Toronto All afternoon I kept overhearing snippets of conversation about the action with a housing committee at City Hall that evening. It was a deputation? No, it was just lobbying to keep them on track. It was important? No, it was just another exercise in keeping the City [...]]]>

Toronto All afternoon I kept overhearing snippets of conversation about the action with a housing committee at City Hall that evening. It was a deputation? No, it was just lobbying to keep them on track. It was important? No, it was just another exercise in keeping the City of Toronto on track to finally put teeth in the landlord licensing law. Are you going, Wade? No, I don’t think so. I couldn’t figure it out, and I had plenty of things still on the list. What did I know!

When Judy Duncan, ACORN Canada Head Organizer, and I talked with the Toronto ACORN Field Director Tatiana Jaunzems and Organizer Shauna Harris after everything was said and done, there was a whole different story as the details emerged. They were super charged! It turned out that there were 30 ACORN members at the committee meeting with 10 other allies and they had dominated the affair and seized the opportunity to advance the agenda. When the crowd was broken into work groups to prioritize what needed to be done next, our teams were well organized and efficient and “bullet voted” their top priority so that a long standing issue could no longer be ignored.

We were all about the box. Like any classic community organizing issue it almost seems too simple a demand to be taken seriously, but that’s precisely the beauty of it. We were demanding a box, and we would not be satisfied with anything else. Every time the discussion started to veer one way or another, according to the organizers, we then herded it back into the corral by arguing the box would solve the problem. We were on our game and playing our card in every game until it became the trump. When the City Councilor heading the committee finally said, the one thing we are all clear on is that we need to make the box happen, but can we discuss some of the other issues, the ACORN members knew they had finally come around the corner and would win the box.

Ok, you are now as confused as I was, so let’s think out of the box. Under the landlord licensing law that Toronto ACORN won in recent years for tenants, there have to be inspections by the city of the housing complexes. In the first year we were livid. Hardly a hundred buildings were inspected. We went crazy and were all over the City for dropping the ball here. The commitment increased tenfold. All good!

But, once the inspection was finished there was a problem. How would existing tenants or prospective tenants know what problems the building had and, perhaps more importantly, check and make sure the needed repairs were being made by the landlords? Solution: the box of course! We were demanding that there be an official City of Toronto box constructed or placed in the lobby of all inspected buildings so that all the tenants would be able to access the report and keep pushing the landlords to make the repairs or in the case of prospective tenants, not move into the complex until they saw that the repairs had been made. It was all elegantly simple. Without an inspection tenants had no collective leverage on the landlord for fines or broken regulations. But an inspection was meaningless if there was no transparency so that the tenants themselves were empowered to be able to constantly push both the landlord and the city to make the repairs and improvements. And, you guessed it, there was only transparency if there was a box that was placed permanently in the lobby so that all the inspection reports could be protected and available for all the tenants to constantly consult and make sure rules were followed and therefore justice was done.

Turns out for Toronto ACORN it was thinking in the box that would guarantee change for tenants.

Don’t you love it?!?

Toronto It is not often that my friends in Canada are willing to concede that there might be a service in the US that is superior to what exists in the great north, so I was paying careful attention to the torrent of complaints that spewed forth before the beer was even [...]]]>

Toronto It is not often that my friends in Canada are willing to concede that there might be a service in the US that is superior to what exists in the great north, so I was paying careful attention to the torrent of complaints that spewed forth before the beer was even on the table after a well played game we had enjoyed between the Blue Jays and the Yanks about the lack of competition in the Canadian telephone industry which was simply hammering Canadians on both cost and service. The company drawing heaviest fire was Rogers, but this was partially because they are one of the few in the sight line of course.

Many of them were astounded at the lower cost of monthly and specialized services in the US market compared to the more restricted, low competition scene in Canada. I stumbled on to the problem first hand early on a Sunday morning trying to get on wireless. Where service had been fine in my basement lodging, it had suddenly disappeared off the screen completely. Worse there were no other unsecured sites that I could locate even in this residential area in not that far from the University. Strange? Same problem on the unsecured site at the Starbucks where I drug my computer 5 blocks down the way.

Talking to Josh Stuart, ACORN Canada’s Special Projects and international master of technology, it turned out that Rogers is on a wild campaign against unsecured wireless sites. In the name of “checking” security, they regularly go on unsecured sites and turn them off for days on security “checks” in order to try and force customers with fully paid bills to change their sites to “secured.” Why? Simple reason is that they want to make everyone pay for wireless service so they see an unsecured site, even where only a simple houseguest like myself or a Starbucks customer, as a place for free riders and scofflaws. Being a quasi-monopoly, they don’t mind being both expensive and bully boys and pushing people off the air. Dogs!

