May Day, May 1st, is International Workers’ Day, a day established to commemorate labour struggles by workers around the world since the mid-19th century, when the fight for the 8-hour day cost the lives of many of those active in their labour movements.

Join us May 1st on Parliament Hill at 1pm as we take to the streets with United Steelworkers – Local 1005 from Hamilton, many of whom are currently locked out from their workplace. The attack on Local 1005 members by the employer, U.S. Steel, is part of a larger global attack on all workers around the world across all industries. These attacks include union-busting, cuts to wages, benefits, and pensions and affect all workers.

An injury to one is an injury to all.

Whether you work in a unionized shop or not, an attack on workers is an attack on you. These attacks are lowering the standards of employment and raising profits for employers not being properly held accountable for the effects their practices are having on society and the world.

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For the bargain price of $1, you can read the following stories and more!

Headlines:

* Egypt: Labor Unrest Was ‘Straw That Broke The Camel’s Back’
* Starbucks Workers Declare New Union Shop in NYC, Celebrate MLK Day Victory
* Rage Against the Machine Supports Guitar Workers’ Strike
* Solidarity Against Sexism on the Shop Floor

Features:

* Obituary: Remembering Labor Activist Jayabean Desai
* Celebrating A Rich Tradition of Women in the IWW
* 100 Years Later: Remembering the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

[Read more →]

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A panhandler piper who cut the wires of a competing music speaker in an Ottawa underpass in 2009 is continuing his fight against the city and a welfare system that he says is an institution of modern slavery.

The judge convicted him and sentenced him to 20 hours of community service with the Salvation Army, which he refused. He had filed an appeal, but a misunderstanding over the date in November 2010, meant he missed it. The judge dismissed the appeal due to his absence.

“They gave me a piece of paper with a Salvation Army logo on it for 20 hours and I said, ‘I’m not working for those guys’,” said Loomer, who objects to community service as a form of slavery. He said that obligatory community service enforced by the courts and police is nothing like volunteering and actually working in the community. The Salvation Army and other agencies like it are “religious extensions of the government” that benefit and depend on the free labour given them by such sentences.

[Read more →]

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A talk with biographer Jeffrey B. Perry

Thursday, February 10, 2010 · 19:00 – 22:00

CUPW Boardroom
377 Bank Street
Ottawa, ON

A talk with biographer Jeffrey B. Perry on this radical Caribbean and American worker-intellectual who organized with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), was a tireless editor and writer on issues of race, class and justice, and later founded the International Colored Unity League and advocated a separate black state within the United States. He died at just 44 years of age.

Sponsored by the Ottawa-Outouais IWW, Black Law Student Association, Human Rights Research and Education Centre of the University of Ottawa, ravenlaw.com, and the University of Ottawa Law Union. Thanks also to the Canadian Union of Postal Workers
(CUPW) for hosting the event.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – December 2, 2010

12/2/2010 The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or Wobblies) has officially voted to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in support of Palestinian rights. The “Resolution in Support of the Workers of Palestine/Israel” was adopted in an overwhelming vote both at the IWW’s convention in Minneapolis and by the membership via referendum. This vote makes the IWW the first union in the US and the third union in Canada to officially support the Palestinian United Call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.

Inspired by the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, the BDS movement calls for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel until such time as fundamental Palestinian rights are recognized. The BDS call is supported by a broad cross-section of Palestinian society, including Palestinian unions.

The resolution to support the BDS campaign comes out of the work of the IWW’s International Solidarity Commission and the IWW Friends of Palestinian Workers Group, a grassroots network of Wobblies supportive of the Palestinian, Israeli and international struggle against Israeli apartheid. Support for the BDS campaign was also stressed by all the Palestinian workers who met with members of the IWW on the IWW delegation to Palestine, particularly the Independent Workers Federation of Palestine, with whom the IWW shares a close bond of solidarity.

“For a union concerned with international solidarity, supporting the BDS movement is the right thing to do”, said IWW member Nathaniel Miller, who serves on the International Solidarity Commission and attended the IWW delegation to Palestine. “By officially supporting this BDS call, the IWW stands shoulder to shoulder with Palestinian workers in a global picket line against Israeli apartheid.”

“Our support of the BDS movement is in line with traditional wobbly principles of anti-racism and international solidarity”

The IWW Friends of Palestinian Workers Group resolves to continue to advance the cause of Palestinian rights inside and outside of the IWW.

Founded in 1905, the IWW is a union with a long tradition of solidarity and anti-militarism, and has been central to some of the most important struggles in US working class history. More recently, the IWW has been successful organizing at Starbucks and in the fast food industry, among workers long thought to be unorganizable. The IWW is an international union, with members across North America, Europe, Australia, and South Africa.

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