Categories

The Canadian Lessons in Turning Back Collective Bargaining Assaults

Worker Solidarity Movement

New Orleans In the early years of this century in Canada public employees and their unions faced almost exactly the same kind of hard conservative, neoliberal provincial attack on collective bargaining that we are seeing in the Republican assault in the Wisconsin, Ohio, and Indiana.  Conservative governments had gained the whip [...]

Raising the British Columbia Minimum Wage

Vancouver Even as the regional leaders of the BCGEU were strategizing with me on Friday morning about living wage campaigns in their cities and raising the minimum wage in British Columbia, according to the Prince George Free Press the local City Council had reneged on a pledge made in 2007 to the support an [...]

Canadian Breakthrough: Meeting Ombudsmen

The Cleaner

Prince George When doing the “ housekeeping” for the BCGEU regional leadership meeting, Lynda Morrice, the educational director, introduced Carol Adams, a communications staff was going to be the “ ombudsman” for the meeting, and that if anyone had any problems whatsoever, bring them to her. Later in talking to both of [...]

Los Mineros and Napoleon Gomez’s Exile

Prince George, British Columbia I wanted to hear Napoleon Gomez Urrutia speak to the British Columbia Government Employees Union (BCGEU) leaders gathered in the northern part of the province to look at how their union connects to the community.  Gomez is Secretary General of the 250,000+ member Union of Mining, Metallurgical, Steel and [...]

Race or Class in Vietnam

Hanoi We were all used to seeing facemasks of different sorts, fashions, and colors on the tens of thousands of scooter drivers when we first navigated the streets of Ho Chi Minh City and then later Hanoi.  What was more curious in the stifling heat and humidity was figuring out the long arm stockings that [...]

Associations in Vietnam

Hanoi The Organizers’ Forum delegation kept hearing about the distinctions between unions, the government, the party, non-profits or NGO’s, and associations, all of which became clearer in our first meeting in Hanoi with the Vietnam Women’s Union, one of the principal associations in the country.  With 20000 staff at different levels and branches [...]