Category: Labour
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‘Class’ Warfare: A Primer on the Chicago Teachers Strike
An estimated 30,000 public school teachers in Chicago walked off the job on Monday for the first time since 1987, leaving 350,000 students in limbo. Chicago has the third-largest school … Keep reading »
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Funeral for Collective Bargaining Rights
First We Mourn, Then We Fight Devastated by a far-reaching anti-worker Bill 115: Putting Students First Act (it was passed Sept. 11), rank and file education workers convened a funeral for … Watch video »
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The Marikana Massacre and the South African State’s Low Intensity War Against the People
The massacre of the Marikana/Lonmin workers has inserted itself within South Africa’s national consciousness, not so much through the analysis, commentary and reporting in its wake. Instead, it has been … Keep reading »
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Auto Manufacturing Workers at a Crossroads
“The place is hot like hell, especially in the summer time at night, bad ventilation, a lot of humidity and of course machines emitting heat doesn’t help,” said Iain*, a … Keep reading »
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Chicago Teachers Draw a Line
Can the scrappy band of outsiders that now heads the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) lead the kind of high-stakes fight that most labour unions have ducked? That question looms large … Keep reading »
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The Marikana Massacre: A Turning Point?
The massacre of 34, and almost certainly more, striking mineworkers at Marikana (together with more than 80 injured) on 16 August has sent waves of shock and anger across South … Keep reading »
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The Massacre of Our Illusions … And the Seeds of Something New
The story of Marikana has so far been painted shallowly as an inter-union spat. In the first few days after the fateful Thursday and the shock and horror of watching … Keep reading »
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Echoes of the Past: Marikana, Cheap Labour and the 1946 Miners Strike
On August 4, 1946 over one thousand miners assembled in Market Square in Johannesburg, South Africa. No hall in the town was big enough to hold them, and no one … Keep reading »
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Class Struggle in the Philippines
Trade union leader speaks in Vancouver and Toronto On August 2, Pete Pinlac of the MAKABAYAN labour and political center in the Philippines spoke at a public forum hosted by the … Keep reading »
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Cheap Labour, Cheap Lives
Contextualizing Farm Worker Deaths in South Africa and Canada There is a passage from Olive Schreiner’s 1883 novel The Story of An African Farm where she describes the isolated existence of … Keep reading »
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Ed Miliband At the Miners’ Gala
A Red Dawn Over Durham? Although their histories are quite different, the British Labour Party and the U.S. Democrats have one thing in common: both like to avoid too much public … Keep reading »
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Cuba’s Coming Co-operative Economy?
Reflections From Two Recent Field Trips In 2011, I made two trips to Cuba to study the new co-operatives. In June I was kindly invited by Camila Piñeiro Harnecker, a professor … Keep reading »