The Uber-ization of the Canadian economy

Living in Singapore a few years ago, Drew Currah had a tough time finding tradespeople to fix his air conditioning and help him with an electrical problem. His challenge finding contractors, coupled with his job working for a firm that invests in U.S. Silicon Valley tech companies, helped him come up with a business idea.

He moved to Edmonton and, along with some friends, developed Trade Pros — a mobile phone app that allows people to post their repair and renovation jobs and contractors to bid on them.

 Why Workers Everywhere Should Be Scared by Kentucky’s Assault on Unions

“A lot of working people voted for change in this election,” argued Bill Finn, the director of the Kentucky State Building and Construction Trades Council, as Kentucky legislators were shredding labor rights in the Bluegrass State. “They didn’t vote for this. They didn’t vote for a pay cut.”

Finn got that right. Kentucky Republicans launched the new year with a race to enact sweeping anti-labor legislation, and they weren’t concerning themselves with the question of whether they had a mandate to assault labor unions and undermine wages and workplace protections. They are moving immediately, aggressively, and thoroughly to implement an across-the-board assault on workers and the unions that represent them.

John Kasich blocks Ohio cities from raising their own minimum wages

This week, Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) signed a bill that blocks any city or other local government in the state from raising its own minimum wage above the state’s floor of $8.10 an hour.

The legislation, which was passed by state lawmakers earlier in the month, was in direct response to an upcoming vote in Cleveland on whether to raise its wage. While the state’s wage will raise to $8.15 next year, Cleveland residents will vote in May on whether to raise their minimum to $12 by 2018 and $15 by 2021. With the new law in place, however, they won’t actually have any power to raise their minimum wage.

No Country With a McDonald's Can Remain a Democracy

A wave of revulsion rolls around the world. Approval ratings for incumbent leaders are everywhere collapsing. Symbols, slogans and sensation trump facts and nuanced argument. One in six Americans now believe that military rule would be a good idea. From all this I draw the following, peculiar conclusion: no country with a McDonald's can remain a democracy.

Twenty years ago, the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman proposed his "golden arches theory of conflict prevention." This holds that "no two countries that both have McDonald's have ever fought a war against each other since they each got their McDonald's."

Donald Trump Is the Anti–Labor Day Candidate: Running Against Fair Wages, Worker Rights, and Unions

Donald Trump, the billionaire candidate who has argued that “having a low minimum wage is not a bad thing for this country” and complained in a 2015 GOP debate that wages are “too high,” is running for president this fall on the most virulently anti-worker and anti-union platform in the history of his Republican Party.

Trump and the anti-labor partisans who nominated him for the presidency have rejected the legacy of a Grand Old Party that once cheered when Abraham Lincoln declared: “Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”

'France can change': PM Manuel Valls vows to push on with labour reforms

The French government will not back down in the face of strike action against its contested overhaul of labour laws and intends to prove to the world that reforming the country is not impossible, Manuel Valls, the French prime minister, has said.

Valls is increasingly concerned that images of striking oil refinery workers around burning tyres, rail disruptions and petrol panic-buying have tarnished France’s image abroad, put visitors off coming to the showpiece Euro 2016 football tournament and threatened to damage a fragile tourism industry still reeling from November’s Paris terror attacks.

No progress made on public sector bargaining as Liberals ape Conservatives' stance

Canada's largest public service union is warning of another era of emaciated civil service systems following a second round of unsuccessful contract negotiations under the Liberal government.

Five bargaining units from the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), representing nearly 100,000 civil servants, met with teams from the Treasury Board in Ottawa last week to discuss new contracts.

In Exchange For Cutting Benefits, This Bankrupt Coal Company Agreed To Pay Executives Millions

A bankrupt coal company last month unveiled a plan to pay top executives up to $11.9 million in bonuses over six months as an apparent reward for slashing benefits for workers and dodging environmental clean-up obligations during bankruptcy proceedings. The company, Alpha Natural Resources, is one of the four largest coal companies in the U.S. and filed for bankruptcy last year.

Nine years of Harper, nine years of attacks on unions

Stephen Harper has been Prime Minister for almost a decade. In that time, the system of protections that have been put in place by decades of advocacy by labour organizations and unions has been partly dismantled.

"This government has been clear in its dislike of unions and collective bargaining," said Angella MacEwan, Senior Economist with the Canadian Labour Congress. "There has been no respect for the important role unions play in the workplace and in civil society."

The attacks have been extremely strategic. Ground Zero for these attacks has been the House of Commons, where piece after piece of legislation has taken aim at unions and collective bargaining.

A Labor Day Worry: The Court’s Right-Wingers Are Sharpening Their Knives

We don’t officially celebrate International Workers’ Day on May 1 in this country, even though the worldwide holiday was originated to memorialize the Chicago Haymarket Square Riot of 1886 and the long and often bloody movement waged by American workers to establish the eight-hour workday. Instead, we hold a watered-down substitute, observing Labor Day on the first Monday of September. Each year, the commemoration grows more tepid and disconnected from the historical and current struggles of working people.

If the U.S. Supreme Court’s dominant Republican majority has its way when the panel’s new term commences in October, we might as well dispense with the holiday altogether, or at least drop the term “labor” from its title. Among the most important cases the court will consider when it reconvenes is Friedrichs v. California Teachers, which poses what some observers have called an “existential threat” to public unions and by extension to the entire labor movement.

