On March 8 we celebrate, we mourn and we double down on our determination to do more.
International Women’s Day this year comes on the 50th anniversary of two important events – the abortion caravan to Ottawa and the Royal Commission on the Status of Women.
These landmarks are worth celebrating, even as we recognize the work that still needs to be done.
Members of Unifor’s predecessor unions were involved in the caravan, which began in Vancouver and made its way to Ottawa to push back against changes to Canada’s Criminal Code on abortion.
Premier Jason Kenney’s second budget sends a clear message to working people that they don’t matter. His 2020 budget doesn’t create jobs, it kills them, while exposing Alberta’s most vulnerable to even more insecurity.
Kenney is doubling down on the same austerity strategy that has failed to produce results in Alberta or anywhere else in the world. His massive spending cuts coupled with tax breaks for the rich are the last thing Alberta needs.
By now, the entire country is aware of the ten week long lockout at the Federated Co-operatives Limited (FCL) refinery in Regina. What fewer people know is the length to which the company has worked to prolong it. It has deftly used numerous systemic advantages to try to break our union. FCL has been let off the hook time and again. It has to stop.
On December 5, 2019, FCL locked out 730 members of Unifor Local 594 after walking back on its promise to keep workers’ pensions in place.
Today is a heartbreaking day for forestry workers in Nova Scotia and a shameful reminder of the disregard Premier Stephen McNeil has for working people.
A skeleton crew will stay at Northern Pulp until April 21 to winterize the facility. The rest of the 230 Unifor members at Northern Pulp walked through the mill’s gates for the last time today, leaving behind long-held careers, the certainty of good family-supporting jobs in their hometown, and the promise of a dignified retirement with a good union pension.
Last week I witnessed something I have not seen in my 40 years walking picket lines across Canada. Never before have I seen a police force conduct itself with such disrespect for working peoples’ rights and disregard for their basic role as peace officers.
Regina’s Chief of Police ordered more than 70 police officers to intimidate, harass, and dismantle by force a lawful picket line and a peaceful assembly of hundreds of Unifor picketers and their supporters.
Employers that refuse to offer workers an hourly wage of at least $15 are sentencing their employees to poverty.
The Executive Director of the Employer’s Council of Newfoundland and Labrador, Richard Alexander, recently called a $15 an hour minimum wage an “extreme policy”.
When I think back 30 years this week, I think about where we were and the casual sexism and misogyny that seemed to be all around us back in December of 1989.
It’s bewildering to think about how men would cat call the women they worked with or even strangers on the street, egging each other on as if it was some sort of game.
What’s even more astonishing, however, is how little has changed, and how in some ways it has gotten worse.
Part-time work is nothing new to Canadians because employers have long exploited a gap in our employment standards that allows them to discriminate against them. It’s no secret that part-time workers earn below average pay, have no guaranteed schedule of hours, and are often denied benefits that their full-time counterparts enjoy.
More than 3.6 million working people (or about 20 per cent of the workforce) earn their living as part-time workers in Canada.
Every era must come to an end, and thankfully the end has come for Don Cherry’s.
In a long overdue move, Sportsnet finally cut ties with the host of Coach’s Corner this week.
It should have happened a long time ago.
Years of racist and misogynist comments, uninformed opinions on issues such as climate change and advocating a hard-hitting style of hockey that, frankly, put the health of players at risk, finally made his continued employment untenable.
Jerry Dias, National President of Unifor and Daniel Bernhard, Executive Director of Friends of Canadian Broadcasting
Today, the Disney+ streaming service becomes available in Canada, hot on the heels of Apple+, which launched on November 1st. Many are celebrating their arrival as a boon for Canadian viewers: hundreds of new programs, available anytime, anywhere, for less than $9 per month.
