World Crisis
CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF EDUCATION AND WORK – UPDATE 13th FEBRUARY 2011
EVENTS
LEFT FILM AND VIDEO – CULTURE FORUM ONE
Monday, February 21
7:30 pm.
The Regal Beagle (back room)
335 Bloor St West (near St George), Toronto
Left film and video: a discussion with Frank Saptel and other Board members of the Canadian Labour International Film Festival (CLIFF)
Performances by:
– Wally Brooker, saxophone
– Jerry Lee Miller, stand-up comedy
– Mike Constable, animation films
– plus short films by invited guests
Presented by the Culture Committee (Cultcom) of the Greater Toronto Workers Assembly
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WEBINAR – THE CO-OPERATIVE MODEL: A DURABLE AND SUSTAINABLE ENTERPRISE
Friday, February 18
12pm EST
Featured Speakers: Professor Ian MacPherson (Professor Emeritus University of Victoria and author of A Century of Co-operation) and David Bent (Author of Forthcoming book Determined to Prosper: The Story of Sussex Co-op, the Oldest Agricultural Society in the World, PhD Student in History, University of New Brunswick)
More info: http://www.cooperativedifference.coop/page/4-Events-Opportunities
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CLiFF (CANADIAN LABOUR INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL) CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS FOR 2011
The Selection Committee of the Canadian Labour International Film Festival (CLiFF) invites you to submit your film or video for possible screening during our second Festival to be held this November in Toronto, Ontario and in 50 communities across the country (and counting). Films are due 30 June, 2011.
CLiFF features film and video made by, for, and about the world of work and those who do it, in Canada and internationally. The films we showcase are about unionised workers, as well as those not represented by unions. We encourage projects regarding any and every aspect of work, as well as issues affecting work or workers.
The festival draws thousands of trade unionists, community members, youth, activists, students, educators, artists, and allies from across North America and one day, we hope, the world.
We are looking for films on a wide spectrum of issues. We seek films about privatization, youth, First Nations people, people of colour, immigrants, refugees, detainees, health and safety, resistance, art, poetry, women, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered people, taxi drivers, truck drivers, rickshaw drivers – anyone who does anything considered work.
We also encourage the widest possible variety of films: from documentaries to drama to poetry/poetic treatments to comedy and animation.
More info: http://labourfilms.ca/cliff/2011/02/08/2011-call-for-submission-now-available/
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FORUM – GLOBAL CRISIS, FISCAL RESTRAINT AND PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS
Thursday March 10, 2011
7pm
Ryerson University, Oakham Lounge, 2nd floor
63 Gould Street, Toronto
2011 Phyllis Clarke Memorial Lecture: John Loxley
Co-sponsored and supported by Ryerson’s CUPE Locals 233, 1281, 3904, Ontario Council of Hospital Unions/CUPE and the Department of Politics and Public Administration, Ryerson University
Dr. John Loxley is a professor in the Department of Economics, University of Manitoba. He specializes in International Money and Finance, International Development and Community Economic Development and has published extensively in these areas. He has researched public-private partnerships for almost fifteen years and recently published Public Service Private Profits: The Political Economy of Public-Private Sector Partnerships, with Salim J. Loxley, Fernwood Publishers, 2010.
For further information contact Bryan Evans at 416 979-5000 x4199 or e-mail: b1evans@ryerson.ca
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LUNCHBOX SPEAKERS’ SERIES – SOCIAL ECONOMY CENTRE (OISE/UT)
Community Foundations
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Noon – 1:30 pm.
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Room 12-199, 252 Bloor St. West, Toronto
With Rosalyn Morrison, Community Initiatives, Toronto Community Foundation and Betsy Martin, Community Foundations Canada
Rosalyn Morrison will talk about how the Toronto Community Foundation mobilizes more than 300 individual and family donors, high-impact community organizations and cross-sector leaders to tackle complex, quality of life issues in creative and inspiring ways.
Betsy Martin will discuss how foundations in Canada can support social enterprise and how this is part of the evolution of the investment model of foundations around the world. She will give examples of what community foundations in Canada and the United States are doing, to give a sense of the potential for this kind of community foundation investing.
Moderator: Michael Hall, Primus
– Bring your lunch and a mug. Water, coffee and tea will be provided.
