FW D has released a podcast discussing the news.
Hopefully this is the first of many!
Give it a listen here.
Tag: Ottawa
Statement of Endorsement of Keep Your Rent Ottawa
Tenants, Workers: Same Struggle
The Ottawa-Outaouais General Membership Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) hereby endorses Keep Your Rent Ottawa in solidarity with all tenants unable to pay rent or are participating in a rent strike for the duration of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in the Ottawa-Gatineau region.
As many are aware, the unemployment rates across Ottawa have increased from roughly 4.3% in January 2020 to 6.3% in April. The financial support options available to unemployed and underemployed Canadians in this unprecedented disaster is limited to either a paltry $2000/month payment by the Federal Government—the Canadian Emergency Relief Benefit (CERB)—or Employment Insurance (EI), which is paid at approximately 55% of a workers’ income, though applicable only if the worker is determined to be eligible.
The Ottawa-Outaouais IWW would like to take this moment to emphasize that landlords are not our fellow working class. Landlords exploit the hardship of working-class people in a predatory for-profit housing market, on land that they inherited from the theft of unceded territories of the Algonquin Nation.
Despite Ottawa’s growing vacancy rates, landlords have callously hiked rental rates and living costs that continue to push many low-wage workers out of adequate and affordable housing. This bleak situation forces the working class to either choose between buying food, medicine, or saving their hard-earned money for paying off debt or ensuring emergency funds are available in times of crisis such as these times we live in.
Furthermore, we have heard of rent strike organizers successfully taking action against landlords engaging in unsafe practices, such as entering tenants’ units to harass or intimidate them, showing their units to potential renters, and increasing rent prices during the pandemic in the hopes of forcing out their tenants in favour of more profitable clients. We applaud these actions and we anticipate that these stories will spark organized resistance to tenants’ inadequate living conditions.
The IWW is a labour union, and our union internationally has been a leader in organizing fellow workers against the injustices of capitalism, whether it is on the job or in our communities. We encourage renters in the city to talk to their fellow tenants, to support each other day-to-day, and to create a union that fights for rental freezes or reductions and for better living conditions, and that includes keeping rent from parasitic landlords.
When we build a strong and vocal union of tenants, we can collectively take appropriate and effective action and give all Canadians access to the most fundamental of all human rights—the right to shelter.
“An Injury to One is an Injury to All.”
To contact the COVID-19 Ottawa Rent Strike:
KeepYourRent.com
(343) 883-5608
OttawaKeepYourRent@gmail.com
https://www.facebook.com/groups/ottawarentstrike
https://twitter.com/covidrent
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
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.
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.
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
VITTORIA TRATTORIA FIRING UNFAIR, MUST NEGOTIATE WITH THE IWW OR FACE BOYCOTT
Ottawa-Outaouais General Membership Branch
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
MEDIA RELEASE
July 9, 2013
For Immediate Release
OTTAWA—The Industrial Workers of the World are picketing Vittoria Trattoria (William Street location) to defend a member unfairly fired on May 18, 2013.
After two years on the job, our member spoke up to demand fair treatment for his co-workers and to improve health and safety standards at the restaurant.
In response, Vittoria Trattoria summarily fired him. The manager did not give our member two weeks notice nor was he paid two weeks’ termination pay as required by the Employment Standards Act. His response to legitimate workplace concerns was to fire the worker and intimidate by example the restaurant’s remaining employees.
The IWW will continue to picket the restaurant to demand fair treatment for our member and for all Vittoria Trattoria employees. Our member is not the only worker who has faced this unacceptable behaviour.
The IWW is calling on Ottawans to not cross our picket line and to respect a boycott of both the William Street and Rivergate Way restaurants until management meets with our union to negotiate in good faith and to respond in a fair and meaningful way to our settlement offer.
Arbitrary firings and disrespect for the Employment Standards Act is rampant in Ottawa. Furthermore, 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 can win these fights when they unite and take action.
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For more information, please contact Heather, IWW Organizer, 613-618-9459