Sectoral bargaining could level the playing field for today’s employees.
For more than 30 years, unions in B.C. have been fighting for sectoral bargaining — a process to bring workers and employers from similar businesses to a single negotiating table.
Instead of organizing hundreds of fast-food outlets, for example, one model of sectoral bargaining could require representatives of the businesses and workers to negotiate a framework agreement for the industry.
Interview with Bashir Abu-Manneh & Hoda Mitwally on how US activists can more effectively support Palestinians. Two years after Oct 7, public outrage against Israel is widespread, yet grassroots solidarity nowhere near as powerful as it needs to be.
While Trump’s ceasefire plan might provide relief from Israel’s genocidal onslaught, Gaza has been decimated, and the proposed deal would codify a vastly deteriorated situation for millions of Palestinians.
On 22 September, half a million workers, students and solidarity activists mobilised in more than 80 cities across Italy under the slogan “Blocchiamo Tutto” (Let’s block everything). The Unione Sindacale di Base (USB), which initiated the action, has called for “the immediate break-off of relations with the terrorist state of Israel”.
The working class must be ever vigilant of the machinations of the political class. Mark Carney positioned himself as Canada’s response to Trump, but his actions show him to be pro-business and anti-worker.
Workers need to be wary this season. The ground is cluttered with politicians who claim to be our friends. These claims are almost always lies, whether they are uttered in Ottawa or DC, or in any other capital where poisonous populism is celebrated by autocrats. Looking at you, Orban, Putin and Modi!
The federal office tasked with ensuring the long-term health of Canadians’ pensions is underestimating one of the biggest threats to people’s retirement plans — climate change, says an advocacy group.
The Office of the Chief Actuary (OCA) is failing to capture the financial risks of climate change in its long-term assessments of the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and other public funds, warned advocacy group Shift: Action for Pension Wealth and Planet Health in an email to Chief Actuary Assia Billig early this morning.
For unions to survive, they must embrace antifascism.
In countries across the capitalist world, trade union movements are being challenged to their very core by the growth of right-wing populist and neofascist mass movements. What makes this situation especially dangerous is that labor unions and supporters are facing not just maniacal leaders or even military juntas, but a strengthening political alignment between segments of the capitalist class and these same right-wing social movements.
Big tech companies continue to spend massive amounts of money building ever more powerful generative AI (artificial intelligence) systems and ever larger data centers to run them, all the while losing billions of dollars with no likely pathway to profitability. And while it remains to be seen how long the companies and their venture capital partners will keep the money taps open, popular dislike and distrust of big tech and its AI systems are rapidly growing.