Ex-Tory Senator Segal: Why I Fought Anti-Labour Bill C-377

Bill C-377 was a Private Members Bill touted as one to provide transparency and accountability to the public and union members relating to the business of unions and where and how money was spent.

My opposition to this bill, when it reached the Senate of Canada, reflected several serious concerns expressed by various expert witnesses who appeared during Senate Committee hearings after second reading.

The Canadian Bar Association questioned its constitutionality, as it sought to circumvent normal provincial jurisdiction over labour relations and trade unions by imposing Canada Revenue Agency reporting requirements via federal statute.

Jeb Bush Wants You to Work Longer Hours

When economic theory makes its way into campaign trail chatter it can take on a life of its own. And Jeb Bush’s gaffe-of-the-week showed how even today, Reaganomics keeps trickling down into the popular conservative parlance.

When asked about the crisis of unemployment, Bush stated, “Workforce participation has to rise from its all-time modern lows. It means that people need to work longer hours and through their productivity gain more income for their families.”

Scott Walker Prepares To Sign Budget That Eliminates The Living Wage And Prevailing Wage

For months, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has said he won’t launch his long-expected run for the Republican nomination for President until he gets his own house in order and signs Wisconsin’s budget into law. Despite weeks of delays, he still may make that deadline before his planned announcement on July 13th.

Harper's Rule Breaking Rush to Crush Unions

"There's nothing democratic about what's going on here. It's like watching the Roman Empire collapse." -- BC Liberal Senator Larry Campbell on Conservative senators imposing Bill C-377

Is there anything more undemocratic than Canada's most tainted organization -- the Conservative-controlled Senate -- breaking its rules and then overturning its own Conservative Speaker's ruling, all to hurriedly impose anti-union legislation before the federal election?

That's what happened last week with Bill C-377, an odious private members' bill shepherded from beginning to end by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's own office, passed by Parliament's Conservative majority and sent to the Senate for approval.

Postal workers' union alleges union-busting by Canada Post

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) alleges Canada Post is practising union-busting, after the Crown corporation dropped its contract with the unionized temporary agency that had been staffing its international parcel intake plants.

"Canada Post makes the decision as to who gets the contract, and we believed they deliberately went to a different company to avoid CUPW and to avoid having a unionized group of workers processing the parcels," said CUPW 3rd Vice-President George Floresco.

Conservatives overrule speaker, force vote on controversial labour bill

OTTAWA — Conservatives in the Senate have used their majority to overrule their own Speaker and force a final vote on a controversial labour bill.

Claude Carignan, the Conservative leader in the upper chamber, was backed by all but six of his own senators in shooting down a ruling by Speaker Leo Housakos that would have prevented the government from ending debate on Bill C-377.

Tories Scramble After Joe Oliver's Call For Looser Labour Laws At G7

Finance Minister Joe Oliver said Wednesday he believes relaxing labour laws to make it easier to lay off workers would help spur economic growth.

The Conservatives insist he wasn’t talking about Canada. But party officials gave conflicting statements Thursday as to which country he actually was speaking about.

Extreme Bill Would Override All Local Employment Laws, Including LGBT Protections

During a meeting of the Michigan House Committee on Commerce and Trade, Republican lawmakers sneakily introduced a substitute bill replacing HB 4052. The new legislation, sponsored by Rep. Earl Poleski (R), overrides all local ordinances governing employers’ relationships with their employees. Because of the way it would impose state control, opponents have dubbed it the “Death Star” bill. Not only does it have implications for any local ordinance that controls minimum wage, benefits, sick leave, union organizing and strikes, wage disputes, apprenticeship programs, and “ban the box” policies (blocking employers from asking about felony convictions), but it would also override the LGBT protections that exist in 38 Michigan municipalities.

For corporations, it's never enough: How corporatism threatens Canadian workers

A news story this week blandly described the perverse reality that is the current state of the Canadian economy. The headline read "Corporate profit margins at 27-year high and likely to stay there." Pretty heady stuff if you took it out of context. But the context is everything: pathetic growth projections, record high personal debt, stagnating wages, hundreds of billions in idle corporate cash, a multi-billion-dollar infrastructure deficit, a growing real estate bubble and a Bank of Canada chief who has no idea how to fix things. And, of course, a prime minister who thinks fixing things is heretical.

The headline describes the conclusion of a report by CIBC World Markets, which concluded that not only has the profit margin hit a 30-year high of 8.2 per cent (the historic average is less than 5 per cent), but the signs are that it is going to stay there -- because "profit margins are fully supported by the fundamentals."

The Demolition of Workers’ Comp

DENNIS WHEDBEE’S CREW WAS RUSHING to prepare an oil well for pumping on the Sweet Grass Woman lease site, a speck of dusty plains rich with crude in Mandaree, North Dakota.

It was getting late that September afternoon in 2012. Whedbee, a 50-year-old derrickhand, was helping another worker remove a pipe fitting on top of the well when it suddenly blew.

Oil and sludge pressurized at more than 700 pounds per square inch tore into Whedbee’s body, ripping his left arm off just below the elbow. Coworkers jerry-rigged a tourniquet from a
sweatshirt and a ratchet strap to stanch his bleeding and got his wife on the phone.

“Babe,’’ he said, “tell everyone I love them.”