Steel and the other union and global union federation involved have asked LabourStart to host.

The Turkish union is convinced that messages from Canadians will carry extra weight not just with Telus, but with the Turkish workers.  A few seconds of digital solidarity can have a huge impact on morale in a workplace as horrible as theirs.

This week’s LabourStart podcast is an interview with Luc Triangle, General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).  Luc detailed the horrendous conditions for trade unionists in Belarus in the lead-up to a global day of action in solidarity with them.

On our Working Women News page you’ll find stories from Canada and from around the globe in 9 languages.  

Stories like those marking Equal Pay Day on 10 April.  The date changes from year to year but it is the date on which the average woman worker earns as much for her work in 2024 and the for three and a bit months of 2025 as did men doing similar work in 2024 alone.

And like the piece from Northern Ontario, where the Labourers have launched a new programme to get women workers onto construction sites and one detailing why women parents support women workers as the Quebec daycare strikes heat up.

Among the Canadian items appearing on our health and safety page and newswire this week was coverage of the surge in shoplifting from Liquor New Brunswick stores and its effects on the CUPE members who work in them and another regarding the mental health issues corrections workers face and how one union, OPSEU, is addressing them.

LabourStart’s Photo of the Week isn’t often Canadian but as a Canadian is our photo editor and as that Canadian is me, you all get to hear about our photo of the week in each episode.

This week we carried a photo of members of FO, a French union confederation like the CLC, as they participated in a national day of protest against neoliberal austerity policies in the social services and healthcare sectors.

Labour’s history is what our current struggles are built on and this week we marked the anniversaries of these events:

This week 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 called on the province to bring in anti-scab laws with no success.

In 1972 more than 200,000 public sector workers, organized in the Québec Common Front, began a ten-day strike. Three leaders were jailed, but the Common Front ultimately succeeded in winning a $100 minimum weekly wage for public employees.

In 1980 The Canadian Farmworkers Union held its founding convention at Douglas College in Vancouver. Delegates elect Raj Chouhan as president of the CFU, Canada’s first union of agricultural workers.

And last but definitely not least, this week 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.

There are lots more Canadian labour history items like this to be found at the bottom of our Canadian news pages.  Look for them and be inspired.

This is Derek Blackadder from LabourStart reporting for RadioLabour.

VANCOUVER—British Columbia Infrastructure Benefits (BCIB)—a unique provincial organization that uses a community benefits agreement to help workers land good local jobs in construction—is succeeding in making its workforce more representative of the province’s population, finds a new report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA). 

Building Better: The positive impact of a community benefits agreement on the B.C. construction workforce shows how using a community benefits agreement in construction employment helps address the industry’s chronic shortage of skilled workers, diversify the workforce and provide substantial local economic benefits by giving priority to hiring from communities where its projects are located.

“The tools the BCIB are using to provide better local jobs in the construction industry are working,” says report author John Calvert. “It’s helping to counteract a toxic worksite culture that can be hostile to new workers who are women, Indigenous or racialized. It’s helping construction workers land better paying, unionized jobs. And that’s helping local economies.”

From 2019 to the end of 2024, British Columbia Infrastructure Benefits (BCIB) hired 4,946 workers, who logged over 7.5 million paid hours. This makes it the second largest provincial construction employer and the source of benefits, such as:

• Reaching a 92 per cent hiring rate of B.C. residents, 76 per cent of whom are in the communities where projects are built.
• Reaching a 20 per cent hiring rate of trainees or apprentices and a 21 per cent of rehiring of BCIB employees on new jobs.
• Reaching a 14 per cent hiring rate of Indigenous workers, more than double the provincial construction average 
• Addressing the frequently toxic worksite environment affecting many workers via its Respectful Onsite Initiative (ROI). 
• Guaranteed payment to all workers on BCIB’s payroll, eliminating the common problem of non-payment of wages.
• Providing consistent pay across worker classifications, regardless of contractor, through unionization of workers on BCIB worksites.

“BCIB is unique,” says Calvert. “It is the only example of a government creating a public employer to train, employ and supply the trades’ workforce on major construction projects in Canada. “BCIB’s support for training and apprenticeship, its efforts to retain skilled workers in the industry by promoting employment continuity through rehiring workers, and its focus on local employment represents a long-term investment in the industry’s workforce. It’s working.” 

Build Better is available at: https://www.policyalternatives.ca/news-research/build-better