App-based workers in Canada are taking things into their own hands
Ryan Hayes
“I remember thinking to myself: if this is the future of work, then the future is going to be hell,” recounts bike courier Brice Sopher. Sopher began working for Toronto food delivery startup Hurrier in 2015 after getting laid off from his office job. As an event promoter and DJ, he was attracted to the […] More »
Trade unionists, workers, and peace activists unite against humanitarian crisis
Scott Neigh
Simon Black was watching the news on television with his one-month-old daughter on his lap. A report came on—a bombing of a school bus in Yemen by coalition forces led by Saudi Arabia, which killed dozens of children and injured dozens more. Black had one of those moments that sometimes happen to new parents, a […] More »
Lately, all of my labour—domestic, creative, and income-earning—has shrunk to the space of a studio apartment. My office now doubles as my kitchen table, my gym, and my sick bed. It is a home which felt small even when I had access to third spaces for work, leisure, and exercise (such as cafes, parks, libraries […] More »
People working in Canada's restaurant industry need more supports—and some are cropping up
Zakiya Kassam
My first restaurant job was also my last. It was a three-month stint that passed by in a blur of cutlery roll ups, tedious small-talk, and barely-there tips. Like many jobs in the food service sector, my shifts were long and ran late, and my hourly pay was well below minimum wage. Breaks were […] More »
Most know it as a destination for summer wine tastings. But for migrant workers, Niagara-on-the-Lake is home to extremely difficult, precarious work
Kristin Lozanski
It’s August 7, 2016, the day after Jamaican Independence Day. I’m in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., sitting on the back of a “jitney”—a truck with the top of the cab chopped off, used to haul crates of freshly picked peaches from the fields to the packing barns. A few men are sipping Labatt’s Blue, while others drink […] More »
This year, Canada celebrates its 150th birthday. Ours is a country of rich history—but not all Canadian stories are told equally. In this special report, This tackles 13 issues—one per province and territory—that have yet to be addressed and resolved by our country in a century and a half At a St. John’s rally on April 6, the […] More »
Thinking about @justinpjtrudeau and his plan to plunge #Canada into a $1.5 trillion bankruptcy. Wow I have to get rid of this this guy in 2019! A post shared by Kevin O’Leary (@kevinolearyshark) on Mar 3, 2017 at 2:13pm PST Kevin O’Leary, the Boston-based former CBC personality said that if he were ever elected, he […] More »
Stephen Harper didn’t hide what he thought of working people. His government waged attacks against collective bargaining. They tried to force unions to develop overly bureaucratic measures to make their finances public to non-members. They resisted and dismantled social programs that help people, even if they had few or no benefits through their work. And they […] More »
If you look at a map of southern Ontario, Leamington seems no more remarkable than the other small towns that dot Lake Erie’s coastline. Yet, in Min Sook Lee’s documentary Migrant Dreams, the 30,000-population town becomes the setting of a much bigger issue. Leamington has the largest concentration of greenhouses in North America. And, thanks to […] More »
Have you ever been called “sister” in a union meeting? Did you feel erased or were you misgendered? The labour movement practice of calling one another “sister” or“brother” clashes with a growing consciousness about the perils of classifying people into a strict gender binary, and many union activists are demanding change. “We’re erased in many […] More »
The now nine-month strike exposes media’s precarious labour landscape. In an industry rife with layoffs and low on jobs, how can unions protect news integrity, connect with young journalists, and keep everybody from crossing the picket line?
In January 2016, just weeks before the Chronicle Herald would begin its still-unresolved strike, management at the paper offered Nathan Clarke a job. Clarke covers sports, and the Herald, Nova Scotia’s newspaper of record, wanted him to be its sports reporter, stepping in to fill the shoes of a striking worker—what’s called being a strikebreaker or, […] More »