PERSPECTIVE: Worth fighting for: Community Living London workers ready to strike

Three Community Living London workers belonging to OPSEU Local 166 take a photo in front of sign for MPP Rob Flack's office.

Community Living London workers are preparing to walk off the job on Monday, joining thousands of workers across Ontario in a growing labour dispute driven by chronic underfunding, low wages, and worsening working conditions.  This action is a part of the “Worth Fighting For” campaign, a coordinated, province-wide community and labour action in Ontario led by frontline workers in the community and social services sectors, including members of OPSEU/SEFPO and CUPE. Workers are demanding retroactive pay to compensate for wage increases being unfairly capped at 1 percent in 2019 by the Ontario government’s Bill 124, which was ruled unconstitutional in…

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PERSPECTIVES: Stevenson for Mayor? Thanks, Josh Morgan

In this increasingly polarized political climate that we find ourselves in today, Londoners don’t seem to agree on much. But if there’s one sentiment that’s almost unanimous across all 14 wards, it’s that our city is headed in the wrong direction. The genuine anger and frustration at the state of our city is palpable, much of it justifiable and righteous within itself. But it is commonly misdirected towards our unhoused neighbours, immigrants, or the “other” – whoever that may be at any given moment. No one has better capitalized upon this smouldering rage than current Ward 4 councillor – now…

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“Earth’s Greatest Enemy” screening reveals the global cost of militarization—and how we fight back

Two months ago, as the US-Israeli war of aggression on Iran and Lebanon continued to heat up, another thermometer was quietly ticking higher in the background. Largely unnoticed outside the areas it affected, in March the southwest US (and interior of BC) experienced an unprecedented heat wave, with multiple states smashing all-time single-day and -month temperature records. This was no one-day flash in the pan: the unseasonal temperatures lingered for nearly two weeks, causing alpine snowpack volume to melt down almost to nothing at a time when it should have been on its way to a typical mid-April peak. The…

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“Mourn for the Dead and Fight for the Living” : International Day of Mourning to remember workers killed, injured, and made ill on the job

On April 28, trade unionists and labour activists came for the Day of Mourning ceremony held in London’s Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) hall.  This year’s London ceremony highlighted the recent death of a worker who was killed while working at the Maple Leaf Foods poultry processing plant on Wilton Grove Road on April 9. The investigation into the workplace death is ongoing and further details haven’t been released at this time. “We are all sharing in grief,” said Mike Mattioli, the regional union representative from the Union of Commercial and Food Workers (UFCW), which represents workers at the…

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PERSPECTIVES: It’s About Time We Take Our City Back From Corporate Interests 

On March 28, I had the pleasure of participating in the province-wide Fight Ford protests right here in London, Ontario at Victoria Park. I was incredibly grateful to have the opportunity to speak to an issue that Londoners across this city know all too well— our city being an increasingly unaffordable rental market with working-class Londoners priced out of housing by corporate developers and predatory landlords.   Now, with the news that our city has officially earned the unfortunate distinction of having the highest unemployment rate in the country at 9.1%, this housing emergency has become all the more dire.   As…

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Insights from animate blankets: Artist Andrew Maize’s ‘fan dancers’ spin in McIntosh Gallery 

“There’s this animacy that you get from the wind. The wind fills the sails, livens a tree. I think it’s that sense of animacy we get from these blankets which otherwise are just inert material. It’s seeing that surprise on people’s faces when they first get up. It’s so exciting. There’s a sense of wonder,” says artist Andrew Maize, whose exhibit *(s)twerH is open to the public in Western University’s McIntosh Gallery until May 16.  A key feature of the windowless exhibit is a collection of gleaming silver and gold emergency blankets draped over hangers. First created in 1964 by…

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