Living in an age of economic, environmental and technological insecurity, and faced with the enormous power of tech billionaires, giant corporations, and unpredictable governments, people need to come together now more than ever. This in spite of the social isolation and political polarization so common to our time. We can overcome this with the power of the Many.
Politics and economics have been the key ways I have discovered and understood the world. It was my union that changed my life for the better. We campaigned against the privatization of Air Canada and the deregulation of the transportation industry. We fought contract concessions.
We were at the forefront of the anti-free trade battles in the 1980s and ’90s, educating and mobilizing the membership with an unparalleled intensity. After a narrow loss for the anti-free trade movement in that 1988 federal election, Canada firmly embarked on the neoliberal project.
Sadly, our predictions were true. Hundreds of thousands of workers lost jobs as businesses chased the cheapest labour, regulations were undermined, the tax base was eroded and public services pinched, with the iron dominance of global capitalist logic. And tragically, these same issues continue to plague us decades later.