– For more information, please contact Lisa White at: secspeakerseries@gmail.com
– This event will also be webcast live on the Internet. Please see our website for detailed instructions: http://socialeconomy.utoronto.ca/english/webcast.php
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NEWS AND VIEWS
REPORT: WAL-MART ACTUALLY KILLS JOBS, CREATES TAXPAYER BURDENS
from The Raw Story
NEW YORK – Wal-Mart’s lengthy struggle to open in New York City has hit fresh problems — a controversial report that said America’s biggest discounter does not just sell cheap, it makes neighborhoods poorer.
The report concludes that Wal-Mart, the biggest U.S. private employer, kills jobs rather than creates them, drives down wages and is a tax burden because it does not give health and other benefits to many part-time employees, leaving a burden on Medicaid and other public programs.
Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/10/walmart-draws-ire-poor-parts-brooklyn/
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MUBARAK’S FOLLY: THE RISING OF EGYPT’S WORKERS
by David McNally, The Bullet
Rarely do our rulers look more absurd than when faced with a popular upheaval. As fear and apathy are broken, ordinary people – housewives, students, sanitation workers, the unemployed – remake themselves. Having been objects of history, they become its agents. Marching in their millions, reclaiming public space, attending meetings and debating their society’s future, they discover in themselves capacities for organization and action they had never imagined. They arrest secret police, defend their communities and their rallies, organize the distribution of food, water and medical supplies. Exhilarated by new solidarities and empowered by the understanding that they are making history, they shed old habits of deference and passivity.
Read more: http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/460.php
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TAKE A STAND AGAINST WAGE THEFT
We work hard, but too often we don’t get paid.
In December 2010, the Workers’ Action Centre recorded our experiences looking for work. Go to http://www.workersactioncentre.org to listen to the reality workers in Ontario face every day.
We are offered work for less than minimum wage, we don’t get overtime pay, we are charged fees to get work, we are told we have to be self-employed to get a job.
This is wage theft.
TAKE ACTION
We are taking action against wage theft and so can you.
– Watch workers’ stories of wage theft and share with others. (http://cts.vresp.com/c/?WorkersActionCentre/0760994829/46f0beda64/0feed76c2b)
– Email the Minister of Labour Charles Sousa on our Wage Theft Action page (http://www.workersactioncentre.org/campaigns_stopwagetheft.html)
– Call our workers rights hotline at (416) 531-0778. Report wage theft.
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CBC NEWS OTTAWA – UNION WASTE COLLECTORS SAVE OTTAWA MILLIONS
The City of Ottawa said Tuesday it saved close to $5 million, over four years, by using unionized employees to collect garbage in its downtown core.
The city said since the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 503 — the city’s largest union — won the garbage collection contract for Ottawa’s downtown area in 2005, it has delivered the services it promised for less money.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2011/02/08/ottawa-union-garbage-208.html
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PUBLIC-WORKER UNIONS SKIP ALBANY AD BLITZ FOR NEW TACTICS
by Nicholas Confessore, New York Times
ALBANY — The airwaves are virtually silent. The fiery criticism of years past has given way to conciliatory press releases. And the halls of the Capitol ring not with angry protests but with the quiet hum of lawmakers and lobbyists making their daily rounds.
Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, the New York City teachers’ union, said, “We think the ad wars make people feel disenfranchised from the process.”
Faced with devastating budget cuts from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and a deeply hostile electorate, New York’s most influential public-employee unions have unexpectedly shifted their strategy for defending cherished government programs and worker benefits. Put off for now are the angry denunciations and millions of dollars of advertisements, chiefly from hospitals and a health care union, that have traditionally begun haunting governors in early February.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/10/nyregion/10unions.html?ref=nyregion
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ABOUT CSEW (CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF EDUCATION & WORK, OISE/UT):
Head: Peter Sawchuk
Co-ordinator: D’Arcy Martin
The Centre for the Study of Education and Work (CSEW) brings together educators from university, union, and community settings to understand and enrich the often-undervalued informal and formal learning of working people. We develop research and teaching programs at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (UofT) that strengthen feminist, anti-racist, labour movement, and working-class perspectives on learning and work.
Our major project is APCOL: Anti-Poverty Community Organizing and Learning. This five-year project (2009-2013), funded by SSHRC-CURA, brings academics and activists together in a collaborative effort to evaluate how organizations approach issues and campaigns and use popular education.
For more information about CSEW, visit: http://www.csew.ca
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