Author: ottoutiww

Book Review: A Brief History of Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism is the intensification of the influence and dominance of capital; it seeks to transfer power in the workplace from the forces of labour to the holders of capital, trying to strengthen, and restore the power of economic elites. As David Harvey notes: neoliberalism and the neoliberal state have been able to reverse the various political and economic gains made under welfare state policies and institutions. Progressively, the neoliberal regimes will erode institutions of political democracy since “the freedom of the masses would be restricted in favour of the freedom of the few“. Nicos Poulantzas believed that neoliberals do not support the return to laissez-faire capitalism, since the state continues to play a major role in the reproduction of capital. What they want to achieve is the collapse of welfare state which was the most important people’s victory in the 20th century.

The first historical instance of this “revolution from above“, according to Harvey, is Pinochet’s Chile. The infamous general overthrew Salvador Allende’s socialist Chilean government in a coup d’état in 1973 with CIA involvement and US government officials’ support. As Henry Kissinger remarked: “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.” The coup was followed by a massive neoliberalism of the state. Chilean economy was deregulated and privatized including the breakdown of state-controlled pension systems, state industries, and state banks. Even though Inflation was reduced and GDP growth spiked, massive inequalities emerged.

Noam Chomsky supports that the crucial principle of neoliberalism is the undermining mechanisms of social solidarity, mutual support and popular engagement in determining policy. As aforementioned, in the 1970s, welfare state, an achievement of the working class in the post war world, was becoming the target of economic elites, who were trying to re-establish the conditions of capital accumulation and to restore their power. According to Harvey, this revolution from above required a change in the political culture and social landscape that would spawn a widespread support for the new political project. Individual rights, property rights, a culture of individualism and consumerism arose first in Thatcher’s UK. Thatcher success in the, as Harvey notes “construction of consent“, turned her aphorism “there is no society, only individuals” into a reality.

His book is one of the best efforts for unmasking the rhetoric of neoliberalism and trying to spawn criticism against this barbarism. Harvey hopes that social movements will form a “broad-based oppositional program” that would gain political support and move society toward a social and economic change.

Book Review: Thomas King, The Inconvenient Indian

Let’s mention some facts:

In 1598 Juan de Onate and his troops killed over eight hundred Acoma in what is now New Mexico. By 1630 the Puritan settlers were launching attacks against the Pequot tribe in 1637, massacring six to seven hundred men, women and children.

For two hundred years, merciless wars frequently broke out throughout North America. In 1832 one hundred and fifty Sauk and Meskwaki (Fox tribe) in Wisconsin were killed. In 1863 there was the Bear River massacre where two hundred and fifty Shoshoni were killed. In 1864 there was the Sand Creek massacre and in 1890 the infamous Wounded Knee, where over two hundred Lakota were slaughtered.

Michael Parenti, in his book Profit Pathology and Other Indecencies, describes the sobering devastation: “Estimates of the native population of America prior to the European conquest vary from 12 million to 18 million… but after four centuries of warfare, massacre, disease and dispossession, the original population was reduced by over 90 percent…whole tribes were completely exterminated or whittled down to scattered numbers.”

Why did this unmatched and largely unrecognized holocaust happen? Thomas King is clear: “Native history in North America as writ has never really been about Native people. It’s about Whites and their needs and desires… the Lakota didn’t want Europeans in the Black Hill, but Whites wanted the gold that was there. The Cherokee didn’t want to move from Georgia to Oklahoma, but Whites wanted the land. The Cree of Quebec weren’t at all keen on vacating their homes to make way for the Great Whale project, but there’s excellent money in hydroelectric power”.

Native people were in the way of what the Whites coveted, and so the Whites needed them to disappear. In other words, the native peoples were slaughtered with merciless deliberation so that their land might be taken for the use of Whites.

Colonialism and its consequences in the lives of North America’s native peoples is the core of this astonishing book. Policies, treaties, agreements, government’s decisions and tribal reactions comprise the rest. The Inconvenient Indian is a book we all must read.  

Sept 16th Anti-Oppression Workshop with Thane Robyn

Ottawa-Outaouais General Membership Branch are hosting an open Anti-Oppression Training Workshop by trainer Thane Robyn of Robyn Media

This event is taking place on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishnaabeg people.

