Winnipeg Wobbly

Check out the newest edition of our newsletter, the Winnipeg Wobbly! Included in this edition:

• Postal Worker's Wildcat
• Student Protests in U.K.
• Filipino fight for Justice
• Women fighting violence against women
• IWW BDS
• Jimmy Johns workers here to stay!

Click Here For The Winnipeg Wobbly Vol. 1 Issue 6

This isn't isolated to Ottawa. The same thing is happening in Winnipeg and in most major cities in Canada.  City hall continues to try and push though bills that punish panhandlers that violate the human rights of the poor and destitute. 

BIAs, police 'class cleansing' Ottawa streets

Panhandlers union claims downtown harassment common

By Don Butler, Ottawa Citizen


Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/BIAs+police+class+cleansing+Ottawa+streets/4031782/story.html#ixzz19SlIT6KA

Wrap your head around this, if you can: Stacy Bonds's treatment is symptomatic of "class cleansing" by Ottawa police in the service of powerful business interests who want to eliminate street people from the ByWard Market and Rideau Street.

That's the view of the Ottawa Panhandlers' Union, which claims to represent about 80 of the city's estimated 300 to 400 panhandlers.

Spokesman Andrew Nellis, a former street person and self-described anarchist, says business improvement areas, which represent merchants in a given district, have a disproportionate amount of power, both with the police and at City Hall.

He charges that police have effectively become "private security guards" for BIAs, responding to business complaints regardless of whether any laws are being broken.

"The police are under instructions from business in this city to basically lock down Rideau Street, to eliminate anyone who looks poor, to engage in a kind of class cleansing," he alleges.

This amounts to criminalizing people who are poor, he says. "The police, the city and the BIAs are all working together to remove any area where poor people actually gather."

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were Italian anarchists accused of murder in 1920 and put to death in 1927 after a famously biased trial. The pair came to symbolize the bigotry directed toward immigrants and dissenters in America. Their struggle is retold in this probing documentary.

First two parts are here, for the other 12 parts click "Read More>>" at the bottom.

The Commercial Stevadoring Agricultural and Allied Workers Union (CSAAWU) is supporting 50 workers against an illegal lockout by Robertson Abbatoirs, that started on Tuesday 30th November 2010. On the 3th of December the workers were dismissed.

CSAAWU has been engaging the employer (who is also a commercial farmer) for a while in order to stop the illegal practice of demanding that workers work excessive number of hours as overtime under conditions that bear resemblance to slavery. At times workers had to work from 6am till midnight – “the company treated black workers not as human beings but as an extension of machinery”. According to pay slips some have had to work as many as 39 hours overtime in a week, in contravention of the basic Conditions of Employment Act of 1995 (BCEA) that stipulates that the maximum overtime a worker can be expected to work is 10 hours per week or 2 hours per day. The Department of Labour in Worcester has failed to enforce compliance with the law. The workers at the Abattoir were paid R350 a week by the employer. Each worker is responsible for supporting and feeding, on average, 6 people. Now 50 households are facing hunger and starvation.

Monday the 6th December the workers and CSAAWU took action and dragged the employer to the Labour Court.

12/2/2010

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or Wobblies) has officially voted to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in support of Palestinian rights. The “Resolution in Support of the Workers of Palestine/Israel” was adopted in an overwhelming vote both at the IWW’s convention in Minneapolis and by the membership via referendum. This vote makes the IWW the first union in the US and the third union in Canada to officially support the Palestinian United Call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.

Inspired by the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, the BDS movement calls for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel until such time as fundamental Palestinian rights are recognized. The BDS call is supported by a broad cross-section of Palestinian society, including Palestinian unions.

The resolution to support the BDS campaign comes out of the work of the IWW’s International Solidarity Commission and the IWW Friends of Palestinian Workers Group, a grassroots network of Wobblies supportive of the Palestinian, Israeli and international struggle against Israeli apartheid. Support for the BDS campaign was also stressed by all the Palestinian workers who met with members of the IWW on the IWW delegation to Palestine, particularly the Independent Workers Federation of Palestine, with whom the IWW shares a close bond of solidarity.

“For a union concerned with international solidarity, supporting the BDS movement is the right thing to do”, said IWW member Nathaniel Miller, who serves on the International Solidarity Commission and attended the IWW delegation to Palestine. “By officially supporting this BDS call, the IWW stands shoulder to shoulder with Palestinian workers in a global picket line against Israeli apartheid.”

“Our support of the BDS movement is in line with traditional wobbly principles of anti-racism and international solidarity”

The IWW Friends of Palestinian Workers Group resolves to continue to advance the cause of Palestinian rights inside and outside of the IWW.

Founded in 1905, the IWW is a union with a long tradition of solidarity and anti-militarism, and has been central to some of the most important struggles in US working class history. More recently, the IWW has been successful organizing at Starbucks and in the fast food industry, among workers long thought to be unorganizable. The IWW is an international union, with members across North America, Europe, Australia, and South Africa.

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IWW Friends of Palestinian Workers Group

(email) nathaniel@iww.org

(phone) 610-209-1447 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 610-209-1447 end_of_the_skype_highlighting

http://www.iww.org/projects/isc/palestine