Graham Cox is a labour union researcher at Unifor focusing on economic, bargaining, and policy in the energy, road, rail, and marine sectors.
Previous to Unifor, Graham was a researcher at the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE). At CUPE his work focused on economic and policy analysis for the anti-privatization, trade, post-secondary education, utilities, employment insurance, special projects, and organizing files.
Before working at CUPE, Graham served the student movement as National Researcher of the Canadian Federation of Students and chairperson of the National Graduate Caucus.
Graham has worked as a union organizer for the PSAC, CUPE, and the CFS with a focus on graduate student teaching assistant, research assistant and contingent academic staff union drives. This included leading drives to organize academic workers at the University of New Brunswick, UPEI, and Memorial University of Newfoundland.
Please also see articles under the author Editors (What’s left).
At the Canada-European Union Summit on September 26 in Ottawa, Harper marked the conclusion of the negotiation of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the European Union and released the draft text. However, unlike the narrative outlined in news reports, this is not the end of the deal's negotiation process and CETA was not signed or ratified.
The federal government has had three different occasions over the previous year to boast about the end of the negotiations for the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement. In all three instances the government has declared their unwavering support for free-trade and blasted anyone who has dared criticize the undemocratic nature of free-trade agreements as out-of-touch anti-trade ideologues.
Liberal Senators say Bill C-377 is 'one of the worst bills we've ever seen' and have pledged to sit through the summer to try and defeat or delay it. Conservative Senator Hugh Segal has called the private member's bill targeting unions 'immature, ill-conceived and small-minded'. And yet Harper's Conservatives gave the bill its full support, forcing it through the House of Commons and threatening Senators who don't vote for it.
More trouble for the sputtering Canada-EU trade deal. It seems that the premature victory laps that the Harper government have been running on CETA are foul of the line.
Join us Friday, August 22 at 2:45pm at the Peoples Social Forum MRT 211 for an in-depth discussion on a progressive trade alternative for Canada.
A report in from a German social democratic newspaper brought some last minute scrambling from politicians on vacation here in North America. However, even if corporate-rights provisions were not included in CETA, it is still a bad deal for working people in Canada and the EU.
Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanisms allow foreign investors to bypass domestic courts to challenge government legislation and laws before unaccountable international arbitration tribunals.
Leftnews.org is attending this year's LaborNotes Conference in Chicago, Illinois and will be reporting on some of the events and workshops.
The expression of protest is to remind the administration that students run their campuses. Sometimes this mass political expression comes across as a bit contradictory, but that's the nature of liberal arts academies. Neil Macdonald of CBC disagrees however and he is outraged at the very notion that students should have a say about who speaks to them at graduation ceremonies.
Authors: Scott Sinclair and Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood
