"Precarious and poor" on strike at UofT and York U

Sam Hammond

Reprinted from People's Voice Newspaper

At the end of February and beginning the first week of March, approximately 10,000 academic workers went on strike at two of Canada’s largest universities. They are represented by two CUPE Locals, 3902 and 3903, who represent Units of Teaching Assistants, Graduate Assistants and Contract Faculty at the University of Toronto and York University respectively. Nine thousand are still on strike.        

The issues and responses at both universities, York with about 4000 strikers and U of T with about 6000, are so close that they can be detailed in the same general overview.  A good place to start is with the words of Erin Black, Union Chair at U of T, “We are poor and precarious and need improvement in our standard of living”.  This is by no means an overstatement but what analyses will show is probably an understatement of the precarious existence of Teaching Assistants (TAs), Graduate Assistants (GAs) and Contract Faculty (CFs) at most universities.

Federal inmates go on strike to protest pay cuts

Prisoners say cuts will leave no money to support
families, pay for education

Maureen Brosnahan
CBC News

Inmates in several federal prisons across Canada have gone on strike to protest against a 30 per cent cut in their pay that took effect this week.

The government began deducting
the money from prisoners’ paycheques as part of a move to recover costs under the federal government’s Deficit Reduction Action Plan. The move was first announced in May 2012 by Public Safety Minister Vic Toews.

Until now, the top pay an inmate could earn was $6.90 a day, but only a small percentage of inmates received that. The average is $3 a day.

That rate was set up by the government in 1981. It was based on a review by a parliamentary committee and it factored in a deduction from inmates for the cost of room, board and clothing at the time.

Calefornia students protest

CEO's sleazy anti-strike placard: “Sick Pay? Pay Increase? How about no pay?”

Bay Street CEO organizes anti-union protest
by "Mick"

from Linchpin.ca blog

On Tuesday July 14 Deputy Premier, or according to him “Citizen”, George Smitherman launched “One Toronto” a website networking volunteer scabs to pick up garbage in Toronto in the midst of a 4 week long strike by the civic workers unions CUPE 416 and 79.

Posing for media photos with a broom in hand, Smitherman had the bald faced audacity to claim that he wasn't taking sides in the strike but rather ““We’re taking one side and one side only — the side of clean streets in our city,”

Smitherman knows he can't come out and say he's organizing brigades of volunteer scabs to further his political career but that's exactly what he's doing.

Not to be outdone or perhaps inspired by Smitherman's scabs, Bay Street CEO Kathy Gregory, head of Paradigm Quest Inc a multi-million dollar mortgage underwriting and servicing company, “organized” a pathetic lunch hour confrontation between a gaggle of Paradigm employees and CUPE workers at City Hall on July 15th.

Marching with professionally made signs reading such pearls of wisdom as “Sick Pay? Pay Increase? How about no pay?” which can only leave you wondering how Gregory must treat workers that she actually employs!

Why, with such progressive attitudes towards workers by the CEO, one can only assume that all the workers who attended must really be participating totally free and uncoerced. I'm sure that if they really wanted to they could have refused to join her protest and told their boss that they're pro-union without the fear of any repercussions.

If you believe that, then let me tell you about a bridge to the island airport that I have for sale.

As pathetic and scheming as Gregory and Smitherman's antics are, one can't help but take warning that at least a small section of Toronto's big business and political elite are showing a readiness to revert to a very dirty history of so-called “Citizen Committees” that terrorized workers and trade unionists at the beginning of the 20th century.

news bulletin- South Korean workers fight off police attack

South Korean strikers hold firm as commandos attack

from the morning star newspaper (UK)


Wednesday 05 August 2009- Helicopter-borne police commandos have fought a pitched battle with militant strikers at a South Korean car plant, but failed to dislodge hundreds of trade unionists occupying a paint shop.

At least 50 people, mostly police and private security guards, were injured in the day's clashes.

The assault began when hundreds of commandos stormed the roof of one of the factory's two paint shops by descending from a black shipping container carried by a helicopter, while others rappelled down a rope from another helicopter.

Helmet-wearing workers, who have been occupying the plant for over two months, fought back with sticks and threw objects at the truncheon-wielding police.

Commandos also fired water cannon from the container as it was suspended above the roof while another 300 riot police launched a ground assault.

