From the Ground Up: An Interview
What's next for Canadian workers?
The following is part one of a two-part roundtable on working-class power in Canada, first posted in the Canadian radical magazine Briarpatch.
Andrew Loewen
During the economic expansion that followed WWII, organized labor won significant gains in exchange for embracing capitalism. Long since the crises of the 1970s, and decades into organized labor’s decline, major labor organizations still talk as if a return to that postwar compromise is possible. What can be done — what is being done — to challenge this orientation?
Deena Ladd
Many people we work with don’t see union rhetoric affecting their lives. As temp and contract workers, or workers in the periphery of unionized workplaces, they see workers’ ability to fight back weakening. The restructuring of the labor market in the last thirty years has been incredibly gendered and racialized. And it’s meant a massive disconnection between unions and people who have lost work, lack credential recognition, have migrated, or have been marginalized into low-paying work.
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