UNIONS PUT THEIR SOLIDARITY ON DISPLAY on November 26. You could see in Toronto, in the many different union flags carried by the folks gathered at the corner of Steeles and Heritage Road to support the #makeamazonpay warehouse workers campaign. It was the same thing in Brampton and Ajax and in hundreds of other rallies, large and small, at Amazon shipping centres in 50 countries around the world.

IT WAS MOSTLY NURSES THIS TIME. And not for the first time. Nor likely the last. Their November 14 rally in Toronto was part of a broad, long-running battle to force the Ford government to repeal Bill 124, a 2019 law that puts a 1% wage cap on one million public service workers in Ontario, including nurses and teachers.

CALL IT A “KOJAK MOMENT.” Ask the the Occupational Disease Reform Alliance (ODRA) “Who loves ya, baby” and the answer will be instant and obvious: we do.

There’s growing interest and support for a wealth tax on the ultra-rich—and for very good reasons.

THE UNION REFUSED TO KNUCKLE UNDER. It’s not what unions are set up to do after all. And they didn’t. They exercised their legal right to strike.

NURSING HOMES ARE BACK UNDER THE GUN in Ontario, thanks to a multi-union legal action to force them to obey pay equity laws.

STRIKES ARE BACK. BIG TIME. More and more workers on every continent are walking off the job: 155,000 metalworkers in South Africa, thousands of GM workers in Brazil, 6000 nurses in Denmark, 700 emergency phone line operators in Spain, 2000 Uber drivers in Croatia and 100,000 workers in the USA—so many that they are calling it “Striketober.”

DAYCARE WORKERS IN QUEBEC ARE ON A ROLL. The government has offered to raise their pay—right in the middle of contract negotiations. But it hasn’t been enough to stop the workers from striking to win more.

ONE BRAVE SOUL SPOKE UP AND WE ALL GOT IT. That’s how Senator Wanda Thomas Bernard remembers the moment that resulted in the creation of the East Preston Empowerment Academy (EPEA).

BETH MACLEAN DIED TOO SOON. She died before her big win came. She died just two weeks before the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal ruled that the provincial government was guilty of systemic discrimination against people with disabilities—just as she had claimed for years and years.