"Fellow feminists," was how Niki Ashton greeted the crowd at Women's Forum 2013, held earlier last week in Ottawa. It was a fitting address; the women who joined her on stage throughout the day were passionate, they were fiesty and they didn't shy away from using the f-word.
Well over 100 people attended the forum, now in its second year. Ashton, the forum organizer, made headlines in 2008 when she became the second youngest woman ever elected to the House of Commons.
The recent mass walkouts by fast food and retail workers in New York City and Chicago made international headlines and ignited a lively discussion about the alternative organizing forms being adopted by America's growing ranks of non-unionized, poverty-wage workers.
Saskatchewan is about to dramatically overhaul its labour legislation, transforming it from one of the most progressive jurisdictions in Canada in terms of worker protection to one of the most regressive. You wouldn't know it, though, from reading mainstream news coverage.
The national media's near-total silence on the soon-to-be adopted Saskatchewan Employment Act, now being sped through the legislature as Bill 85 by the ruling Saskatchewan Party, is a bit puzzling given the unprecedented nature of many of the bill's reforms.
A "landmark" report on precarious work released last week by the Law Commission of Ontario gives academic confirmation to what workers' advocates have been saying for years: that an increasing proportion of workers in Ontario (and Canada, for that matter) find themselves stuck in insecure, temporary or part-time jobs that put them barely above the poverty line. And that regulatory loopholes and shoddy enforcement of employment laws are leaving these workers vulnerable to burnout and abuse.
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