CUPW postal workers & supporters take action at Canada Post head office

Action in Ottawa at Canada Post head office in response to a lockout by the company coupled with demands for concessions, and back-to-work legislation. Thursday June 16, 2011.

More info in the video description:
(Click on 'read more' at www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFhpWZnTvEg)

By Scott Neigh
August 1, 2009

More than 3300 employees of mining giant Vale Inco are on strike in Sudbury, Ontario, and in other Canadian communities to defend decades' worth of gains. Beyond that, the strike by members of Locals 6500 and 6200 of the United Steel Workers of America also raise important questions about how unions orient themselves towards their communities and towards the nation-states in which their members live.

There are a number of "very provocative issues for the men" in the company's demands, according to a 21-year veteran of Inco's transportation division who requested to remain anonymous when interviewed at a picket line in the Sudbury community of Copper Cliff.* He pointed out, "There's absolutely no monetary raise in this contract" and no expectation by the members that there would be one, given the low price of nickel and the state of the global economy.

Elio Petri's The Working Class Goes to Heaven (La Classe Operaia Va In Paradiso) is a grim look at the psychological wounds imposed by the factory regime on its chief character, Ludovico Massa. Cruelly nicknamed Lulù the Tool by his pissed off and contrary co-workers, in a factory where he operates a lathe, his obsessive output making him the measure management use to gauge everyone else's work rate.

http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~epf/1999/choi.html

The IWW was one of few labour unions that saw past the rhetoric, and understood that the bourgeois was attempting to divide the working class. One of the more positive accounts of the circumstances faced by Asian immigrants in North America, where they were alienated both by the ruling class and their fellow workers, the IWW would not just take up "Workers of the World, Unite!" as a slogan, but would take it to heart.

CAW leader betting no-strike contract will create opportunities for workers. Some call it a thinly-veiled dues grab

Oct 20, 2007 04:30 AM
Tony Van Alphen
Business Reporter

A controversial agreement between Magna International Inc. and the Canadian Auto Workers that eliminates the right to strike is a "betrayal" of labour principles and a blatant "dues grab," say some past and current leaders of the union.

Read on at The Star's Website.

CAW decries exporters' proposals that would cut workers' pay if currency rises above a pre-set level

High dollar may hit wages

From traffic stop to taser death, Mounties answering questions over routine traffic stop death.

The Toronto Star also carries a special on Canadian troops in Afghanistan today.

Widespread poverty in Canada, particularly among aboriginal peoples, is tarnishing the international reputation of a country that considers itself a moral beacon to the rest of the world leading CUPE to condemn a "Conspiracy of silence."

1,800 people took part in the IBM virtual strike on Second Life I drew attention to before. Here's a report from a participant.

As a national representative for the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Derek Blackadder has walked many picket lines.

But until last month, he'd never encountered the problem of having a fellow protester affixed to his head.

Of course, this was unlike any picket he'd joined before.

The unseemly incident occurred during a virtual strike against IBM within the online community Second Life. Mr. Blackadder, of Cobourg, Ont., was marching to show support when an IBM Italy worker materialized on top of him.

via LIBCOM

Chiefs of the information ages Google are set to launch a technological fix for the uploading of copyrighted material to sites like Youtube. Might be an article worth reading in mind of James W. Lindenschmidt contribution to the Commonor on Revolution and Counter-Revolution In The Information Age

Google Steps Up Video Copyrights.

In what I believe to be a Unite Here campaign, hotel workers at the downtown Toronto Holiday Inn are rising to man a picket daily over parity of pay with other workers in the downtown core and are currently locked out.

22 hotel workers in wage fight

CAW shelves right to strike

Employees at Magna International who vote to join the Canadian Auto Workers won't have the right to strike under a historic labour relations deal.

In a dramatic change regarding fundamental labour rights, the CAW confirmed yesterday it has agreed to shelve the key strike provision in efforts to build a new management-union relationship at Magna, the country's biggest auto parts maker.

I can't even put into words how angry this makes me, fortunetly A very nice rant by another blogger was already written.

For all those geeks out there who have Second Life accounts, here's your chance to picket IBM in the virtual world of Second Life.

Since the Euro-Mayday Net Parade in 2005, where scattered workers unable to participate in the traditional parade could design avators with short biographies of themselves that were added to a huge animated march, these sort of online collective acts of mobilised petitioning have become much more common.

This is the first I've heard of one specific to one workplace. The action arises from negotiations over a new internal collective agreement at the works, after a majority of IBM employees asked for a small pay increased the company snapped back by canceling benefits related to productivity, meaning a loss of 1,000 Euros for individual workers.