Articles
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Boosting Member Participation
Longtime Our Times reader and supporter Allan Gottheil called in last summer to suggest an idea for a column: what I’ll call “tech-enabled broader-based participation.” Continuous democracy? Breakfast-table mobilization? Whatever it gets called, it is about the wider and deeper inclusion of members in their union’s activities, on a daily basis, through a process similar to polling.For instance, imagine a smartphone app that connects members to their union. The union wants to kno… Keep reading…
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Telling Our Own Stories
A People’s History of Nova Scotia
A self-proclaimed group of misfits, radicals and rabble-rousers got together recently in Halifax to recount a different sort of history than what’s usually taught in schools. Keep reading…
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Tech Tips & Tools For Change
Katie Arnup at Unifor is the first Canadian unionist I’ve seen, to date (besides me), to use a badge on Facebook: a small logo or other graphic in the corner of a user’s photo. It’s an inexpensive way for union members to show their allegiance to, and play a small but collectively important part in, campaigns such as ... Keep reading…
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Standing Strong In A Precarious World
Retail Workers Keep Their Statutory Holidays
It’s hard to imagine, but a significant public policy campaign launched by retail workers in Canada began with the pages of the right-leaning Toronto Sun newspaper. Keep reading…
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Tribute To Linda Jolley (1945-2013)
In April of next year, a health and safety symposium is being held in Elliot Lake to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Steelworkers’ wildcat strike to protest the conditions in the mines. It’s truly painful that Linda will not be there. Keep reading…
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Meeting Members’ Needs
I suspect I was being baited, as a LabourStart emailer when, out for dinner with some union friends recently, I was treated to an “email is dead” screed. The argument was that email has become so ubiquitous and routine that it gets no real attention. And because so much of what we receive is junk, unless the message is coming from someone we trust, we delete it without even opening it.There’s some truth to that, particularly regarding trusting the sender. To which my response is: get t… Keep reading…
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The Movement And The Message
Okay, close your eyes and think of the Canadian labour movement. What do you see? C’mon, be honest. You’re picturing a middle-aged white guy, sporting a robust beer belly under an XL union t-shirt, likely with placard in hand, defiantly standing on a picket line. Keep reading…
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The Digital Divide Where We Live
I need a list of things that I should be reminded of regularly. Age, or perhaps resilient enthusiasms that fly in the face of reality, are the culprits behind my forgetting. Top of the list is that the digital divide isn’t a Global South vs. Global North thing. It’s a “my neighbourhood” thing.As I was writing this column, my attention was drawn to comments made by some pretty active (online and in meatspace) trade unionists about Canada Post and probable service cuts. Asked to support ... Keep reading…
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Knowing The Words And Your Rights
It’s a rainy evening in late February as men and women enter the British Columbia Federation of Labour building, set on Joyce Street among aging storefronts in a south Vancouver neighbourhood. Heading to a classroom, the group passes a series of framed images lining the hallway, including a photograph of a funeral procession in 1918. Keep reading…
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Workers Who Are Migrants
A Dialogue About Global Labour Migration
“If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us walk together.“Lilla Watson, Australian Aboriginal activistQuick! Tell me what comes to mind when you hear the term “migrant workers.” If you had images or thoughts of pitiful working conditions, cruel treatment and unjust immigration policies, you get five points (okay, make that six). But why not a perfect 10?It seem… Keep reading…
