Investing in Social Enterprise to reduce poverty and green house gases

By Lynne Fernandez A new Errol Black Chair paper explains how a combination of governmental policies and initiatives in Manitoba allows social enterprises to reduce Manitoba’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions while training and employing Inner City workers. The …

Stagnant wages for over 80 percent of Canadian workers

Are wages in Canada stagnant or growing? The short answer is another question: do you live in an oil boom province? There’s a fairly common meme that Canadian wages are no longer stagnating, as opposed to US wages. …

Work Life: “We asked for workers; we got people instead”

By Lynne Fernandez The above quote, by one of Swiss author Max Frisch’s characters, succinctly captures the inherent conflict between employers and workers. Employers want results; they want productivity, machine-perfect timing and energy for the lowest wage possible. …

Manitoba’s Proactive Enforcement of Temporary Foreign Worker’s Rights is a model for Canada

By Julie Guard Canada’s Temporary Foreign Workers Program (TFWP) has become a hot potato for the federal government, which is frantically attempting to quell widespread outrage sparked by revelations of Canadians fired to be replaced by cheaper, more …

WorkLife: There’s Power in Youth and Unions Working Together

By Gabriel Bako While the labour landscape has changed dramatically in Canada in the last 58 years, the legal framework has not. The labour relations framework that we use today in Canada was implemented in 1944 with PC-1003, …

More Than a Dream

Lynne Fernandez holds the Errol Black Chair in Labour Issues at CCPA MB Many of us have, like John Lennon, imagined a world without war, greed, hunger or possessions. There are those rare individuals who insist that we …

International Women’s Day 2014: The continuing struggle for bread and roses

By Lynne Fernandez Download as PDF History teaches us the importance of remembering and celebrating International Women’s Day. In the Triangle Shirtwaist fire of 1911, 146 young women suffered horrific deaths at this New York City garment factory. …

The 2014 Federal Budget: Austerity for the many, prosperity for the few

By Lynne Fernandez Observers were not expecting anything more than a middle-of-the-road federal budget for 2014, but even so the Finance Minister managed to disappoint. Why then did the government choose to release a ho-hum budget when the …

The Living Wage: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

By Lynne Fernandez Minimum-wage workers are not just teenagers working at fast-food restaurants after school. According to the Manitoba Federation of Labour, 55 per cent of minimum wage earners in Manitoba are adults twenty years and older; 51 …

Program to Subsidize Business at the Expense of the Unemployed

By Kevin Linklater Federal Employment and Social Development Minister, Jason Kenney, met with his provincial counterparts last Friday to discuss the federal government’s proposed overhaul of job training, the Canada Job Grant (CJG) program. The Provinces have opposed …