May 14,2020 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Socialist Project — The transport sector represents one of the most serious challenges when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, which are increasing faster than from any other sector in society – and at an ever-increasing pace (over 120 per cent globally over the last 30 years – and still increasing in all parts of the world).
Physical distance makes campaigns difficult but not impossible, says union
Despite providing vital services and risking their well-being just by going to work, many previously “invisible” private-sector employees — like janitors, personal support workers and truckers — now deemed essential are still among the most overworked and underpaid.
In response, Services Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 2 has launched a national unionization drive for these essential workers.
David Fairey Co-Chair, BC Employment Standards Coalition
From: David Fairey
Sent: Saturday, May 16, 2020
Subject: Paid Sick Leave Days Campaign Petition & May 21st Day of Action
Please sign our Coalition online petition to the BC government at the link in the e-mail below, and share the link with your networks. Here is a link to an opinion piece on the need for paid sick leave published in The Province newspaper May 3rd:
Across Ontario, seven health-care workers have died from COVID-19 and more than 3,200 are sick.
Those sobering statistics has pushed the province’s largest union to lobby for one piece of equipment that may help those on the front lines.
“We’ve been calling on the government to use its emergency powers to order industry to produce the N95 mask and it was disappointing to learn General Motors in Oshawa will be making masks but not the N95 masks,” says Michael Hurley, president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions.
On Saturday, May 9, 2020 a large cavalcade wended its way through the city of Oshawa, past the major city hospital (Lakeridge Health) and Hillsdale Terraces, a long-term care home where Covid-19 has infected 42 residents (of whom 14 died), and 13 staff members. The cavalcade of 65+ vehicles ended up at the sprawling General Motors Assembly Complex, now mostly empty since GM abandoned vehicle production last December.
Support Health Care Workers – Manufacture More PPE
The rush to reopen the economy highlights a divide between those motivated by public health and those who would sacrifice minimum wage workers to protect profits
Last week John Ivison wrote a lazy screed for the National Post arguing that the CERB was too generous and would prompt minimum-wage workers to stay home rather than return to work in the middle of a pandemic.
Pandemic brings systemic issues around remittances and migrant labour exploitation into sharper focus
Since mid-March, the enhanced community quarantine imposed on the Philippines’s largest island in response to COVID-19 has caused life to grind to a halt, closing down public transportation and most businesses and throwing people out of work.
The effects of this dire situation have reached Canada, as many overseas Filipino workers and families face the urgent need to send remittances home despite their own precarious situations.
I am getting sketched out. I am wearing a bandana on my face. I feel totally stupid that in frikken 2020, all I can find to protect my face is a piece of fabric. I am in the crowded elevator, breathing everyone else’s air. Mostly, people are making fun of me, or acting like I’m a paranoid weirdo. But one worker I don’t know well, a foreman from another trade, he looks at me with compassion in his eyes. I can see that he takes it seriously, as well.
