The Citizens’ Press email newsletter archive.
What's Left This Week includes an analysis of post-secondary education in Ontario and the call for a Franco-Ontarian university, the Uber fight in Montréal, a book review of February by Lisa Moore and the resurgence of independent bookstores.
On January 27th, the Bell Let's Talk campaign flooded the airwaves and internet once again, with a corporate campaign taking aim at 'fixing' mental health issues. Discussing mental health is important: millions of Canadians of all ages are affected both at home and at work. Mental health includes anxiety, depression and if un-addressed can lead to mental illness and other health issues that leave individuals struggling for the rest of their lives.
Socialists understand better than most that regular people do not control or drive the current economy. Every day, social justice activists are struck with the realization that the economy is changing in a way that makes it harder to advance democratic interests. On one side, we have techno-Utopians who think App Innovation™ will foster a new, better and more efficient world. On the other side, elected officials act as cheerleaders for this economy – an economy based on exploitive precarious employment instead of democratic and sustainable regulated workplaces.
Insecure Internet devices, Liberal honeymoon's coming to an end, massive rally in solidarity with retired Steelworkers and more.
Songs, trade, Sanders and more.
It was a bad week for media workers. Halifax-based newspaper The Chronicle Herald is getting scab-ready for a bargaining round in which they are hoping to lower wages, increase work hours, and lay-off over a quarter of their sixty staff. The Toronto Star announced the closure of a Vaughan printing plant, meaning that 220 full-time and 60 part-time workers will lose their jobs. The industry is shifting, and workers are left wondering what tools they have to resist short-sighted profit-obsessed employers and present a vision of the future where integrity, sustainability, and quality journalism are at the heart of the industry.
We have greatly enjoyed writing What's Left each week this year. We are grateful to you all for the words of encouragement and solidarity (and constructive criticism/corrections) received every week. This has helped to improve the newsletter and keeps us going.
It won't come as a surprise that capitalist think-tanks are putting forward a vision of work that should trouble anyone who works for a living. Groups such as the Policy Network and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) promote future dystopia for workers where the nature of our work is perpetually precarious, privatized, and fully market-driven. It is a vision where robots, computer programs, and artificial intelligence replace all of the world's jobs that defined and established today's affluent worker.
It's easy to be swept-up in the feeling of accomplishment the COP21 agreement promises, especially with the enthusiastic response of the media, politicians, and celebrities involved. Unfortunately, while it is a victory for so many countries to come together and unanimously agree something should be done, this is not the first time such promises have been made.
According to members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), several post-secondary education institutions in Ontario are putting their most vulnerable workers in the line of fire. These universities, including Wilfrid Laurier University, the University of Windsor, and the University of Toronto are engaged in an outsourcing campaign against their custodian workers in an attempt to cut their (already low) wages by up to 40%.
