By Susan Prentice
On September 19, Manitoba launched an on-line consultation on the province’s next multi-year plan for childcare. Since 2002, Manitoba has had two five-year plans, each of which made incremental changes. A major redesign of childcare is long overdue. In 1890, the province began building public education, moving past one-room schoolhouses to create a public school system. The same transformation needs to happen today for childcare.
They were kids when they started. Teenagers locked up in the youth detention centre, watching movies about American street gangs. Soon they realized that if they stood up for each other, and worked together, it was easier to survive. They said, “Hey, maybe we should form a gang, just like in the movies.” Soon they had a name and insignias. “What colour should our rags be?” That’s obvious, one said: “Indians wear red!”
Once they were a gang, they weren’t pushed around as much. They resisted. They had power. It felt good. Little else had felt good in their lives.
By Lynne Fernandez, Errol Black Chair in Labour Issues
There have been some rumblings from south of the boarder that people under 40 may not recognize and that may be only vaguely familiar with others: the sound of workers on the rise, of a groundswell of workers who have had enough of the new economic reality they are mired in.
Earlier this month fast-food workers in 60 US cities shut down McDonald’s and Burger King and also demonstrated at other stores such as Macy’s Inc., Sears and Dollar Tree. These workers, fed up with not being able to support their families or afford healthcare coverage, have learnt a lesson that workers knew only too well during the last century and before: if you want a fair deal at your workplace, you have to form a critical mass and speak with one powerful voice. The service sector in both the US and Canada is bereft of union coverage and these workers are now connecting the dots between lack of unionization and the low-wage, precarious job they have.
By Josh Brandon
Last week, Statistics Canada released data from the third and final instalment of its 2011 National Household Survey (NHS). The new data dealt with housing and income of Canadians. It is still unclear how compatible this new data is with the Census data this survey was intended to replace. However, what is apparent is that for many families finding an affordable, suitable home in good repair remains a far off goal.
September 13, 2013
Across North America, governments and business lobby groups are working hand-in-hand to restrict the rights of workers to organize unions and bargain collectively. Right to work legislation is taking hold even in previously labour-friendly states such as Michigan. That trend threatens to seep into Canada with a hostile federal government and several anti-union provincial parties or governments eager to follow the American experience.
By Tyler Craig
Housing advocates in Thompson are alarmed by a recent proposal by a group of business owners to push homelessness out of sight.
Last month, a group of business owners in Thompson sent a letter to Thompson Unlimited, the city’s economic development corporation, with a list of 15 recommendations on how to deal with homelessness in the community. The proposal included ideas such as moving the homeless shelter to the outskirts of the city and reducing the size of the sign on the shelter. The short sightedness of these business owners is further reflected in asking “Does one ever consider that this [homelessness] may be by choice”.
By Colin Anderson
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Small farm owners Pam and Clint Cavers were blindsided on August 28, 2013 when Manitoba Agriculture, Food and Rural Initiatives (MAFRI) staff showed up to “seize and destroy” their locally produced and cured prosciutto (pork).
Ironically, just months ago, MAFRI presented the Cavers with $10,000, naming their prosciutto the “Best New Food Product” in the Great Manitoba Food Fight competition.
Pam Cavers neatly summed up the Province’s approach to supporting local food, “With one hand they giveth and the other they taketh away.”
By Josh Brandon
“It began as a housing marvel. Two decades later, it ended in rubble.”
In 1972, the St Louis Housing Authority put dynamite to the massive Pruitt-Igoe housing complex, a social housing project that was once home to 15,000 people. By then, years of crime, vandalism and urban decay had left the project with few defenders. The iconic image of the demolition of these high-rise structures became a symbol for the problems of mid-century modernist architecture. For a generation of social and civic planners in the US, Pruitt-Igoe became ideological shorthand for the inevitability of failure of large-scale social housing interventions.
By Lynne Fernandez,
This isn’t the first time I’ve been inspired by the CBC’s early-morning business update to go on a little rant. Sometimes it’s the blatant business bias that makes me choke on my bagel; other times it’s the banality of the supposed news that gets me going. Today it was a combination of both.
For some reason our national broadcaster thinks we need to know that Yahoo! has changed its logo. So important is this information that the business reporter and local host were able to dedicate precious air time discussing it. “Whimsical but sophisticated; fresh and modern” says the Yahoo! spokesperson of the new logo. Who needs news about falling wages, the shrinking of the middle class, the growth of precarious work – when events of this magnitude are breaking? In fact, why talk about workers at all?
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