Winnipeg Wobbly

Show your prairie union pride with an official T-shirt of the Winnipeg General Membership Branch. Proceeds benefit the Winnipeg GMB!

Visit the IWW Online store and order yours today!

rumbles of strikes are coming from the bastions of higher education.  The following piece was originally featured in the Winnipeg Wobbly Newsletter.  


As always when ever the class struggle flairs up, the here at the Winnipeg IWW make the Wobbly Offer:  For all workers at the university of Winnipeg, if you need a uncensored voice, we have space to you!  Gripes about management, conditions, news  Email us at winnipegiww@iww.org

The Coming Insurrection at the University of Manitoba
By X359910

 It is likely that this fall will see a wave of strikes and/or lockouts at the University of Manitoba. Contracts for all the major unions on campus (Canadian Auto Workers local 3007, CUPE 3909, the Association of Employees Supporting Education Services, and the University of Manitoba Faculty Association) expire within only a couple months.

While poor working conditions are often the norm at the University, with CAW 3007 in particular having to go on strike at nearly every contract negotiation, labour relations on campus have been even worse than usual as of late. As an indication to just how bad they have gotten, the security staff affiliated with AESES-Security Services were locked out after rejecting a pro-posed contract in August. Already under-staffed for campus the size of the Univer-sity of Manitoba, the university administra-tion was trying to reduce staffing levels even further – despite safety concerns such as a stabbing last year. As AESES has not been on strike since the 1970s, the univer-sity administration called in scabs, and the University was able to force concessions onto AESES-Security, this is an indication that we‘re in for an offensive by the univer-sity administration at a level unseen in a long time.

Another major irritant in terms of labour relations at the University of Manitoba is the ROSE/OARS project, meant to increase ―efficiency‖ in university operations. Of course, we all know what administration means by ―efficiency‖ – reducing staffing, reducing services, and contracting out to private corporations which are more expen-sive than keeping staff on hand. ROSE/OARS must be seen for what it is: an em-ployer offensive and an attempt by admini-stration to force cutbacks onto students and workers.

In short, the university is affected not just by the neoliberal agenda of the outside world which has resulted in governments under-funding post-secondary education for dec-ades, but also internal ideologies of neoliberalism in miniature which permeate the University administration. We can see these ideas at play in various attacks on University workers, as well as privatization of university services such as the contracting out of education for international students to Navitas, a large multinational corporation, under the guise of the International College of Manitoba a few years ago. If the univer-sity administration were simply trying to do their best with limited funds, they wouldn‘t be doing things such as contracting out ser-vices which unionized, full time staff can do more efficiently.

A battle is brewing at the university. On one side, we have the unions on campus, allied with UMSU. How effective they are in defending their membership will in large part come down to how united they are. As there is very little to speak of in terms of politicization and social move-ments on the U of M campus, this will also be a test for UMSU of how well the leadership will able to overcome the various forces that push the student un-ion bureaucracies towards fuzzy, inof-fensive institutional politics and how well they will be able to mobilize their mem-bership in support of striking workers. If no one blinks, there is a good chance that a broad student-labour alliance can create some meaningful resistance to the neoliberal agenda of the admini-stration and possibly avert a long, paralyzing strike.

On the other side, we have the Univer-sity administration, led by David Bar-nard. Barnard is generally considered to be an administration hatchet-man, given his implementation of ROSE/OARS not too long after being appointed. It is beyond doubt that the university administration would love to ―discipline labour at the university, which will likely involve an aggressive position during collective bargaining and the hiring of scab labour, used during the AESES security strike this year and the CAW strike in 2007.

The University administration will undoubtedly try to play students and workers against each other, by blaming workers salaries for tuition increases and employer offensives on tuition not being high enough. While clearly workers and bosses have nothing in common, it is just as important for students not to identify with the administration. They aren‘t some neu-tral body trying to make the best decisions they can to increase the quality of education, they see us as revenue generating units – numbers on a balance sheet, which the university often tries to squeeze more cash out of (such as their attempts to increase tuition in 13 faculties this summer, of which 11 were defeated). Fortunately, unlike the Manitoba Federation of Labour, the cam-pus locals are more or less supportive of the student unions positions on tuition.

At the end of the day, the battle will come down to one of unity and mobilizations. If a student-labour alliance is able to hold together and mobilize resistance, we have a shot at blocking the egregious attacks on University workers. But if the admini-stration is successful at driving a wedge between students and workers, or if we fail to mobilize resistance to neoliberal agendas, both within the University and in broader society, we will both be in for a massive defeat.

X359910 is a student at the University of Manitoba

On 25th of January 2011 migrants started a hungerstrike in Athens and in Thessaloniki.  Solidarity actions will be heald across Europe on Feburary 11th in support of migrant rights.


300 migrants in hunger strike in Greece

We are migrant men and women from all over Greece. We came here due to poverty, unemployment, wars and dictatorships. The multinational companies and their political servants did not leave another choice for us than risking 10 times our lives to arrive in Europe's door. The West that is depriving our countries while having much better living conditions is our only chance to live as humans. We came (either with regular entry or not) in Greece and we are working to support ourselves and our families. We live without dignity, in the darkness of illegalness in order to benefit employers and state's services from the harsh exploitation of our labor. We live from our sweat and with the dream, some day, to have equal rights with our Greek fellow workers.

During the last period our life has become even more unbearable. As salaries and pensions are cut and everything is getting more expensive, the migrants are presented as those to blame, as those whose fault is the abjection and harsh exploitation of greek workers and small businessman. The propaganda of fascist and racist parties and groups is nowadays the official state discourse for issues of migration. The far right discourse is reproduced through media when they talk about us. The "proposals" of the far right are announced as governmental policies: wall in Evros, floating detention centers and European army in the Aegean, repression in the cities, massive deportations. They want to convince greek workers that, all in a sudden, we are a threat to them, that we are to blame for the unprecedented attack from their own governments.

The answer to the lies and the cruelty has to be given now and it will come from us, from migrant men and women. We are going in the front line, with our own lives to stop this injustice. We ask the legalization of all migrant men and women, we ask for equal political and social rights and obligations with greek workers. We ask from our greek fellow workers, from every person suffering from exploitation to stand next to us. We ask them to support our struggle. Not to let the lie, the injustice, the fascism and the autarchy of the political and economic elites to be dominant in their own places too; all these conditions that are dominant in our countries and led us to migrate, us and our children, in order to be able to live with dignity.

We don't have another way to make our voices heard, to make you learn about our rights. Three hundred (300) of us will start a Hunger Strike in Athens and in Thessaloniki, in the 25th of January. We risk our lives, as, one way or another, this is no life for people with dignity. We prefer to die here rather our children to suffer what we have been through.

January 2011
Assembly of migrant hunger strikers