Morgan Oddie

Canadian Hearing Services workers concerned about community impact as strike enters ninth week

Workers for Canadian Hearing Services (CHS) are still on strike, with their Employer refusing to come to the bargaining table or exchange demands. “The community is suffering because of it. Eight weeks is a long time for us on the line but I’m sure it feels a lot longer for our community who have been without their mental health counsellors, without their audiology services, without their sign language interpreters for their doctor’s appointments,” said Amanda Seavers, CUPE 2073 picket captain. The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) 2073, which represents 206 workers across the province and 10 in London, filed…

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Workers’ Compensation on first strike in history: wages, workload, and micromanagement primary concerns

Since May 22, over 200 workers have been on strike at the downtown London office on Fullarton Street for the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB). Represented by the Ontario Compensation Employees Union (OCEU) Local 1750, London workers are some of the over 3,600 employed by WSIB across Ontario. These workers are responsible for administering the employer insurance program for workers who are injured on the job.  “We are wanting a fair collective agreement. We are looking for increased wages, better workload management, less micromanagement of our workloads,” said Suzanne Flannery, Unit Coordinator for the London Office and head picket…

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‘The system itself is flawed’: London community shows up to support sexual assault survivor 

Over 40 people joined together on Tuesday, May 13 outside of the Superior Court in London, Ont., to support survivor E.M. on her seventh day of cross-examination by defense attorneys in the sexual assault trial of five men. E.M. was 20 years old at the time of the reported sexual assaults. The trial began at the end of April this year — nearly seven years later. The five men, Michael MacLeod, Cal Foote, Dillon Dubé, Carter Hart, and Alex Formenton, were hockey players on the Canadian World Juniors hockey team. They were in London in 2018 to celebrate the team’s…

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A protestor with a Palestinian flag. Photo taken by Moses Odida.

“Western racism is its DNA”: Talk by Palestinian scholar Saree Makdisi on genocide in Gaza

Originally published at The Socialist on April 16th, 2025 On Wednesday, March 19, Dr. Saree Makdisi presented at Western University for a public lecture titled, “Gaza and the Question of Palestine.”  Dr. Makdisi is the Chair of the Department of English at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), a prominent scholar of romantic literature, and public intellectual who authored Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation (2008) and Tolerance is a Wasteland: Palestine and the Culture of Denial (2022).  He is also the nephew of the late scholar Edward Saïd, who is responsible for foundational work in postcolonial theory. Saïd’s seminal work, Orientalism (1979) describes the West’s…

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