Canada

  • Canadian Auto Workers Block Plant Auction To Salvage Back Pay, Benefits
    Gerry Farnham
    Jan 4 2010 - 4:36am

    Why are workers forced to occupy plants and blockade workplaces to get what they are legally entitled to? Canadian auto workers are in a bitter struggle just to win severance and benefits they're owed.

  • Steelworkers Take Fight at Canadian Mine Global

    Steelworkers at nickel giant Vale Inco’s operations in Sudbury and Voisey Bay in Canada have been on strike since July. After rejecting contracts calling for deep concessions, Steelworkers (USW) members there find themselves in the midst of one of the largest battles in their history.

  • Employer Neutrality Backfires for Steelworkers in Canada

    John Humphrey

    The springtime news from the United Steelworkers and the Dofasco steel bosses rocked Hamilton, Ontario. Within days, the Steelworkers would be allowed into the company’s plants. They would chat with workers informally, one-on-one and in small groups, listen to their concerns, and gauge their interest in joining the union. . . .


    Yes
  • Things Aren’t Always What They Appear to Be

    Herman Rosenfeld

    The ongoing debate about the Canadian Auto Workers in these pages isn’t about particular tactics, it isn’t about whether or not to consider new and creative approaches (who could oppose that?), and it isn’t about underestimating the very real challenges that Canada’s largest private sector union (and all unions) face today. . . .


    Yes
  • Viewpoint: CAW Committed to Militancy, Movement Unionism

    Jim O’Neil

    Labor activism has never been limited to a single tactic or channel. It is this point that Herman Rosenfeld fails to recognize in his Viewpoint criticizing the recent direction of the Canadian Auto Workers union (see Labor Notes February 2008). . . .


    Yes
  • Viewpoint: Canadian Auto Workers Moves from Fighting Back to Cooperating

    Herman Rosenfeld

    For many labor activists around the world, the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), a union born in the refusal to accept the concessions agenda of the 1980s, has been an inspiring example. . . .


    Yes
  • Canadian Auto Workers Surrender Right to Strike, Shop Floor Independence in Magna Agreement

    Herman Rosenfeld

    The Canadian Auto Workers unveiled a plan in mid-October for organizing Magna, the largest automotive employer north of the border and a notoriously anti-union company. . . .


    Yes
  • Steward's Corner: How Our Local Bonded With The Community

    by Ken Riley; President ILA Local 1422, Charleston, South Carolina

    For a long time our local union was a sleeping giant in the community. Other groups solicited us only for our funds and not for our involvement. We were also losing ground in contract negotiations: Charleston is a major port, and we weren't taking advantage of that fact to address issues that were particular to Charleston.


    Yes
  • Auto Workers Sanctioned Over Raiding Charges

    by Marsha Niemeijer

    A dispute over which union will represent 30,000 Ontario health care workers is threatening to split the Canadian labor movement. The Canadian Labour Congress has imposed far-reaching sanctions on the Canadian Auto Workers, following accusations that the CAW had attempted to raid eight Ontario locals of the Service Employees International Union. The CLC stripped CAW delegates of the right to vote in district labor councils, provincial labor federations, and other CLC bodies.


    Yes
  • Global Labor Stands Up to Global Capital

    by Kim Moody

    They didn't start in Seattle. Protests against the impact and institutions of corporate globalization have been mounting around the world for some time. As global capital pokes its sticky fingers into one corner of the planet after another in search of profits, disrupting lives and communities, destroying jobs and the environment, spreading low-wage high-stress work, and subordinating entire nations to its goals, resistance has grown.


    Yes