At least 500 workers withdrew to the second paint shop, which was reportedly packed with inflammable material.

The commandos eventually managed to wrest control of the rest of the compound, but authorities acknowledged that the occupation is far from over.

Korean Confederation of Trade Unions spokesman Lee Chang Kun warned that a police assault on the paint shop would be deadly.

"We will respond to it, bracing ourselves for death," Mr Lee declared.

Workers launched the occupation after Ssangyong bosses sought to impose a restructuring plan which calls for the shedding of 2,646 workers, or 36 per cent of the workforce.

Some 1,670 have left the company voluntarily but nearly 1,000 went on strike and kicked off the direct action in May.



Below news footage of the police, beating detainees.

Latest on Honduras and Colombia

As reported in Granma and the People's Weekly World online blog, the general strike continues to keep the economy dead in its tracks. Literally, as extensive roadblocks have stopped the flow of people and goods. The report says some police officers have joined the strike and that "Many people called Radio Globo, a radio station that is keeping its microphones open for the people, to report that they had been victims of repression by the army forces who attempted to halt their movement."

The Honduras armed forces have said that they will support the agreement being sought to return President Manuel Zelaya to Honduras, but with severe limits on his powers. This signals that the army is taking a somewhat moderate but still pro-establishment approach compared to Roberto Micheletti, who holds an extreme view of absolutely refusing to have Zelaya return. It's up to the people now. Here's hoping that the strike spreads.

Zelaya has set up camp on the Nicaragua border, this after crossing into Honduras twice over the past few days. Zelaya was the target of a coup d'etat after he tried to hold a referendum to gauge public opinion on changing the constitution to allow him to run a second time.

Meanwhile in Colombia, the Uribe government continued it's campaign of bloody repression. It bombed a FARC camp south of the country's capital. Any hope of peace is dismal while Alvaro Uribe is president. It should be noted that in Colombia Uribe is also planning to change the constitution in order for him to run for a third term in office. If anybody needs to be overthrown it's Uribe.

reports on the honduran regime's attempts to close down radio and free media outlets. Links.

from Indymedia newswire




Listen the transmission of Radio Liberada from some place of Honduras: http://208.43.218.127:8070/

We encourage the national and international independent means groups to broadcast in your free radios or make a mirror of this transmission.

Mirrors: 1 2 3

More information in the Independent Media Center of Honduras Indymedia Honduras: http://chiapas.indymedia.org/honduras/

More information in Radio is the one of less:

http://www.radioeslodemenos.org/

Minute by minute by Kaos in the Network: http://www.kaosenlared.net/noticia/secuestrado-presidente-honduras-militares

Information and transmission by the Association of Radios and Participating Programs of El Salvador (HARPS): http://www.arpas.org.sv/

We know that they have been closing free media in Honduras. This morning (note: report is from late June) the Radio Progreso, one of the older communitarian radios of the continent has been closed by the military. Other communitarian radios have decided to protect their equipment.

The electrical energy, the telephone and the Internet have being interrupted by the coup participants trying to block the communications and make the informative censure.

And the situation worries to us in that the networks of communitarian radios of the Lenca town and the Garífuna town stay, as well as the free media: COMUN, Revistazo, the COFADEH and the rest of groups of the independent and communitarian media movement in Honduras.

Video review: strikes (part 3)

Considering that as the economic recession goes on we are only at the beginning of attacks on us as workers, these two videos show examples from past history.

PROTEST BY SCHOOL TEACHERS



Original caption states,
1933/04/17"Chicago, IL: Parents and pupils join in a huge demonstration, tangling traffic for blocks as hundreds of thousands line the streets of the Loop to watch the bizarre procession staged by employees of the Board of Education, whose pay is eight months in arrears."

FARMERS AND SHOTGUNS

To learn more about the subject matter of the film read about the Farmers' Holiday Association.



Farmers have always been divided. Example are plenty: rich against poor, large against small, left against right, those in favor of genetic modification versus those against.

Farmers have traditionally helped each other out, formed co-operative stores, grain handling companies, or pooled their money towards a machine that none of them could alone afford.