Venue is fully wheelchair accessible

Facebook Event

Registration Form

GoFundMe

More Info

Sept 16th 1-3pm

Bronson Centre (211 Bronson) Room 222
3hr Training will include 3 segments with breaks for coffee and snacks

1. Anti-Oppression 101
2. Ant-Oppression Application
3. Anti-Oppression Community Building

Suggested donation is $15.
No one turned away for lack of funds.

Candle-Light Vigil for Charlottesville victims of right wing terrorism

Ottawa Outaouais IWW members will be offering our support and  solidarity to those injured and killed resisting the violent right wing terror attack yesterday in Charlottesville with a candle-light vigil at 7 PM tonight at the Human Rights Memorial (161 Elgin).

An IWW contingent counter-protesting the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville were attacked by a white supremacist who drove through the crowds with their vehicle injuring many and killing one protester. Additionally, there are accounts of white supremacist groups terrorizing the streets with drive by shootings using vans and assault rifles.

We encourage everyone to come out and show your support for the victims and opposition to violent right ring terrorism.

Facebook Event

A fundraiser has been setup to cover the medical costs for the many victims.

Go Fund Me

Stand With Lac Megantic Defendants

From the Ottawa-Outaouais General Membership Branch

Whereas, the railroad and the government has sought to blame the employees for the natural result of the combined reckless work rules and policies that undercut safety and even basic common sense.

Whereas, the Canadian Transportation Safety Board’s 18 causes for the disaster are all company policy driven.

Whereas, the MMA (Montreal Maine & Atlantic Railway) has declared bankruptcy and will face no charges for their own negligence.

Whereas, two railroad workers face criminal charges and a life sentence for a tragedy caused by unsafe railroad management policies.

Whereas, the Ottawa – Outaouais IWW stand in solidarity with all workers facing unsafe work conditions and persecution from bosses and state agents

Be it resolved that, the Ottawa – Outaouais IWW fully endorses the Railroad Workers United hardingdefense.org campaign to have all charges dropped against railroad workers Tom Harding and Richard Labrie.

Solidarity with the victims. Solidarity with the workers. Hold the bosses to account!

More Info

Donate Here

Railroad Workers United

Twin Cities GDC Fundraiser Event

Wine Rack Firing Unfair! – Must negotiate with the IWW or face boycott

By a member of the Ottawa-Outaouais IWW, January 23, 2016

Originally published in The Industrial Worker.

OTTAWA—The Industrial Workers of the World are picketing Wine Rack to defend a member unfairly fired on September 6, 2015.

Our member engaged in his legally-protected right to organize and was publicly engaged in a card-signing campaign by another union in efforts to certify a bargaining unit for Wine Rack locations in Ottawa, Ontario.

Wine Rack is owned by parent company Constellation Brands, a US-based multinational corporation with two billion dollars of profit in 2013. Front-line employees of Wine Rack are paid minimum wage and given only conditional yearly increases lower than the rate of inflation, compounding the difficulties posed by a part-time and unpredictable schedule for workers.

According to the Labour Relations Act, all workers have the right to form, select, and administer a union without interference from the employer. In response to our member’s organizing efforts, Wine Rack manufactured a spurious reason to terminate his employment without following their established disciplinary processes.

The IWW will continue to picket Wine Rack to demand fair treatment for our member until our demand for our member’s reinstatement on the job with back pay is met. All employees deserve to be able to organize without reprisal.

The IWW is calling on Ottawans to not cross our picket line and to respect a boycott of Wine Rack locations until management meets with our union to negotiate.

This is yet another instance of arbitrary firings and disrespect for the Labour Relations Act happening here in Ottawa. Workers can win these fights when they unite and take action. The IWW is a member-run union for all workers and is dedicated to organizing on the job.

For more information contact Ottawa-Outaouais IWW

WINE RACK FIRING UNFAIR!

Ottawa-Outaouais General Membership Branch
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
MEDIA RELEASE
January 8, 2016
For Immediate Release

MUST NEGOTIATE WITH THE IWW OR FACE BOYCOTT

OTTAWA—The Industrial Workers of the World are picketing Wine Rack to defend a member unfairly fired on September 6, 2015.

Our member engaged in his legally-protected right to organize and was publicly engaged in a card-signing campaign by another union in efforts to certify a bargaining unit for Wine Rack locations in Ottawa, Ontario.