These kinds of telephone tactics seem all the rage around the world even while service expansion in places as remote as India, China, and Kenya are growing. When we were recently in Lima, the organizers for ACORN Peru were even more adamant about the problem of texting or calling any of the members for meetings and actions, because in the slums the time is carefully calibrated to the minutes bought, and though this practices is so “1990’s” in the US and elsewhere, in Peru the telephone monopolies charge minutes for incoming calls still, so no one ever wants to answer their phones unless it’s an absolute emergency.

The cheerleaders for globalism sometimes forget to read the fine print on the problems of working people trying to access even the basic services whether in the slums of Lima or the neighborhoods of Toronto, but where companies are allowed to have their way with people, it will never be pretty.

Toronto Around 2006 the Harper government in Canada had a pretty good citizen wealth idea to advance the educational opportunity for lower income children. They would give a $500 grant to children born after 2005 in a savings instrument for future higher education expenditure, if or when the child went to [...]]]>

Toronto Around 2006 the Harper government in Canada had a pretty good citizen wealth idea to advance the educational opportunity for lower income children. They would give a $500 grant to children born after 2005 in a savings instrument for future higher education expenditure, if or when the child went to a university. Furthermore they would match any additional money that the family put aside for the child at 40% of the contribution. The family income needed to be in the neighborhood of $40000 or so for a family of three. The grant would be deposited into the family’s RESP – or Registered Educational Systems Plan. Sounds good!

I listened to Judy Duncan, the ACORN Canada head organizer, describe it as an “American style” benefit and I winced every time as she explained that this meant that the benefit was not awarded automatically or triggered by tax returns, but a family needed to apply for the benefit. Consequently now almost 4 years on, less than 15% of the almost 800,000 children who would have been eligible to have this educational benefit set aside had actually accessed the program. Unfortunately, that did sound very American! RESP without the RESPECT as Aretha used to wail.

Unfortunately it gets even worse, as I listened to the ACORN Canada national board discuss the issue. The conservative government led by Stephen Harper had also done a couple of other very American things. First they made private banks like Scotiabank and others the custodians of the money and the partial handlers of the application process. Secondly they also did not particularly supervise or regulate the other quick buck outfits that swept in to take advantage of the plan. Two extremely savvy members of the ACORN Canada national board, Marva Burnett from Toronto and Preeti Misra from Burnaby near Vancouver had both been duped by predatory educational fronts that swept in on them right after they had babies during the last five years, enrolled them on monthly bank deducts, and now are fighting them tooth and nail after they discovered the huge, hidden “management” fees being charged by the companies, which in Marva’s case are now in excess of $700 CN per year on contributions that are less than $3000 per year.

As we make a plan to achieve maximum eligible participation on this program throughout Canada, it was shocking to hear how “American” our good neighbors have allowed themselves to become under the Harper government in copycatting benefit programs that pretend to be for the poor but are only masking corporate and fast buck pocket lining schemes in a classic political bait and switch.

Lima In a bold experiment at the ACORN International staff meeting we tried to schedule and link our far flung offices together via free Skype connections to be able to hear reports from India and Kenya and introduce staff and leaders to each other. As the expression goes in Spanish it [...]]]>

Lima In a bold experiment at the ACORN International staff meeting we tried to schedule and link our far flung offices together via free Skype connections to be able to hear reports from India and Kenya and introduce staff and leaders to each other. As the expression goes in Spanish it was mas a minos!

On our end in Lima webmaster magician, Josh Stuart from ACORN Canada, tried to get the projector and speaker to work on four different computers before getting my baby, cheapo Acer to do the job, sorta. In the process we lost connect with Vinod Shetty of Mumbai calling from Europe. We were finally able to hear Dharmendra Kumar and Om Pradash from Delhi and they could see us, but we could not see them on the web camera.. We kept getting emails from Kenya but for whatever reason were unable to find them on line even though their Acer was the same as mine. Frustration was setting in until we finally got a big win in Bangalore.

Suresh was right on time and he could see us and we could see him. A projector beamed him up to the wall and the excitement and enthusiasm was amazing. He could also see us, though in a somewhat blurry fashion. When Kay Bisnath, ACORN International president from Toronto, sat in front of the computer and was able to question Suresh about the work and progress, it was truly transforming how we could imagine the power of the communications and this new and accessible tool.

Pioneering is hell, but worth every bit of the journey!