But as time went on larger farms would instead of help out a neighbour for mutual benefit, force smaller neighbours out of business and take it over. This capitalist model of competition is shown battling in this film against the small farmers who try to prevent the sale of food at below production costs. The free enterprise farmer meanwhile rather selfishly take up arms to smash the union farmers.

Today we see the progression of this battle of co-operation versus competition. Large corporate farms are becoming the norm, and ownership of the means of food production is in fewer (and more monopolistic) hands. Farmers themselves are again becoming "technological sharecroppers" with genetically modified seeds, chemicals and contracts to obtain such technology that is becoming necessary to keep up in a marketplace where such crops are no longer an edge but another necessity that allows the farmer to keep his eroding livelihood.

video reviews: strikes

This is the month of May, and the 90th anniversary of the Winnipeg General Strike. But another general strike is shown in the following films. The San Francisco general strike of 1934 was started as a strike on May 9th by longshoremen. It resulted in the unionization of all ports on the west coast.







Above we see the effects of workers' power of stopping all work. The employers and powers that be freak right out as shown on the newsreel.
The corporate media paint the strike as menacing society and innocent people. Who are these innocent people I would like to know. I believe the newsreel is referring to the well to do minority of bankers and industrialists.

The narration appeals to the law and order crowd who prefer the status quo instead of risking change. Of course in the 1930s not many people benefited from the status quo and so many more were willing to accept radical ideas and change. The devil they knew was a devil they could bear no longer.





This clip shows the police attacking the strikers and the ensuing battle.
It shows the strikers side of the story more, as the state comes in to crush the strike, much like in Winnipeg in 1919. Law and order is the pretext but the scenes show the police creating chaos. The end of the clip has the narrator stating the strike as a step backwards for reconstruction (of capitalism).





Above is a silent clip showing a march of longshoremen on strike. Note the "smash the fink halls" placard against having to be forced to belong to company unions and paying a company union hiring hall to work in a port.

The Depression of the 1930s was full of countless strikes and workers actions. The next and final set of videos show two such actions: Chicago teachers who were owed months in back wages, and striking farmers who tried to stop flow of their crops.

Video review: “The Prologue” from the Passaic textile strike

this is the first in a series of video reviews on films about strikes.







This film was made in 1926 and is silent. This video only shows the opening prologue. It is a melodrama explaining conditions of the workers at the struck woolen mills. The rest of the movie contains documentary footage of the picket lines, police beatings and other aspects of the labour actions. According to the IMDB website, the cast played themselves and the production crew were made up of members of the communist party. (Ironically the IMDB site had sponsored links to union busting outfits).


You will see in the title sequence “An International Worker's Aid Picture.” Affiliated to that was the Workers Film and Photo League. Two reels were thought lost to time. However, in 2006, the Communist Party USA donated a vast collection to New York University and among the collection were reels and reels of film. Two of them included the lost footage which at present is in the process of restoration.


Passaic by the way, is in New Jersey. And sadly, the strike was lost due to various problems like an attack by the at that time racist craft unionism of the AFL and red-baiting. It did have a silver lining of, breaking the company unions then in place, and forcing the hand of the AFL. These lessons were remembered in the 1930s

more on the strike: http://www.weisbord.org/Passaic.htm

http://www.weisbord.org/BulletinsTwo.htm

youth rise up in France

MORE PROTESTS IN ICELAND, RUSSIA.


huge protests in Iceland [SHOWN] are rare and
this one has been dubbed the 'saucepan revolution'
for its use of pot banging and forcing the
PM to resign [photo:wikimedia]


A BBC report (click on post heading above) shows that young workers and students in France know how to push back. And not surprisingly, quotes like "new generation of activists", and "re-birth of the violent extreme left" inspire a new red scare. (yawn). Violence only is an equal and opposite reaction to police provocateurs, and 'plate glass revolutionaries'. Sarkozy's right wing attack on workers in such bad times has them raising hell. Is the government saying 'let them eat cake' ?

Here in Canada the Tories sure are. Everything is fundamentally fine they say, though evidence says otherwise. The budget still pretends that the rich will volunteer to save us. Harper gives our tax dollars to the banks, next to nothing for EI, students loans or social housing. CEOs may have icing, bosses cake, while we struggle to win bread for ourselves. History has proven that we have to fight for every crumb.

see photos of Russian protests.