By: Delbert Francis

The Ontario government has announced that it will end the Community-Start Up and Maintenance benefit (CSUMB) for recipients of Ontario Works (OW) and the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) on December 31, 2012. Considering the real value of a welfare cheque has declined by nearly 60 percent since the mid-nineties, doing away with community start-up amounts to kicking the poor while they’re already down. To stop this cut poor people and public sector workers in Ontario will need to fight back together.

Issue 15 of Linchpin, the newspaper of Common Cause, is now available online.

Inside you will find articles on CUPE's upcoming strikes and lockouts affecting the City and University of Toronto, the struggle against Caterpillar being waged by locked out workers at Electro-Motive in London, reports from Occupy Toronto and Occupy Hamilton, interviews with participants in the Egyptian Revolution and more!

Download Linchpin here!

by Bruce 'the Bruiser' Darden

Before the Lockout

In the spring of 2011, during the rotating strikes and subsequent lockout of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), anarchists living in southern Ontario attempted to organize support and solidarity for their working class brothers and sisters. Specifically, members of Common Cause took an active role organizing community solidarity and fightback in Toronto and Hamilton. These members did not organize under the banner of Common Cause, but participated in the activities planned by the mass organizations that these members are a part of—especially Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP); the Greater Toronto Workers' Assembly (GTWA); Steel City Solidarity (a solidarity network in Hamilton); and CUPE Locals 3902 & 3907.

by Jeff Shantz
State repression columnist

In events like the G20 protests and clampdown there emerge real opportunities for recognition and understanding that are not always so readily available behind the screen of “business as usual.” The learning curve shifts and some things become much more clear.

Issue 10 of Linchpin, the newspaper of Common Cause, is now online and available for downloading and printing.

This is a special edition of the paper produced for Labour Day 2009.

In it you can read the reflections of Common Cause member and CUPE 3906 union organizer Peter Marin on the recent successful organizing drive of post-doctorate workers at McMaster University.

There are also ads for upcoming anarchist discussions and conferences in Ottawa, Hamilton, and Toronto.

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On Tuesday July 14 Deputy Premier, or according to him “Citizen”, George Smitherman launched “One Toronto” a website networking volunteer scabs to pick up garbage in Toronto in the midst of a 4 week long strike by the civic workers unions CUPE 416 and 79.

Posing for media photos with a broom in hand, Smitherman had the bald faced audacity to claim that he wasn't taking sides in the strike but rather ““We’re taking one side and one side only — the side of clean streets in our city,”

Smitherman knows he can't come out and say he's organizing brigades of volunteer scabs to further his political career but that's exactly what he's doing.