Wine Rack is owned by parent company Constellation Brands, a US-based multinational corporation with two billion dollars of profit in 2013. Front-line employees of Wine Rack are paid minimum wage and given only conditional yearly increases lower than the rate of inflation, compounding the difficulties posed by a part-time and unpredictable schedule for workers.

According to the Labour Relations Act, all workers have the right to form, select, and administer a union without interference from the employer. In response to our member’s organizing efforts, Wine Rack manufactured a spurious reason to terminate his employment without following their established disciplinary processes.

The IWW will continue to picket Wine Rack to demand fair treatment for our member until our demand for our member’s reinstatement on the job with back pay is met. All employees deserve to be able to organize without reprisal.

The IWW is calling on Ottawans to not cross our picket line and to respect a boycott of Wine Rack locations until management meets with our union to negotiate.

This is yet another instance of arbitrary firings and disrespect for the Labour Relations Act happening here in Ottawa. Workers can win these fights when they unite and take action. The IWW is a member-run union for all workers and is dedicated to organizing on the job.

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For more information contact John Bainbridge, IWW Representative, at  (613) 797-9955.

1935: Organize the Unemployed! (Pamphlet)

Unemployment!

No Food!

No Clothes!

No Shelter!

No Pleasures!

Read the Inside Pages

That is exactly what UNEMPLOYMENT is to us who have to endure it year after year; five years of it! Yet there is no sign of times getting better. All the plans of our “brains” in parliament have come and gone-with no results but more unemployment, more soup kitchens, more road camps operating on the “stagger system” of a few days on, and a few days off, not enough to secure the necessities of life, more slave camps of the Lac Seul type, where single unemployed are herded away from towns and cities, where they can be regimented by the military forces and kept from voicing their discontent of the failure of the present system of society.

The high-way camps of British Columbia where the wages paid are $5.00 per month.

Everywhere it is the same story; no work and soup; work and get a five spot for a month’s work. What a future for the working class of Canada to look forward to! Starved, ragged hordes of men looking for a chance to work. Beaten and jailed if they demand a decent wage while working-yet the Profits of the Master Class Has Increased Since the Depression Began!

Why do workers who have worked in the past and filled the ware houses of the world with the necessities of life, have to live on soup or work for $5.00 per month? It is because they are not organized as well as those who own the natural resources and factories, mines and mills of this country.

Those of you who are working have had your wages cut under the threat that the unemployed would take your job at the lower rate if you refused. Modern machinery has enabled you to produce 60% more in 1935 than you did in 1921. Yet you still work the same hours.

Your wages only enable you to buy enough of your products to exist on from day to day. It was the same in the past. You produce more to-day than you ever did. You do it in less time than it took you a few years ago because of these machines that you marvel at.

That is why you are out of work. That is why the workers have filled the ware houses to overflowing with commodities that you can’t get because you haven’t got the money to buy them.

As long as this surplus exists, you will remain unemployed. As time goes on, more machines are put into use and more workers are displaced-not only for a few months, but for all time if the hours of work are not cut down so as to create more jobs.

And the Hours of work will not be lowered by those who profit by long hours, The Master Class? The workers will benefit by it and they are the ones that will have to act in a way that will cut them down.

The only way to do so is to organize, not only the employed workers, but unemployed as well, in one union that will assure support of the latter to the former when they strike for better wages and shorter hours, thus creating a demand for more goods thru their increased buying power (wages), and in making more jobs through the shorter work-day.

That is the only solution for unemployment, The bally-hoo of Politicians about high-ways, parks, air-ports and soup-lines have given us nothing but starvation and prolonged misery under the name of relief. Now they offer “unemployed insurance” as a means to solve the problem of workers who produce too much and starve in the midst of plenty!

What an example of the “leading brains” of a country! It is but an added burden on the backs of the tax-payer (worker) and a cut in the wages of those who are working. It will mean a more efficient means for the enforcement of a black-list against all workers who are active in the organization of workers throughout the country. Labor produces all the wealth-is it not an insult for us to exist on a dole when we have built a world! The owners of industry have amassed millions of dollars through our skill and our brawn. They are organized and we are the proud, but ragged mass of workers who thot that we could get by without being organized.

