“What I would like is for the general public to wake up and understand that as these good paying jobs disappear so to do our tax dollars. I paid close to $25,000 in income tax alone in 2011. At $18 an hour I wouldn’t pay even close to that. As a country we have the lowest corporate tax rate of all the G7 countries. As jobs like mine disappear where do the federal tax dollars come from to sustain our fantastic country? This is slowly becoming a country of haves and have-nots.”
Jane Slaughter | Labor Notes | On a scale never before seen in Canada, the mayor of Toronto seeks to privatize city services and is taking on the largest public sector locals in Canada to do so. Counting down to a lockout February 5, city workers’ unions are scrambling to make their case to city residents.
On February 28th 2012 over 100,000,000 Indian workers will come out on strike. Workers from many unions and sectors are trying to gain improvements in areas such as, pay, pensions, and employment rights.
Jane Slaughter | Labor Notes | China faced its second wave of strikes in two years, as thousands of workers in industrial southern provinces—manufacturers for the world—walked out this fall. Workers making New Balance shoes, Apple and IBM keyboards, underwear, furniture, and Citizen watches struck over pay and overtime.
“On Nov. 8, voters in [Ohio] will decide whether to keep a new law passed by the Republican-dominated legislature that all but eliminates collective bargaining in the public sector. … The new law is sweeping. It limits public-sector collective bargaining to wages only and eliminates binding arbitration, allowing state and local governments, as well as school districts, to dictate contract terms if no agreement is reached. The bill forces public workers to contribute more for their pension and health benefits, while allowing employers to roll back benefits unilaterally. It eliminates mandatory union dues and lowers the decertification threshold to 30 per cent of workers.”
Twofaculty members at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), a private university in San Francisco, are being edged out of their jobs largely because of their efforts to create a system for granting tenure at CIIS and their academic work on Kashmir.
The administration at CIIS are claiming their suspensions are the result of ‘poor teaching’, however, such claims contradict the recommendation of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) who, after examining the evidence presented by the administration, have urged their reinstatement.
Unfortunately for the faculty being targeted, CIIS remains a non-unionized workplace, where academic freedom can be usurped under the cover of any performance indicator the administration chooses to implement.
Students and alumni from CIIS have organized their own response to the suspension of their professors, this petition is just one. Please sign it.
–The Tories have lost their mind if they think that working people are going to sit back and allow them to take away the basic right to strike. We need unions more than ever to help us fight for a better future against their ridiculous, ill-thought out program. This is a disagreement between a private company and its workers, the federal government has no business getting involved.
The Cons will continue to push their nonsensical ideological agenda until the people unite and fight back.
By Jim Stanford | It is interesting to compare what unions disclose through their internal democratic processes, reinforced by the requirements of the labour boards, with what corporations must disclose. Publicly-traded companies, of course, are required to disclose financial statements (some of them audited, not all), executive compensation (top 5 execs), and other details to their own shareholders (and potential shareholders), by virtue of securities regulations (not tax law). Private companies, however, don’t have to disclose a thing.
