A year after the first teachers strike in Nova Scotian history, unionized educators are once again at war with the province. On Tuesday the Nova Scotia Teachers Union announced it would hold a strike vote on February 20 for its 9,3000 members. The action is a direct response to the recently released Glaze report and its […]
Labour
Posted inNews + Opinion
Fighting for equity in the workplace
Liane Tessier says she decided to start the Equity Watch group because she doesn’t want anyone else to go through what she did. Tessier is a former firefighter who fought for 12 years to receive a settlement for her human rights complaint. She has recounted the instances of bullying and gender-based harassment she experienced while […]
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Nova Scotia government closing the book on school boards
Nova Scotia will begin acting on recommendations made in yesterday’s “Raise the Bar” report, starting with shuttering the province’s elected school boards. The news was announced Wednesday afternoon by Zach Churchill, minister of education and early childhood development. “I thank Dr. [Avis] Glaze for her incredibly thoughtful report,” writes Churchill in a release. “She has […]
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Class warfare and the Irving Shipyard
With the holidays coming to an end, negotiations between the Irving family’s Halifax Shipyard Inc. and its unionized workers are set to resume this month with the help of a mediator. In December, the workers, members of UNIFOR Marine Workers Local One voted overwhelmingly in favour of a strike mandate after the employer tabled a […]
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Irving Shipyard workers vote for strike mandate
Unionized employees of the Irving-owned Halifax Shipyard voted 99 percent in favour of a strike mandate this past weekend. More than 700 members of Unifor’s Marine Workers Local 1 showed up to a meeting Sunday for an update on their current collective agreement, which expires December 31. The news wasn’t good. “After a healthy discussion, […]
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How we choose to remember the Halifax Explosion
If a hurricane passes over a deserted island, says Jacob Remes, no one calls it a disaster. According to the historian, a disaster is defined by people—how society responds or doesn’t respond to its impact. In his book, Disaster Citizenship: Survivors, Solidarity and Power in the Progressive Era, Remes examines those issues through the aftermath […]
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Sidney Crosby is wrong: Sports have always been intertwined with politics
In the lead up to the public relations event Tuesday with president Trump, Sidney Crosby kept digging a hole and doubling down on the idea that visiting the office of an elected official was somehow an act totally devoid of politics. More than that, he made the puzzling claim to the Associated Press that he […]
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Local Xpress spins-off into HalifaxToday
The Chronicle Herald’s newsroom strike may have laid the groundwork for the paper’s newest competitor. Ontario’s Village Media is looking to hire an online community editor for its new HalifaxToday website. “HalifaxToday.com is coming soon and Village Media is looking for a full-time community editor to help launch our latest online-only news site,” reads an […]
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Halifax will try to “wow” Amazon
Mike Savage will try and sell Halifax to Amazon and that’s just barely an embellishment. The Seattle-based mega-company announced on Thursday that it’s looking for a location to build a second headquarters, dubbed HQ2. Amazon says it will invest $5 billion US on the project, which it claims will employ up to 50,000 workers over the […]
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The time is now for a guaranteed annual income
No one is happy with the current set of supports available to people living in poverty. We tend to blame people for their problems, despite the growing consensus that health is a combination of things—including income—that are largely outside the person. We need to acknowledge that it is a community responsibility to guarantee each person […]
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Precarious labour is exploiting university educators
University campuses across Nova Scotia are continuing to benefit from contract faculty who face high workloads, low job security and lower wages than tenured professors, leaving a mental health drain on this province’s educators. The common assumption is that contract professors, who Dalhousie Faculty Association president Darren Abramson calls “precarious academic staff,” are mostly graduate […]
