Machinists’ News

Help Prevent Cervical Cancer

The Pearl of Wisdom campaign supports programs to prevent cervical cancer. Almost every case of cervical cancer can be prevented through programs using the Pap test, the HPV test, and the HPV vaccine. But many women around the world don’t know about or have access to these tools. As a result, 500,000 women develop cervical cancer and almost 300,000 die of cervical cancer – every year. The Pearl of Wisdom

Resist the HST (Ontatio only)

Next summer (2010) the Ontario Government is set to put into force its new harmonized GST/PST sales tax which will apply a 13% sales tax to everything we purchase. Things That Were Not Subject To The Current 8% PST Will Be Now Taxed As a result, things that were not previously taxed under the current Ontario Provincial Sales Tax (PST) will be taxed at 8%. The new 13% tax will

Flaherty's Pension Announcement: A Weak Response

I recently wrote about the “pension crisis” and what was needed to improve income protection for Canadian seniors. While several provinces have been working on new pension rules, it was federal Finance Minister Flaherty who made the first move, with his announcement on October 26 of proposed changes to federal pension legislation. While there were some positive elements in Flaherty’s announcement, it was far short of what we need. His

Pension Crisis?

If you look at the newspapers this week, you could be forgiven for thinking that there have been sudden dramatic changes in Canadian pension plans. It seems like everyone is writing articles about the pension crisis – disappearing pension plans, bankruptcies, workers losing plans, retirees afraid of starving. Unfortunately, lot of what is being written is confusing and in some cases, confused, so I’ll try to briefly sort out what

Excellent story about SMS in Canada - by Carlos Da Costa

“Excellent story about SMS in Canada”Recently, I came across a very interesting but lengthy story about Safety Management System (SMS) in Canada titled “Fly At Your Own Risk: Why is Transport Canada moving toward self-regulation for the country’s airlines?” Once in a while you come across a story that just can’t be ignored and captures the issue in its entirety from someone else’s perspective. This story featured in The Walrus

It’s Time to Re-Regulate Aviation (by Louis Erlichman and Carlos DaCosta)

In the wake of the global economic meltdown and its stunning display of the failures of corporate-dominated markets, there has been a lot of talk (but little action) about re-regulation in the financial sector. In the aviation sector, however, the deregulation express seems actually to be accelerating, with moves in Canada and elsewhere to get rid of the last vestiges of airline regulation. Starting in the early days of commercial

A federal election? What are the issues?

With all the talk about the likelihood of the Conservative Government being defeated and bringing on a federal election, some of the pundits are saying that it would be a waste of time – an election without issues. While this may be an accurate reflection of the similarity of Liberal and Conservative policies, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t crucial issues that need to be dealt with – whether or

New UN Agency for Women's Equality and Rights

The United Nations General Assembly voted Monday to create a new, more powerful agency for women, in a move supporters hailed as a breakthrough for women’s equality and rights. An Assembly resolution called for the amalgamation of four existing United Nations offices dealing with women’s affairs into a single body to be headed by an under secretary general. The unanimous vote followed three years of negotiations.

Compulsory votes on certification applications!

Dear Sisters: Dear Brothers: As you may have read in both French and English newspapers from Montreal, Quebec City and Sherbrooke, analysts at the Montreal Economic Institute claim, on democratic grounds, that compulsory votes must be held on certification applications (requests to unionize) to confirm the intention of the concerned workers. Who is in agreement with this claim? Well, the Employers’ Council (whose former president now heads the Montreal Economic