Industrial Workers of the World - Printing and Publishing House Workers Industrial Union 450

Pushing the envelope: Postal workers’ struggles with Canada Post and their union over the last year

IWW.org Editor — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 06:52:41 +0000

Disclaimer - The opinions of the author do not necessarily match those of the IWW. The image pictured to the right did not appear in the original article, we have added it here to provide a visual perspective. This article is reposted in accordance to Fair Use guidelines.

By Erin Hudson - The McGill Daily, September 2010

On November 22, 2010, nine weeks after a new, arduous mail delivery system was introduced to Winnipeg, postal workers simply walked off the job. They had the consent of neither Canada Post nor their union leadership.

This is how Bob Tyre, president of the union’s Winnipeg branch, tells it: “One of our temporary workers said, ‘I can’t do the new method. I’m more than happy to do work in another depot – I’ll deliver the old way – but this new way is too much for me and I can’t do it.’ So they suspended him on the spot and that angered the building. We had four letter carrier depots in that building together. When the boss wouldn’t back off, well, then, they walked out for a day.”

The walkout would set the stage for six months of workers’ struggles, culminating in this summer’s mail strike. But the walkout would also inspire some workers to break with their union’s powerful National Executive and to question the future of unions. From November 2010 to June 2011, anarchism arrived at the post office.

Last fall, Canada Post Corporation (CPC) introduced the Modern Post – a new method of delivering mail that would begin the transformation Canada Post believes they need in order to modernize, become financially sustainable, and maintain relevance in the digital age where mail volume per address is decreasing.

The Modern Post plans to motorize letter carriers and implement a two-bundle carrying method. The two-bundle system will consist of one bundle of presequenced mail to hold on the forearm, and a second bundle of flyers to be handed out at each point of call. Instead of letter carriers sorting their mail in the plant, machines will sequence the majority of mail, which means that letter carriers will spend more time on delivery routes.

Parcel delivery drivers will be almost completely eliminated. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) estimates that in Montreal, Toronto, Hamilton, and Scarborough, 306 jobs will be cut as a result of the new system.

Outside a union meeting in Montreal, delivery agent Denis Auger Delegue said this is his first bad year at the post office in 32 years.

Modern Post was first implemented in Winnipeg’s Southwest and Northeast depots. The system came in two waves, beginning the transition on September 20, and completing it on October 18.

On November 4, following a court decision prohibiting workers from refusing to work under Modern Post, the CUPW – which represents all Canadian postal workers – released a web bulletin weighing in on the matter. Their message: the union’s collective agreement, which was set to expire at the end of January 2011, would not protect workers who walked off the job to protest the Modern Post.

With little concrete action taken by CUPW’s National Executive, workers facing the daily challenges of the Modern Post took matters into their own hands.

Fellow Worker Franklin Rosemont 1943-2009

x344543 — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 05:13:34 +0000

Franklin Rosemont, celebrated poet, artist, historian, street speaker, and surrealist activist, died Sunday, April 12 in Chicago.

He was 65 years old. With his partner and comrade, Penelope Rosemont, and lifelong friend Paul Garon, he co-founded the Chicago Surrealist Group, an enduring and adventuresome collection of characters that would make the city a center for the reemergence of that movement of artistic and political revolt. Over the course of the following four decades, Franklin and his Chicago comrades produced a body of work, of declarations, manifestos, poetry, collage, hidden histories, and other interventions that has, without doubt, inspired an entirely new generation of revolution in the service of the marvelous.

Franklin Rosemont was born in Chicago on October 2, 1943 to two of the area’s more significant rank-and-file labor activists, the printer Henry Rosemont and the jazz musician Sally Rosemont. Dropping out of Maywood schools after his third year of high school (and instead spending countless hours in the Art Institute of Chicago’s library learning about surrealism), he managed nonetheless to enter Roosevelt University in 1962. Already radicalized through family tradition, and his own investigation of political comics, the Freedom Rides, and the Cuban Revolution, Franklin was immediately drawn into the stormy student movement at Roosevelt.

2008 IWW labor history calendar still available

x344543 — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 18:22:00 +0000

The 2008 "Solidarity Forever" labor history calendar published by the Industrial Workers of the World since 1985 is available.

Images span the period from the 1886 Haymarket Demonstration, where workers protesting police brutality against striking workers were attacked by police, to an August 2007 march in North Providence, Rhode Island, in solidarity with IWW-organized foodstuffs workers, which ended with another brutal police attack which sent one Wobbly to the hospital with a severed artery. Other images include a 1920s strike by black and white Alabama coal miners, child labor from India, a Southern California strike by immigrant framers forced to take buses to the picket lines after immigration authorities started attacking their strike caravans, a sit-down strike by Philadelphia streetcar workers, a massive Stockholm (Sweden) rally in solidarity with Sacco and Vanzetti, Detroit teachers picketing against demands for deep concessions, the Paterson strike, immigrant rights protests and more. Hundreds of dates commemorate events in world labor history.

