Category: Economy
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Make GM Government Motors Again
Seven years ago, we owned General Motors (GM). With 49,000 autoworkers walking pickets to finally end the concessions, it’s mind-boggling to remember that the US Treasury owned GM for three years – and managed to do virtually nothing to benefit the working class with it. Keep reading »
Ten Reasons to say No: A Primer on Sidewalk Labs’ Plan for Toronto
Review of Sidewalk Labs’ plans for Toronto’s waterfront and some of the reasons to say no to corporate control and to insist instead, on a democratic and citizen driven process. Keep reading »
Future Possibilities for the GM Plant in Oshawa
We believe that Oshawa could be the manufacturing centre for battery electric vans and other vehicles, anchored by production for Canada Post and other government bodies. Government action and a public ownership model would be required. There is growing support for this proposal from unions, community activists and environmentalists. It would keep good jobs for … Watch video »
Pension Plans Should Not Invest in Companies That Harm Working People
Of all the gains unions have made for workers, the ability to retire with dignity and a pension is perhaps the most valued. Last year employers and employees in Canada contributed over $70-billion to registered pension plans (RPP). It is big money. Still, just over a third of workers are covered by RPPs as most … Keep reading »
Take the Plant, Save the Planet
The Case For Nationalization and Conversion of the Oshawa GM Plant It is a tragic irony that General Motors (GM) chose its hundredth anniversary in Oshawa to announce the December 2019 closure of its Oshawa assembly plant. This means the loss of over 15,000 jobs in Ontario: 2,200 GM assembly jobs, 300 salaried positions, 500 temporary … Keep reading »
Canada’s ‘Vampire’ Pension Plan
How the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board feeds on some futures to secure others Wet’suwet’en people have never ceded their land through treaty; like many Indigenous people they continue to practice relations of responsibility with the places and beings that give them life, including protecting them from ecological devastation. In January 2019, the RCMP raided Wet’suwet’en … Keep reading »
Public Banks and a Just and Green Transition
Public banks are resurgent, triggered by the failure of private finance to meaningfully confront the green transformation. But will resurgent public banks act in the public or private interest? How can progressives ensure public banks support a just green transformation? Democratization is the key. The turning point for public banks was really the UN’s 2015 … Keep reading »
Between Dystopia and Democratic Socialism
The idea of socialism has been re-discovered by a layer of activists struggling for radical change, especially young people. Keep reading »
Book launch: The People’s Republic of Walmart
Launch of Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski’s new book The People’s Republic of Walmart. Moderated by Rawan Abdelbaki; discussants Pam Frache and Sam Gindin. Recorded in Toronto, 8 April 2019. Watch video »
Uber-Capitalism: Platform Mobility/Mobilizing Workers
Bronwyn Frey examines some of the worker organizational strategies emerging within Indonesia’s vast informal transportation sector, where precarity is longstanding and perhaps less exceptional than in the West. Watch video »
Wealth and the Invisibility of Human Life
Judith Deutsch reviews Quinn Slobodian new book Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism. Keep reading »
GM Oshawa: Lowered Expectations, Unexplored Opportunities
A little over a generation ago, #GMCanada employed 23,000 hourly and office workers in #Oshawa. The steady decline to GM’s current numbers was accompanied, each step of the way, by the consolation that ‘well, at least some of the jobs remained’. Keep reading »