Living Well Amid Waste: Wealth, Wages, and Food Insecurity
Newfoundland and Labrador has the highest rate of food insecurity in Canada. It also has the second lowest minimum wage. These two things are connected.
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Trade unions get scant coverage in modern mainstream media
Back in the 1960s, 1970s, and into the ‘80s, almost all of the large newspapers in Canada had a reporter who specialized in labour-management relations. Wilf List covered labour for The Globe and Mail for an amazing 35 years. I wrote a labour relations column for the Toronto Star for 15 years (1968-1982), and the editorial staff of several other papers at the time also included labour columnists as well as labour reporters. Conventions of the largest labour unions and the Canadian Labour Congress attracted dozens of reporters. The names of union presidents were almost as well known as those of prominent politicians and corporate executives. Once a year, in my Star column, I listed, in order, the ten labour leaders I considered the country’s most influential, without having to identify them with much more than their names. Today, not a single daily newspaper employs a labour columnist, much less…
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Disney’s workers: Realities, fantasies, and lessons for NL
Disney is a word that inspires children across the world and the name of a company whose reputation stands for innocence, play, and beloved stories often featuring the victory of good over evil. But it’s a reputation built, squarely, upon the increasingly strained backs of America’s working class. In Orange County, California a Disney worker can expect to spend their day making every desire of visiting families come true, while watching their own hopes fade to dust as inflation and expenses speed ahead of their wages and benefits. “Sometimes I skip meals, so my kids can eat,” noted one worker speaking at a recent public roundtable entitled StopDisneyPoverty in Anaheim, California. The event, a live-stream of which is available for view, was intended to draw attention to the plight being faced by Disney’s employees, and was attended by Senator Bernie Sanders, who gave a speech defending workers’ rights to a fair wage…
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We need solidarity now more than ever
“Power goes to two poles – to those who’ve got the money and those who’ve got the people.” — Saul Alinsky May 1st marks May Day, also known as International Workers’ Day, when countless workers across the globe take to the streets to commemorate the sacrifice and struggle of a strong labour movement that faced state-sanctioned violence to bring us the 8-hour work day, wages, benefits, and safe working environments, while continuing to hold institutions and governments accountable in what shouldn’t be an uphill battle for fair working conditions and living wages but often is. As a student at Memorial University for the past six years, I am no stranger to the immense contribution workers on our campus make, to allow students to learn in a safe and supportive environment. Despite the crumbling infrastructure due to years of upper level mismanagement, a profound amount of effort goes into keeping classrooms,…
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Measuring progress toward a better future
It’s time to look ahead toward the next provincial budget.
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Acknowledging the labour movement on Canada’s 150th
As we acclaim Canada’s builders after 150 years, the vital role of trade unions remains overlooked.
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A movement is born
The provincial government’s 2016 austerity budget has sparked province-wide outrage and politicized a “whole new generation of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians [who are] not going away.”
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Privatization of public services will hurt N.L.: town hall
“People Before Profit” speakers say privatization perpetuates inequality, reduces the quality of public services like healthcare and education, eats away at the fabric of our society — and most Newfoundlanders and Labradoreans can’t afford it anyway.
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Budget 2015 is bad for the economy
The PC’s austerity budget ignores the fiscal realities of a resource-based economy.
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Great expectations
Opportunities and challenges alike lie ahead for young workers in Newfoundland and Labrador
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2014: Newfoundland & Labrador ‘Year in Review’
We need a ‘bigger picture’ perspective if we’re to achieve the large scale change we desperately need. The Independent was there to cover the stories that mattered most in 2014. Help us do it again this year: #GoIndy2015!
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NL unions vow “fairness for all” fight in lead up to 2015 elections
Members of the province’s labour movement gathered in St. John’s last week to discuss their mandate and strategy for ramping up efforts to achieve social and economic justice in Newfoundland and Labrador. Union leaders say political activism will be a key part of their fight.
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Unions, political action, and fairness for everyone
The NL Federation of Labour is holding a political action conference later this month, and there’s a lot on the agenda
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Automation nation
In a world that’s desperate for jobs, why are we ‘innovating’ ourselves out of them?
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How the government and unions solved their pension problem
In a country characterized by increasingly confrontational labour relations, an unlikely story of cooperation and negotiation emerges. Are there lessons in the experience for the rest of the country?
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Working for the weekend
What do we do when our work ceases to be a motivational factor in our lives?
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The threat of CETA: trade, investment and workers’ rights
The damage CETA will wreak on our economy and our democratic rights is unprecedented. But it can still be stopped.
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Minimum wage town hall spawns stories of poverty
Newfoundland and Labrador may be a so-called ‘have’ province, but despite the record corporate profits from our natural resource industries, thousands of minimum wage workers are living on or below the poverty line
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Why Employment Insurance is an election issue
A strong EI program is vital to strengthen our economy and our communities
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Exotic bird goes North
Nowadays, being from Newfoundland is like being some sort of exotic bird.
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