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Mitchell Thompson is a writer, researcher, and occasional radio producer in Toronto.
The typical Canadian worker, whether earning minimum wage or an average income, cannot afford housing in any of the country’s major urban centers — which happen to be where most jobs are located.
A new bill in Canada takes aim at wage-fixing and no-poaching agreements among major corporations. But significant loopholes and objections from business groups underscore how even modest labor legislation faces staunch resistance from capital.
Over one-third of Canadian workers hold precarious jobs, in which they face eroded worker protections and suppressed wages. These outcomes are not accidental but stem from deliberate policy decisions aimed at satisfying bosses’ drive to maximize profitability.
Longshore wages and job security have declined while profits for terminal operators on Canada’s west coast have soared. Now 7,400 workers from the International Longshore and Warehouse Union are striking across 30 ports, fighting against job and wage cuts.
After years of low wages and precarity, Metro grocery workers in the Greater Toronto Area have spoken loud and clear, voting 100% in favor of a strike. It’s a strong start to nationwide grocery sector contract talks in the wake of the pandemic profit surge.
As wildfires burn across Canada, the struggle to contain the damage has intensified for fire crews. The severe cuts to emergency fire services in recent years, driven by right-wing policies, have led to a failure to prepare for this crisis.
As Toronto grapples with skyrocketing housing costs, tenant unions across the city are uniting against major corporate landlords in a massive rent strike. The strike is vitalizing the fight for housing justice in one of the world’s most expensive cities.
Ontario’s doctor deficit has left 2.2 million people without a primary care physician. The shortage, a consequence of for-profit models, worsens health issues, strains emergency departments, and fuels the vulture-like leveraging of profit-driven “solutions.”
As Canada’s conservative heartland goes to the polls, the incumbent United Conservative Party is planning to sell much of Alberta’s social housing to landlords. Under the plan, landlords will prosper, and tenants will suffer.
Dismissing Canada’s rental crisis as nothing but a supply-demand issue overlooks the fact that a small group of landlords dominates the rental market and exploits tenants. As rents become extortionate, Canadian landlords are reaping record profits.
Canada’s price-fixing grocery giant Loblaws, drunk on excess profits, gave its CEO, Galen Weston, a huge bump in his 2022 compensation. The raise ensures that Weston, a scion of Canada’s third-richest family, continues to live large at workers’ expense.
Last week, Toronto mayor John Tory announced his resignation after an affair with a young staffer came to light. But his unstinting attacks on working people and the poor should have rendered him unfit for office years ago.
Ontario premier Doug Ford is outsourcing surgical procedures, handing health care provision over to entities that oppose Medicare. The measure is another step toward the dismantling of public health care in Canada.
After decades of cuts, Canada’s public healthcare system is in crisis. The results of austerity are not theoretical — people are dying in Canada’s waiting rooms.
“Precision scheduled railroading” was pioneered on Canada’s railways. The proof of concept suffered from increased train crashes — and worker injury, exhaustion, and death — but outsize profit for railways clinched the system’s implementation.
As Canadian workers face down rising living costs on stagnant wages while corporate profits soar, the country’s financial press is raising the alarm over a coming “labor Armageddon.” Such a reckoning would be both unsurprising and fully warranted.
Less than two weeks ago, Ontario education workers ended a strike and came to the table to negotiate with the province. Now, in a fight not just for wages but for classroom conditions, 50,000 workers are set to strike again on Monday if a new deal is not reached.
Due to walkouts and the threat of a general strike, Ontario’s premier has walked back a bill that would have robbed workers of the right to strike. But Ontario labor’s willingness to defend working-class livelihoods will be needed in forthcoming negotiations.
Canada’s former finance minister Bill Morneau has recently moved from cabinet to the board of a multinational bank. This business as usual is a reminder that Liberals are totally at home among Canada’s rich and powerful.
The dreaded wage-price spiral, the price hikes thought to be the result of wage increases, is the explanation for inflation preferred by bosses. The logic behind the idea is simple: bosses’ rights to profits can never, ever be infringed on.