In Support of VIU Faculty Association

A message from UWFA to the striking workers of the Vancouver Island University Faculty Association:

March 18, 2011

Dan McDonald
President
Vancouver Island University Faculty Association
640 Fifth Street
Nanaimo, B.C. V9R 1P9

Dear Dan,

I am writing on behalf of the University of Winnipeg Faculty Association to express our support for the striking workers at the Vancouver Island University Faculty Association during your difficult contract negotiations with the University administration. With our colleagues at CAUT, we strongly support your demands that the VIU administration prioritize improved access to education for students, a reduction in administrative costs, the cessation of academic staff lay-offs, and the meaningful inclusion of faculty members in University governance.

The issues that face your members are issues that face academic staff across the country. It is essential that we stand together collectively to defend those rights.

We wish the VIU Faculty Association success in securing a fair and equitable contract for its members.

In Solidarity,

Kristine Hansen
President
University of Winnipeg Faculty Association

Which Side Are You On? - Natalie Merchant

United Steelworkers Vale Strike

The United Steelworkers is in a hard-fought eight month strike against the world’s second largest mining multinational, Vale. This hugely profitable multinational is demanding massive concessions to its members’ pensions, nickel bonus and seniority in their Sudbury, Port Colborne and Voisey’s Bay operations. This nasty, protracted fight has been relentlessly forced upon them by this foreign multinational through tactics and aggressiveness the likes of which we have rarely seen in this country.

As demonstrated in Sudbury on March 22nd, their strikers are receiving incredible solidarity from the United Steelworker’s allies and supporters from across the country and around the world. This show of solidarity is very encouraging and much appreciated. Included below is a report they have prepared on Vale’s approach to business and mining in Canada which provides an insight into how foreign multinationals are buying up Canada’s resources and not living up to their responsibility to Canada’s communities or workers.

Visit the United Steelworkers our strike website to get background and daily updates related to Vale Inco and this important labour battle: www.FairDealNow.ca

United Steelworkers Report

CLC Supports Striking Museum Workers

OTTAWA – The Executive Council of the Canadian Labour Congress is asking workers who belong to its affiliated unions not to visit the Museum of Civilization and the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa-Gatineau until striking workers have secured a fair collective agreement.

The CLC’s Executive Council, meeting in Ottawa, passed a resolution saying in part that the Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation (CMCC) “has blatantly abandoned that responsibility by failing to negotiate a fair collective agreement with its workforce.”

For the past five weeks, 420 members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada have been on strike at the museums to secure a collective agreement that would change the museum’s employment practices: 38% of the workforce is employed on a temporary basis, and museum workers are being paid 30% less on average than other federal government museum workers doing the same or similar jobs.

The CLC is also calling upon the government of Canada to force the museum “to negotiate a collective agreement that ends the precarious work practices used by the Corporation.”

Worker's Song

Enjoy this YouTube video of the Dropkick Murphys performing the Worker’s Song, a song about working, fighting and dying for things you don’t even own.

Information Picket Supports Locked out Petro-Canada Workers

Members of Canada’s largest energy workers’ union will picket select Petro-Canada gas stations Friday and Saturday nationwide in support of locked-out workers at the company’s Montreal refinery.The Winnipeg picket will be: Noon, Friday Feb. 29th, Petro Canada at Broadway and Main Street. The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada has declared Friday and Saturday National Days of Action in support of 270 Petro-Canada workers who were locked out by their employer in November.Though the company is making record profits, it has steadfastly refused to negotiate with workers in Montreal, who are asking for the same settlement negotiated with other plants across the country.

“This is an attempt to break our system of pattern bargaining in the energy sector,“ says CEP President Dave Coles. “In doing so the company is placing the safety of the surrounding community at risk.“ Petro-Can’s lock-out means the refinery is being run by inadequately-trained managers who are working extremely long hours without breaks. An inquiry into the explosion at the BP refinery in Texas in 2005, which killed 15 people, concluded that fatigue and poor training were behind that tragedy.“We are calling on Petro-Canada to let these men and women return to their jobs before disaster strikes,“ says Coles.