Briarpatch articles from October 2002

Briarpatch archives from October 2002

Over-proof? (Openers).(prime minister Jean Chretien on what would determine Canada's involvement for invasion of Iraq)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2002... "I don't know, a proof is a proof. What kind of a proof is a proof? A proof is a proof and when you have a good proof it's because it's proven." (PM Jean Chretien, when asked what kind of proof he would need of weapons of mass...

Robbing the poorest. (Openers).(use of employment insurance premiums to pad country's budget surplus)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2002... Figures released by the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) show that the federal government has been padding its yearly budget surpluses with money taken from the lowest paid workers in the country. The difference between what the Employment...

Overtime problem. (Openers).(how amount of overtime earned affects unemployment rate)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2002... More than a million Canadian wage-earners put in an average of 8.5 hours of paid overtime every week. The nine million hours of overtime worked is the equivalent of 225,000 full-time jobs-or enough to employ one in every five people now...

Sad Ol' Saddam. (Openers).(how Saddam Hussein has been contained since the 1991 Persian Gulf War)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2002... "But he can't be anywhere near as dangerous as he was when the USA and Britain were supporting him, even providing him with dual-use technology that he could use for nuclear and chemical weapons development, as he presumably did. The...

Agricultural sweatshops in Canada: government programs have been allowing maximum "flexibility" for employers for nearly forty years.
October 1, 2002... One of the most important issues for all workers today is "flexibility." Issues such as terms of employment, working conditions and government regulation of the labour market are all affected by a general push from employers for more...

Justice delayed: how employers and the Ontario provincial government have been ducking and dodging the Supreme Court decision that came down in the best interests of agricultural workers.
October 1, 2002... In 1993 Ontario became the ninth province to allow agricultural workers the right to join a union of their choice and bargain collectively. Only Alberta remained adamant that these workers were not entitled to the same union rights as others....

Canada's rural road warriors: the struggle to attain the dignity and justice denied - by law - 20 years ago.
October 1, 2002... "The cushioning between the thumb and finger had worn away completely," says Mavis Wiebe. Through the cell phone static, she sounds tired but resigned. "So they took a piece of tendon from my arm and made a cushion for the joint to rotate...

An interview with Evelyn Lube: she's organizing because a boss is a boss, even in First Nations workplaces.
October 1, 2002... She's been called the Norma Rae of the Okanagan. No one is more surprised by the national attention than Evelyn Lube herself, a dynamic community activist who, in her own words, simply did what comes naturally in her workplace - she...

Say what??? Canadian labour takes on the clear language challenge.
October 1, 2002... "He spoke the language of the people," they said of Louis Laberge, the prominent Quebec labour leader who died this summer. Among his many achievements, Louis was admired for the way he spoke and how he used everyday language that regular...

The Biggar they are, the harder they fall: in a small Saskatchewan community, education workers - mostly women - walk out of a long grueling strike stronger than ever before.(strike at Biggar Public School Division lasts more than six months)
October 1, 2002... Bea Devenny never imagined she would ever be forced to walk a picket line. The ten-year employee of the Biggar Public School Division thought her employer respected the work that she did as a teaching assistant. But on February 4th, Devenny...

Remembering Sacco and Vanzetti.(anniversary of execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti for robbery, which was unjust)
October 1, 2002... August 23, 2002 marked the 75th anniversary of the execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. The two men had been tried and found guilty of a 1920 payroll robbery that left two people dead. The state had argued that Sacco and...

Three Strikes & The IWA in Canada. (Book Reviews).('Three Strikes: Miners, Musicians, Salesgirls, and the Fighting Spirit of Labour's Last Century' and 'The IWA in Canada: The Life and Times of an Industrial Union')(Book Review)
October 1, 2002... THREE STRIKES: Miners, Musicians, Salesgiris, and the Fighting Spirit of Labour's Last Century by Howard Zinn, Dana Frank, and Robin D.G. Kelley www.beacon.org, 2001. THE IWA IN CANADA: the Life and Times of an Industrial Union...

Remembering Kirkland Lake: The Gold Miners Strike of 1941-42. (Book Reviews).(Book Review)
October 1, 2002... Remembering Kirkland Lake: The Gold Miners Strike of 1941-42 by Laurel Sefton MacDowell Canadian Scholars Press, 2001 Toronto, on. For many years the Steelworkers' office in the Regina Union Centre had hanging on its walls several large...

Are jobs really the stumbling block to Kyoto? (My Opinion).(Kyoto Protocol, to reduce global warming)
October 1, 2002... Good News! The Prime Minister has finally announced his intention to ratify the Kyoto Protocol by the end of this year. As a union activist, I was glad to see Canada live up to a promise made five years ago, when our nation made a commitment...