To-day we are paying the penalty-and paying heavily. Have we not learned a lesson during the past five years? Is it not clear that if we are to benefit from modern machinery, we will have to follow the master’s example and organize to fight for what we have produced.

We want it and we will have to get it without the aid of any but ourselves.

They are organized in a union that assures them the support of all capitalists when their interests are threatened. You have witnessed this in strikes, and in the matter of paying wages and in the length of the working day, job conditions and so on. In all these things, they act as one, because it is to their interests to do so.

It is to the interest of every worker to organize in an Industrial Union such as the I.W.W., so as to work hand in hand with other workers in industry, and to learn to act as One Class against the owning class. Good times are not coming back unless you organize and bring them back.

Ottawa-Outaouais IWW Rescinds Protest and Boycott of CAA

Following a meeting on September 9, 2014 with representatives of CAA North & East Ontario, the Ottawa-Outaouais General Membership Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) is calling off actions targeting the automotive insurance group.

The dispute began when one of CAA NEO’s independently owned and operated contractors, Glen’s Towing, failed to provide overtime and termination pay to former employee Deepan Budlakoti. He was also provided with a fraudulent Record of Employment and T-4 that didn’t account for all the hours that he worked, as it did not include the many overtime hours worked (paid out at the regular non-overtime rate), attributed to a “commission” line on his pay stubs.

Until recently, Glen’s Towing has operated in the Ottawa area as one of CAA’s contractors. The IWW has learned that CAA NEO ceased contracting with Glen’s Towing in July 2014. The IWW is pleased with the outcome of our meeting with CAA NEO representatives.

Picket actions took place at CAA locations in Montreal, Quebec and Ottawa, Ontario. These actions informed the public about this issue; a meeting between CAA NEO and the IWW took place shortly thereafter. The IWW has agreed to end actions targeting CAA NEO given their demonstration of social responsibility in this matter. The IWW is satisfied that CAA NEO has ceased contracting with Glen Comeau, an employer who routinely violates the Employment Standards Act, and with other measures that CAA has taken to remedy the situation and effect a settlement of this dispute.

However, Mr. Budlakoti’s fight continues. The fraudulent Record of Employment that Glen’s Towing provided Mr. Budlakoti, fails to document any of the overtime hours worked. This has caused Mr. Budlakoti’s Employment Insurance application to be denied due to insufficient hours worked, resulting in further financial hardship. I f all hours worked were properly attributed, Mr. Budlakoti’s EI claim would not have been denied for this reason.

Glen Comeau, who also operates multiple towing companies including 514 Towing in Montreal, continues to avoid all contact with the IWW and the Ontario Ministry of Labour. The IWW is continuing to support an employment standards claim against the employer, Glen’s Towing, and continues to seek an outcome that will make Deepan whole with respect to his EI entitlement by providing him with proper documentation of the hours that he worked.

The IWW wishes to thank Deepan’s supporters in the Ottawa-Outaouais region, as well as members of the Montreal and Toronto IWW branches for their part in organizing actions.

The IWW is a member-driven organization that is willing and dedicated to achieving justice for working people. For more information about the IWW please visit www.ottawaiww.ca.

Contacts:
Ottawa-Outaouais IWW Secretary, ott-out@iww.org;
Deepan, member, Ottawa-Outaouais IWW, 613-265-1364

IWW Settles with Vittoria Trattoria

Ottawa-Outaouais General Membership Branch
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)

MEDIA RELEASE

July 15, 2013

For Immediate Release

IWW SETTLES WITH VITTORIA TRATTORIA

OTTAWA—The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) reached an agreement with the owner of Vittoria Trattoria in the case of Fellow Worker David Wightman. The IWW picketed the restaurant on July 9 and 10.

“The agreement is satisfactory to both parties and we have agreed to not discuss its terms further,” said Ahmed, an IWW representative.

Arbitrary firings and disrespect for the Employment Standards Act are major problems in Ottawa. Service industry employment standards need to be raised for servers and other staff that depend on gratuities to make a living. Organizing a union is the best way to achieve lasting improvements and defend against management abuse.

“Wage theft is a growing trend among bosses who decide to not pay some or all of the wages, severance pay and other benefits earned by their employees. Workers such as David can win these fights when they unite and take action,” said Ahmed.

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For more information, please send an email to ott-out@iww.org