Education Crisis
CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF EDUCATION AND WORK: UPDATE 25th MARCH 2013
EVENTS
COLOUR OF POVERTY / COLOUR OF CHANGE 2ND PROVINCIAL FORUM: FROM POVERTY TO POWER – RACIAL JUSTICE, MAKING CHANGE
Monday April 29, 6pm to 9pm
Tuesday April 30, 9am to 5pm
Oakham House – Student Campus Centre, Room SCC 115
Ryerson University, 55-63 Gould St, Toronto
Join us on Monday for a welcome to the conference, guest speakers, poetry performances and reception. Then on Tuesday, join us for the all day learning and strategy forum with guest speakers, roundtable discussions and issue focused strategy sessions. Breakfast and lunch will be provided.
Roundtables will include –
– Intersectionality of Oppression
– Political Participation and Representation
Issue focused strategy sessions will include the following topics –
– Employment Equity
– Income Security
– Colours of Politics
– Criminal Justice and Policing
– Immigration Policy and the Changing Face of Canada
– Federal Fiscal Policy
– Education – Access and Opportunities
Everyone welcome ! Free, but please register to reserve your spot soon, click here – http://www.eventbrite.com/event/5698626746
If you hope to attend from outside of the Toronto area and in order to do so would require accommodations, please contact May Lui, Forum Coordinator – frompovertytopower2013@gmail.com or call and leave us a message at 416-966-3882 – we’ll see if we might be able to help !!
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CALL FOR ABSTRACTS: 20TH CANADIAN CONFERENCE ON GLOBAL HEALTH
Global Health in 2013: Are We Having an Impact?
Canadian Society for International Health (CSIH)
October 27-29, 2013 – Ottawa
Call for abstracts open – now accepting video and documentary submissions!
The deadline is April 30th.
For more information please visit: http://www.csih.org/en/events/conference/ or email us at: ccgh@csih.org
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THE WAY THE RIVER FLOWS: OFL 3RD ANNUAL ABORIGINAL GATHERING
June 14 – 16, 2013
CAW Family Education Centre
115 Shipley Avenue, Port Elgin, ON
The Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) is holding its 3rd Aboriginal Gathering from June 14-16, 2013. The OFL and its affiliates have a long history of activism and lobbying on Aboriginal, Métis and Inuit issues. This is a Gathering that is reaching out to all people – labour and community, Aboriginal, Métis, Inuit and non- aboriginal – who are concerned and interested in developing action oriented change, justice and reconciliation for Aboriginal Peoples: Idle No More!!!!!! Let us confront the truth and take action while finding peace and solace in the Aboriginal, Métis and Inuit traditional medicines and spiritual teachings.
Registration Fee: $100.00
For more info and to register: http://www.caw.ca/en_about-the-caw-family-education-centre.htm
[The link to Port Elgin is not working at the moment. Please visit this link instead: http://ofl.ca/index.php/aboriginal-gathering-2013/]
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ONTARIO MINISTRY OF LABOUR COMMUNITY CONSULTATION ON HEALTH & SAFETY
At the February 15th meeting of the Common Front Steering Committee it was reported that we have a unique consultation opportunity to meet with the Ministry of Labour (MOL) regarding our issues and recommendations as they develop an Integrated Health and Safety strategy for the Province of Ontario. This is important for us because one of the Ministry’s priorities is to focus on vulnerable workers and precarious work.
As we know too well, many of our Common Front partners represent workers in this category of vulnerable workers and/or workers doing precarious work. We have asked the Ministry of Labour for a separate consultation session specifically with our Common Front Partners and they have agreed. This
session will take place:
Wednesday April 17, 2013
10:00 am – 2:00 pm
OFL Building – 15 Gervais Drive, 8th Fl Boardroom
Toronto, ON
We ask that you respond back to us by March 28th whether or not you or your organization would like to participate in this consultation session, as we want to inform the MOL. Space will be limited so please send your RSVP early to Paulette Hazel (phazel@ofl.ca).
We are encouraging you to participate as too often the voices and issues of vulnerable workers are not heard and this is an opportunity to get on-record.
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OISE ADULT EDUCATION & COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT SPEAKERS SERIES: TEACHING FOR CRITICAL AWARENESS WITH POST-GRADUATE ADULT EDUCATORS
April 16
2-4 pm
OISE, 252 Bloor St. West, Room 7-105
Speaker: Dr. Tony Brown, University of Technology Sydney (UTS)
In this presentation, Dr. Brown explores the use of film, music, photography and the use of story-making in teaching post-graduate students of adult education.
Often radical and critical educators expect that the gradual elaboration of rational argument about inequality, discrimination, and injustice will explain, convince and win over those who they see as allies and potential supporters. However, students come together in the program with diverse social and educational backgrounds and different work experiences and practices. A pedagogic challenge is how to help students develop deeper awareness, knowledge, and feeling about the world around them? This approach accepts that there are other ways of knowing (Bruner) and so a wider range
of written, visual and oral texts is utilized to work at the cognitive and affective levels.
Dr. Tony Brown is a Senior Lecturer in Organisational and Adult Learning at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). He has coordinated the Masters programs in Adult Education for the past seven years. Tony’s research has focused on learning in trade unions as a site of organisational and social movement learning, and most recently has been investigating literacy and numeracy practices of production workers in lean manufacturing companies.
