The growth of poverty, and the staggering fortunes of the corporations and the rich are not unrelated processes. They arise out of the inner workings of the capitalist system, and political decisions made by all of Canada’s major parties, including the Liberals and NDP.
The fires are a direct result of capitalist-induced climate change, with governments of all political stripes at the federal and provincial levels creating conditions for worsening infernos and withholding the resources necessary to address the crisis.
From March 3 to March 9, there were 54 official COVID-19 deaths. However, COVID Resources Canada estimates that the government only reports 61 percent of COVID-19 deaths. This would put the actual number at 90 deaths in just under one week. By comparison, federal government data shows influenza deaths at roughly five per week.
Upwards of 400 demonstrators gathered outside the Art Gallery of Ontario, where the event was set to take place. The Prime Minister’s Office called off the reception after acknowledging that secure passage for Trudeau and Meloni into the building could not be guaranteed.
In contrast to the treacherous role of the USW bureaucracy, the National Steel Car Rank-and-File Committee (NSC-RFC), established by shop floor workers on the eve of the strike, blazed a new path for the rank-and-file. The committee has become a pole of opposition to the pro-corporate USW leadership.
The strike by 1,400 National Steel Car workers in Hamilton, Ontario, enters its sixth day Tuesday. The workers, who manufacture rail cars for some of the largest class I railroads, are fighting for wage increases above inflation, the abolition of multi-tier pay and pensions, and an end to dangerous working conditions in the plant.
The 1,400 workers at Hamilton, Ontario railcar manufacturer National Steel Car (NSC) launched a strike at 12:01 a.m. Thursday after voting to reject the company’s provocative “best and final offer.”
National Steel Car is a particularly barbaric workplace. Three workers have died in as many years in gruesome workplace “accidents,” for which no executives, or the company owner, the financial swindler Greg Aziz, have been charged or convicted.
A joint struggle of Canadian and American West Coast longshore workers would quickly cripple economic activity in North America’s twin imperialist powers and disrupt the transportation networks that are being used to provision the US/NATO war on Russia.
All workers and young people in the GTA looking for a way to oppose war should make plans to attend Sunday’s meeting and join the struggle for the construction of an international working class-led anti-war movement.
The resurgence of COVID is above all due to the “Forever Covid” mass infection policy of governments at the provincial and federal levels, mirroring their counterparts internationally. The Trudeau Liberal government has spearheaded this policy.
The inmates at Hamilton-Wentworth cited constant overcrowding, a lack of outdoor time, and the threatened loss of television privileges as reasons for launching their protest.
PSAC represents the largest unionized group of federal government workers. A strike would seriously affect a wide array of services, including revenue and taxation, immigration and citizenship, veterans affairs, and the functioning of Service Canada facilities.
The deaths are a damning indictment of the Trudeau Liberal government, which postures as “pro-refugee” while pursuing a “Fortress North America” strategy that excludes from Canada all but a handful of those fleeing repression and war.
The railcars in question are manufactured by National Steel Car (NSC), a company located in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Norfolk Southern’s aim with the press release is to imply that these alleged defects could be the reason for the massive derailment in East Palestine.
The eight-hour working day and forty-hour workweek are increasingly becoming a relic of the past in Canada and internationally. These fundamental advances, which workers fought and died for over the course of a century and a half, are now effectively a dead letter.
In this interview for the Global Workers’ Inquest into the COVID-19 Pandemic, Alberta nurse Kerry speaks on her experience with Long COVID and the unions’ complicity in enforcing the government’s “let it rip” pandemic policy.
•Dylan Lubao
“He wasn’t supposed to be on that job, but they moved him”:
The worker is fighting to build a rank-and-file committee at the plant to enable workers to act independently of the United Steelworkers union apparatus, which is in bed with management and has long presided over dangerous working conditions.
An exchange between a rank-and-file OSBCU member and its president Laura Walton showed growing anger over the education unions’ refusal to oppose the Ford government’s attacks on wages and conditions.