PAID SICK DAYS ARE BACK IN NOVA SCOTIA. For a while at least. But a law requiring all employers to provide paid sick days remains about as likely as catching a blue 100 pound lobster in the Halifax Public Gardens duck pond.

WHO NEEDS DOCTORS WHEN YOU’VE GOT BOSSES? That is the guiding principle behind a new Alberta public health order that gives employers near unquestioned authority to decide when workers infected with COVID-19 still need to come into work.

NURSES CAN’T CATCH A BREAK—or even take one. In Ontario, Premier Ford wants them to volunteer to work unpaid extra hours in COVID-19 immunization clinics. In Quebec, Premier Legault lets their bosses take away their vacations.

THE BITTER IRONY CUTS DEEP for Brent Cosgrove and his 19 work mates at the the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre (MNFC) in Halifax. All 20 of them were thrown out of work on December 13. The workers are convinced it was because they had applied to join a union

BILLIONAIRES GOT BURIED IN MONEY. That’s what happened. Silently. All without even trying. The money drifted in. Ankle-deep. Knee-deep. Hip-deep.

VULTURE LANDLORDS ARE CIRCLING THE WEST. Their eyes are sharply focused on Alberta and Saskatchewan and one kind of prey: essential workers who have to “rent by necessity.”

SCABS RUNNING PICKET LINES IS BAD ENOUGH. But airlifting scabs over picket lines is something else again. But that’s the the kind of bare knuckle battle the employer has forced on the workers at a toxic waste treatment site in Sarnia.

THROWING MONEY AT NURSES is not likely to work. But it’s the best most of our Canadian provinces can come up with. Nurses keep telling them it’s not likely to work.

CANADIAN WORKERS ARE YESTERDAY’S HEROES. Financial support from the federal government is gone. Workers, who were hailed as heroes during the dark days of the pandemic, have been abandoned to their fates. They can either go back to work at some shitty job, or try and eke out an existence on a paltry $300 a week with a less-than-certain “lockdown benefit”.

PAYDAY IS NOW A MYSTERY FOR DANIEL FEUER. He no longer knows how much he will get paid for his work. There are thousands like him in Canada and the USA. They all work as “shoppers” for Instacart, an app that takes grocery orders online and has their shoppers deliver them to customers’ homes.