New Orleans After several campaigns almost yielded victories around Canada, ACORN Canada in British Columbia broke through in New Westminster with a stunning, unanimous vote to win the first living wage policy for any governmental jurisdiction in the country. Perhaps as remarkable was the adoption of a top tier wage and [...]]]>

New Orleans After several campaigns almost yielded victories around Canada, ACORN Canada in British Columbia broke through in New Westminster with a stunning, unanimous vote to win the first living wage policy for any governmental jurisdiction in the country. Perhaps as remarkable was the adoption of a top tier wage and benefits level to one of the highest levels in North America for contract wages: $16.74 per hour! V-I-C-T-O-R-Y, VICTORY, VICTORY IS OUR CRY!!!

When leaders of BC ACORN like Dave Tate and Canada Drouin and the outstanding organizing team directed by head organizer in BC, John Anderson, first initiated the campaign they knew prospects were good given the sold working families orientation of this Vancouver suburb, but they also knew that this would need to be a coalition effort so they forged strong partnerships with labor and others to push the measure. Also, invaluable was the excellent research and constant assistance provided by Seth Klein and the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives. A report they had authored that defined a family and child centered wage policy became the “gold standard” for setting the number that eventually prevailed.

Going into the meeting of the New West council, our friends on the council thought we had the majority, but we wanted to win decisively. One of the members working with city officials had also tried to build support for a middle ground alternative in the staff report which would not adopt a living wage policy but instead implement an “ethical contracting” policy, hoping that a looser social responsibility angle might peel off a vote or two or delay our measure. Now, we know we can go back and win the ethical standards provision in the next round.

Tactically, ACORN Canada decided to sit in the audience with their crowd and let the work they had done behind the scenes speak loudest, and it turned out to be the right judgment when the council ended up voting unanimously to approve the policy and become the first city in Canada to create a living wage measure.

The pressure now moves towards the ACORN Canada campaign in Ottawa, where the votes are still fluid and the measure is bouncing around the poverty reduction committee, but now that the first victory has been won, look for ACORN Canada to be moving their living wage campaign in governmental jurisdictions all over the country.

Celebrate, dance to the music!

Toronto Before Judy Duncan, ACORN Canada Head Organizer, and I went to York University to address Dr. Stephanie Ross’ class on Worker Organizations, we me with a friend for a pleasant hour who was a senior executive of one of the largest unions in Canada.  We often had this dialogue about where labor stood [...]]]>

Toronto Before Judy Duncan, ACORN Canada Head Organizer, and I went to York University to address Dr. Stephanie Ross’ class on Worker Organizations, we me with a friend for a pleasant hour who was a senior executive of one of the largest unions in Canada.  We often had this dialogue about where labor stood and future strategies for building a labor movement.

The conversation was more sobering than usual.

He shared with us the results of a regular semi-annual poll on the attitudes of Canadian workers on a whole number of subjects, but most telling in this case were the polling results concerning attitudes of unorganized workers to joining unions.  I was shocked at how low the numbers had fallen.

The percentage of workers polled who indicated that they would vote for a union if there were a representation election in their workplace had fallen to only 8% or 1 out of ever 12 workers.  If there were no opposition to the union being approved, only 18% of the polled unorganized workers were likely to vote yes.  Remember, that’s without opposition.

Among existing members of unions the sentiment was going exactly the opposite direction.  If a Canadian worker was in a union, 76% of them were happy about it compared to only 24% who were less satisfied.  These were the best numbers in a score of years, obviously prompted by the impact of the recession.  The recession has essentially made workers even more petrified of shaking the boat in any way thereby increasing their fear of  change if it means voting for a union, but if they are members of a union, they are thankful during this recession that they have real protection!

Looking at the graph, it was clear that these numbers did not appear overnight, but were part of long developing trends where the support of unions by unorganized workers was steadily declining.

The conclusion seems simple.  Strategies and tactics have to change.  We cannot rebuild the labor movement, even in Canada where concentration is 2 ½ times what it is in the United States without a “majority unionism” strategy similar to what I discuss in Citizen Wealth. Canada, remember, is where labor law and protections for union organizing are still relatively good, especially when compared to the United States where they are abominable!  Yet, not even here is there much hope that going the straight ahead route is going to reverse the trend and restore the labor movement.

Our friend echoed our own fears as we got up to leave, saying he hoped his union, even though losing members, would “come to their senses” and change their course, while they still had enough members and resources to make the change, rather than realizing they had to change when it was too late.

Our friend was right on target, but all we could hope is that we could help, and that he and others within his union would eventually be able to win the debate while they still could make a difference.