NOVEMBER 18, 2002[1] – The average union member working at the Cobourg Daily Star and Port Hope Evening Guide, earns $10.91 an hour.[2] No wonder they have been walking the picket line since October 11,[3] demanding nothing more than a living wage. Twenty years ago, non-union graphic arts employees were making $10 an hour in Ontario. It is scandalous that, 20 years of price increases later, people are expected to live on the same amount. According to the strikers’ union, the Communication Workers of America local 30248, “over the past three years employees” at the two papers “have lost 1.9…
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DECEMBER 8, 2001 – Fifty newspaper inserters making poverty line wages and fighting for their first union contract have been stymied at every turn by their employer, media giant CanWest Global. “In the lead up to Christmas, one of the most profitable times for newspapers, these women who make an average of $8 an hour, have literally been left out in the cold,” said Cec Makowski, the Ontario Region Vice-President for the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada. The 50 women workers, many single moms and newcomers to Canada, have been forced out on strike against Hamilton Web, the…
Comments closedJUNE 30, 2001 – Prior to the raid on the anti-globalization conference in Indonesia, myself and three others (two from Australia and one from Thailand) were able to meet with and interview trade union activists in Jakarta. We first talked with a young organizer with the Greater Jakarta Labour Union. What are the conditions like for workers in Indonesia? Let me give you an example of conditions. Go to the garment factories or the shoe factories. The working day is supposed to be eight hours. But almost every day, if there’s work to be done, they’ll have to do two…
Comments closedMAY 10, 1999 – Suddenly, what seemed unthinkable 18 months ago, is looming as a real possibility. Mike Harris, reviled by thousands, might just get re-elected in the Ontario election. Some polls have him trailing the Liberals. But the Toronto Star, based on a fairly large sample, put Harris at 51% just as the election was called, 12 points up on the Liberals, and far ahead of the NDP.[1] Harris could still blow it. There is deep hatred towards him across the province. He will be dogged by activists at every stop. But what happens on June 4 if we…
Comments closedMARCH 15, 1999 – When striking educational support staff in Toronto turned to mass pickets last week, they unleashed a power that can stop the Tory cuts. Two weeks into their strike against the Toronto Board of Education, the 14,000 striking members of CUPE local 4400 switched from pickets scattered across the more than 300 schools in the district, to concentrated mass pickets of hundreds at selected high schools.[1] From Harbord Collegiate and West Toronto Collegiate in the west end, to Riverdale and East York in the east, hundreds and hundreds of pickets and supporters, on Monday and Tuesday of…
Comments closedMARCH 1, 1999 – Saturday morning, February 27, more than 14,000 educational workers in the Toronto school board, members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) local 4400, walked off the job.[1] According to CUPE, the Toronto board is facing budget cuts of $172-million because of the Harris Tories’ Bill 160, cuts which pose the possibility of 4,358 job losses in the next four years.[2] But these are essential workers. They are the custodians, administrative staff, teaching assistants, English as a Second Language (ESL) instructors, international language instructors and lunch-room assistants. They have already faced job losses and downsizing.…
Comments closedAUGUST 3, 1998 – The summer of silence from the Ontario Federation of Labour was broken through an article in The Globe and Mail.[1] The heads of Ontario unions have met, the bosses’ paper reported, and there will be no one-day province-wide strike this fall against the Harris Tories. In a phone interview, Buzz Hargrove, head of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), said “my understanding is that there’s no one-day” general strike. Sid Ryan of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) said, “apparently, the province-wide strike at this time has been cancelled.” Wayne Samuelson, head of the Ontario Federation…
Comments closedOCTOBER 21, 1997 – The one-day general strike in Windsor was incredibly successful. Not since the Toronto shutdown in October 1996 and the Hamilton shutdown in February 1996, has there been such an impressive display of working class power in the province. But it was successful in spite of very little enthusiasm from top labour leaders. The number of buses mobilized to bring supporters in were numbered in dozens, not the hundreds which descended on Toronto and Hamilton.[1] And most significantly, at this writing, there are no further public plans for days of action, let alone a province-wide general strike.…
Comments closedOCTOBER 8, 1997 – On October 17, Windsor Ontario will become the eighth Ontario city to be shut by a one-day general strike in the “Days of Action” campaign against the province’s Tories. If it is anything like the general strike in North Bay on September 26, it will again display the deep anger and willingness to fight in the Ontario workers’ movement. On Friday September 26 in North Bay, many workplaces were shut down by picket lines and an estimated 3,000 demonstrated at Memorial Gardens. On Saturday between 15,000 and 20,000, including 180 busloads of protesters, marched through the…
Comments closedNOVEMBER 27, 1996 – The numbers game has loomed large in the wake of the days of action in Toronto. Toronto cops came up with the ludicrous figure of 40,000 for the demonstration on October 26, a figure so unbelievable that they had to increase it to 75,000.[1] The Toronto Star contributed to the nonsense by having “experts” count heads of an aerial photograph of the demo at Queen’s Park. They arrived at a figure of 52,800 for the crowd size.[2] But the problem is that the crowd took hours to march to Queen’s Park. At any one time, only…
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