This article was originally published on Recomposition Blog and was made into a pamphlet and distributed on the picket lines in Toronto during the recent lockout of workers by Canada Post.

To download a copy in pdf format suitable for printing please click here

Postal Worker Solidarity Defeats Compulsory Overtime
By Rachel Stafford

For those of us who get excited about workers sticking up for themselves and fighting the bosses, I have been pretty lucky to have been able to participate in what has turned out to be a really inspiring wave of struggle over the past few months. My national union has been in negotiations for a new collective agreement over the past seven months, but what people are agitated about on the floor isn’t up for negotiation.

Today, December 17, is the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers.

"Challenges: Ottawa area sex workers speak out" is a report released Dec 2, 2010 by Chris Bruckert and Frédérique Chabot in collaboration with POWER (Prostitutes of Ottawa/Gatineau Work, Educate and Resist).

POWER's website is http://www.powerottawa.ca

The report is linked on their site, or directly at:
http://www.powerottawa.ca/POWER_Report_Challenges.pdf

From the report's executive summary:

Feminists with Disabilities reports on adults with intellectual disabilities being paid $0.41 per hour to work at a meat-packing plant in Iowa. Some of the men removed from the plant had worked there since the 1970s, living in an unheated bunkhouse in conditions "worse than squalor".

This is a horrific case. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for employers and agencies to exploit people with intellectual disabilities in this way, paying wages far below minimum wage. These workplaces are mostly unknown to the general public, and even this awful story has generated little attention. I know it is difficult to read, but I think it is an important reminder of how ableism functions in our capitalist society.

this is something I am trying to beef up, any suggestions?
I want it to be as little theory as possible, keep basic.

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an “I owe you” left off the table

Money

There are very few people really asking for what they deserve in this land. You have many cases of people demanding way more than they deserve, usually this is your boss, your manager or your foreman; generally it is the people who tell you what to do without asking you what you think. These are the people that already have more than you; they think they are entitled to even more. It is the way professional hockey players and owners act as if one million isn't enough.

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.