Judy Haiven on everything you need to know about tips in Nova Scotia restaurants and bars. Some pretty awful stuff going on. Learn about dine’n’dash funds, breakage fees, percentages for the boss, and did you know that many restaurants and bars in Halifax in fact charge servers just to work there?
The Westray memorial needs our help! Recently the grounds were damaged by vandals driving over the lawn, apparently not for the first time, and likely not the last. Now people are raising funds to build a fence around the park.
Danny Cavanagh, president of the Nova Scotia Federation of Labour, looks ahead at some of the challenges in 2018, from improving workers’ safety to the Fight for 15 and meeting the challenges of the anti-union provincial Liberals. “We encourage you think critically about things and not be so fast to buy into the same old sound bites that we hear over and over. Things have not gotten better for workers in the same way they have for the corporate elite in our country. Having workers who toil to earn those profits get a little bigger share of the wealth isn’t a lot to ask,” he writes.
This article by historian Lachlan MacKinnon was originally published on September 18, 2014 on the excellent ActiveHistory.ca site. We re-publish this now three-year old article because the gap between mill workers and Pictou County environmentalists the author identifies if anything has widened in the last three years. “Environmentalists must confront the fact that structural power is also wielded against other marginalized groups, such as industrial workers facing the threat of deindustrialization. In this recognition, we can hope to transcend narrow categories such as worker and environmentalist and achieve a broader-based support for systemic change.”
Cafeteria workers at Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC) campuses in Dartmouth and Halifax voted overwhelmingly to join the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 2. Underpaid, overworked and working under unsafe conditions, convincing the workers wasn’t very difficult, says organizer Darius Mirshahi.
Play some Christmas music, heat up the apple cider, and gather round the kitchen table with this Snakes and Ladders-inspired board game to learn whether or not you’ll get extra pay for working during the holidays.
Have a holly, jolly Xmas – but if you expect to be paid for the holidays, the Grinch may have something to say about it. Judy Haiven explains in detail what all you are entitled to and what your rights are.
This leaflet was handed out by Liane Tessier’s supporters prior to the public apology issued to her by Halifax Fire on Monday, December 18. It is well worth a read.
The new collective agreement for provincial civil servants decided by an Arbitration Board is not the victory the labour movement claims it is, writes Larry Haiven. At the end of the contract workers will be earning less than they are now, how much less will depend on the inflation rate. And that’s not taking into account the freezing (and removal for new employees) of the “long-service award.
This Monday former firefighter Liane Tessier will receive a formal apology from the City for the years of systemic gender-based discrimination she was subjected to. Thanks to an entirely incompetent Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission this almost didn’t happen.