The 1400-worker strike in Newfoundland at Dominion grocery stores owned by Loblaw Companies Limited, now in its eleventh week, will go down in history as the first major Canadian labour dispute of the COVID-19 pandemic.
On one level, it is a dispute about fundamental workplace standards, wages and job security. Dig deeper and you quickly realize this dispute is about fairness, decency and respect in Canada’s low-wage retail sector.
As the dust settles from the 2020 B.C. election, parties on both sides of the aisle are reflecting on lessons learned and what comes next.
For the B.C. Liberals, they can hang a significant degree of blame on leadership that is increasingly out of touch with the day-to-day concerns of British Columbians. Leader Andrew Wilkinson is only a symptom of a wider rot in a caucus indifferent to the skyrocketing costs of housing and hostile to reducing income inequality.
People will travel again, for business, for pleasure, to see family or to new job opportunities in another city or even another country. This is well understood by all levels of government.
It won’t happen tomorrow, of course, but it will happen, and we need to be ready.
The first thing, of course, is to make sure that the industry has what it needs to reopen. There is a growing consensus that ensuring Canada has an aviation industry in the future will require the federal government playing a greater role.
Just when Canadians need strong news outlets to guide them through the pandemic’s second wave, those same outlets are facing extinction.
The sharp revenue drop resulting from COVID-19 comes after years of Google and Facebook, cornering the market on consumer data and digital advertising, bleeding much-needed revenue away from newspapers, magazines and TV and radio.
The dust had barely settled on the 2018-19 trade dispute between U.S. and Canada when the Trump administration announced in August that tariffs would be re-imposed on Canada in response to a supposed ‘surge’ in Canadian primary aluminum imports. Thankfully, the second round of tariffs was short-lived, lasting only a month before it was repealed.
The collective agreement ratified by Unifor members at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles this past weekend is a vital step in the rebuilding of the Canadian auto industry for the future.
The deal commits FCA to investing up to $1.5 billion in a new platform to build both Hybrid Vehicles and Battery Electric Vehicles in Windsor, with at least one new model by 2025.
It follows the pattern established by Ford members when they ratified a new collective agreement last month that also included a commitment to BEVs, and puts Canada well on the road to revitalizing the auto industry.
Scott Moe killed somebody. I stood up for the rights of working people. I spent more time in jail.
As has been widely reported this week, Saskatchewan’s premier was let go with a fine after a fatal crash in which a woman was killed in 1997.
Not only that, his name was not released at the time and the woman’s son, then a teenager, did not find out for 23 years who was responsible for his mother’s death.
Moe was given a ticket for driving without due care and attention, a provincial traffic offence. For killing someone in front of her son.
Last month, it was reported that the Liberal caucus identified a guaranteed basic income as the top policy priority to debate and vote on at the party’s upcoming November national convention. This comes as little surprise. The COVID-19 pandemic and catastrophic job loss that ensued has intensified calls for the strengthening of Canada’s social safety net and income security programs that have proven to be inadequate during times of economic crisis.
By Jerry Dias, Unifor National President as published in The Star on September 13, 2020
The Trump administration announced in late July that 10 per cent tariffs on primary aluminum imports from Canada would be levied once again, heeding the demands of a small group of industry insiders calling themselves the American Primary Aluminum Association (APAA).
Getting together in big groups, as we would normally at marches and picnics in the usual celebration of workers’ collective power, is just not possible or even a good idea during the COVID-19 pandemic.
What makes this Labour Day so different is that workers in Saskatchewan are quickly headed toward a reckoning with the Sask Party government that is at odds, if not overtly hostile, to working people’s interests.