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GABRIELLE DE MONTMOLLIN – STEPHEN HARPER HATES ME (ART EXHIBITION)
April 24-May 18
Opening Reception: Saturday April 27, 2-6 pm
Red Head Gallery
401 Richmond Street West, Suite 115
Toronto, Ontario
In a reversal of the 1960’s slogan, “The Personal Is Political” Gabrielle de Montmollin suggests that politics is personal in her new series Stephen Harper Hates Me. Blending news photographs with images borrowed from her drawings and staged photographs Gabrielle shows how Harper’s inimical
attitude towards artists and others he despises has shaped the art she makes and the life she lives. This series of mixed media works on paper is funny, blunt and provocative.
For more info: http://www.redheadgallery.org/
[Note: Gabrielle de Montmollin is Administrative and Communications Assistant of the APCOL project, Centre for the Study of Education & Work.]
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NEWS & VIEWS
THE ROLE OF THE PUBLIC SECTOR AND CAREWORK IN WEALTH CREATION
by Salimah Valiani, Ontario Nurses’ Association
Much like caring work, the role of the public sector in the creation of wealth is regularly undervalued and even disregarded. Due to this, the focus in policy debates is on public sector spending, with the ‘necessary’ conclusion that the amount of spending must be reduced within the context of provincial and federal budget deficits.
An entirely different approach is to begin with the assumption that carework and public services are part and parcel of wealth creation. Using the Statistics Canada database accounting for sales and purchases of all industries in the Ontario economy, a study by the Centre for the Study of Spatial Economics calculates the value of output generated by one dollar of spending in various sectors. This is one way of operationalizing the assumption that public services contribute to the creation of wealth.
The study shows that public spending in the areas of health care, social services and education creates more value added than private sector investment.
Read more: http://www.chnet-works.ca/index.php?option=com_easyblog&view=entry&id=56&Itemid=50&lang=en
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‘RIGHT TO WORK’ IS A LIE
by Paul Kahnert, rabble.ca
The title might sound harsh, but there is no other way to say it. Creating legislation that takes away human rights in the workplace, and claiming that it is giving you rights, is deliberately dishonest. What it’s really about is greed and low wages.
There has been much written and much hand wringing lately about social inequality and the ever growing gap between the haves and the have-nots. There is more wealth now than there has ever been. We don’t have a deficit problem. We have a distribution of wealth problem. “Right to Work”
legislation will make that gap much, much worse.
Read more: http://rabble.ca/news/2013/03/right-work-lie
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BOOK LAUNCH VIDEO – BOOM, BUST AND CRISIS: LABOUR, CORPORATE POWER AND POLITICS IN CANADA
Over the past decade, Canadians have experienced wild economic swings: an economic boom followed by massive layoffs in traditional industries and a wrenching economic crisis. What have these changes meant for Canadian workers? Bad jobs? Weaker unions? Worsening health? If so, why?
Boom, Bust, and Crisis addresses these questions by surveying how work has changed across Canada, from the auto and steel industries of Ontario, to the tar sands of Northern Alberta and First Nations casinos in Saskatchewan.
Introduction by Stephanie Ross, and presentations by:
– John Peters — editor of Boom, Bust and Crisis
– Peter Graefe — “Wither the ‘Quebec Model’? Boom, Bust, and Quebec Labour”
Watch the video: http://www.socialistproject.ca/leftstreamed/ls167.php
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ENDING THE DUES CHECK-OFF: FORCING UNION RENEWAL?
by Sam Gindin, The Bullet
The spread of the notoriously misnamed ‘right-to-work’ legislation in the U.S. — most notably in Michigan, the home of the iconic sit-down strikes and effective birth of modern American-Canadian trade unionism — has given confidence to union-bashers in Canada to follow suit. ‘Right-to-work’ has of course nothing to do with guaranteeing anyone a job and everything to do with trying to undermine unions. Its essence is that even if the majority of workers overcome management opposition and establish a union, and even if all workers benefit from what the union negotiates and the union is (as is the case in the U.S.) compelled by law to represent all workers, workers can — unlike taxes — choose to be free riders and not pay dues.
On the other hand, significant sections of the left have long argued that legislative protections were a double-edged sword, contributing to the institutionalization, bureaucratization, and downfall of the labour movement. If unions were forced to constantly meet their members face-to-face and had to convince each individual to pay dues — as opposed to employers collecting the dues via their payroll systems and sending them on to the union — might it, the argument goes, act as an inadvertent blessing? Might it ultimately renew the labour movement?
Read more: http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/785.php
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CLASSISM EXPOSED: TALES FROM THE PINK GHETTO
by Cari Gulbrandsen
My own experiences related to classism are set in the administrative world of work. Frankie Valli once crooned, “If you go for your diploma, you can join the steno pool.” As I suspect many would agree, the administrative dimension of the work world is indeed a “pool,” where undercurrents of classism swirl quietly even when the waters on the surface are apparently calm. I want to share my anecdotes for administrative workers everywhere.
Read more: http://www.classism.org/tales-pink-ghetto
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MANAGEMENT WAGE INCREASES DWARF OTHERS
by Doug Allan, Leftwords
Earlier I noted that while the provincial government was imposing concessions (and, yes, of course, wage freezes) on unionized public sector workers, the Conference Board of Canada was predicting 2.7% increases for non-union employees in Ontario in 2013 (up from 2.6% actual increases in 2012).
Now, Statistics Canada data suggests this may be part of a long term trend. Data in a new report indicates that in Canada between 1998 and 2011 the hourly wages of full time management occupations went up 34.7% in real terms (i.e. after accounting for inflation).
Read more: http://ochuleftwords.blogspot.ca/2013/03/management-wage-increases-dwarf-others.html
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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 this project, visit http://www.apcol.ca
For more information about CSEW, visit: http://www.csew.ca
**END**
Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales); and at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo (new remix, and new video, 2012)
‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8
Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
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Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski
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