Solidaridad Edicion #2 Disponible Aqui

x344543 — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 20:08:00 +0000

Con:

Trabajadores de NYC Mantienen la Lucha
La Lucha en Oaxaca
Mineros Mexicanos Recuerdan el Desastre de Pasta de Conchos

PDF File

L’IWW et la Création d’une contre-culture ouvrière révolutionnaire

x344543 — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 20:22:00 +0000

Deux mots sur l’auteur :

Né à Chicago en 1943, poète, auteur et éditeur de nombreux ouvrages - essais et anthologies sur le radicalisme ouvrier U.-S. sous toutes ses formes - Franklin Rosemont découvre l’IWW à la fin des années 50 et empoche sa carte rouge en 1962, puis écrit dans la foulée à André Breton, qu’il rencontre à Paris en 1965 pour fonder l’année suivante avec sa compagne Penelope le Mouvement surréaliste aux Etats-Unis.

Co-directeur des éditions surréalistes Black Swan Press, Franklin Rosemont contribue également à la seconde jeunesse de la vénérable Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company depuis les années 1970.

The Industrial Workers Of The World: Its First One Hundred Years 1905-2005 now available!

x344543 — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 23:14:00 +0000

The IWW: Its First 100 Years is the most comprehensive history of the union ever published. Written by Fred Thompson and Jon Bekken, two Wobblies who lived through many of the struggles they chronicle, it documents the famous struggles such as the Lawrence and Paterson strikes, the fight for decent conditions in the Pacific Northwest timber fields, the IWW's pioneering organizing among harvest hands in the 1910s and 1920s, and the wartime repression that sent thousands of IWW members to jail.

But it is the only general history to give substantive attention to the IWW's successful organizing of African-American and immigrant dock workers on the Philadelphia waterfront, the international union of seamen the IWW built from 1913 through the 1930s, smaller job actions through which the IWW, Wobbly successes organizing in manufacturing in the 1930s and 1940s, and the union's recent resurgence.

CNT convoca huelga indefinida en el reparto de prensa a subscriptores de Sevilla

x344543 — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 00:39:00 +0000

Laboral / Economía

Sevilla 14/10/2006 Reparto de prensa

CNT convoca huelga indefinida en el reparto de prensa a subscriptores de Sevilla Se verán afectados los periódicos de pago de Sevilla y provincia

Rotas esta semana las negociaciones que comenzaron hace seis meses entre trabajadores y empresa, CNT convoca para el viernes huelga indefinida donde demandan el cumplimiento del 80% de los artículos recogidos en el convenio.

CNT-AIT, único sindicato en la empresa, anuncia el inicio de la huelga indefinida en Disprensur S.L.U., la entidad encargada de llevar los periódicos a la dirección de los subscriptores a estos medios. Salvo que la empresa "atienda a razones" la huelga comienza el próximo viernes.

Los empleados denuncian jornadas diarias hasta de doce horas de trabajo, donde incluso, como ejemplo, llegan a prolongar la jornada desde la noche hasta la una de la tarde para cumplir esas doce horas. Incumplimiento que desencadena en incumplir las horas previstas en el descanso entre jornada y jornada.

Charles Sullivan: Fighting Capitalism One Essay at a Time

x344543 — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 19:12:00 +0000

Disclaimer - The following article is reposted here because it is an issue with some relevance to the IWW. The views of the author do not necessarily agree with those of the IWW and vice versa.

By Angie Tibbs

Meet Charles Sullivan, social activist, writer, and photographer from the hinterland of West Virginia, whose ongoing battle against capitalism and its inherent evils is a shining inspiration to all of us who are fighting for the very existence of humankind and the betterment of our world.

Angie: Over the past year your voice has become one of the most passionate and consistent in the fight against capitalism and its accompanying evils. What prompted you to rail against the "status quo"?

Expressing ‘isms’ - Local branch of Industrial Workers of the World shows their art

x344543 — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 01:37:00 +0000

ART AND UNREST: OUT OF THE COFFEE SHOPS AND INTO THE STREETS Through Jan, Opening Thu, Jan 5, Remedy Café (8631-109 St), Info: www.edmonton.iww.ca

"It’s the first time we’ve ever done anything like this," confesses Desiree Schell of Edmonton’s branch of the Industrial Workers of the World. "It was originally just discussed over beer, as many good ideas are discussed–over beer. We thought an art show would be not only fun to do, but would also be an opportunity to demonstrate to people that the IWW is not only about being a union, but also is a vision for better world, a better community, and that includes exploring other methods of cultural expression. We have no idea where this may lead–we really have a desire to extend ourselves further into the community."