Last week a University of Toronto research report confirmed what most working Canadians already know — that the gap between them and the rich is getting bigger by the day. While the report was centered on Toronto, the authors commented that in Vancouver and Montreal and many other Canadian communities the story is the same.

A settlement reached at the Quebec Superior Court upholds www.walmartworkerscanada.ca, the labour rights website dedicated to helping Walmart Associates know and exercise their rights as workers in Canada.

In 2010, UFCW Canada, our community partners and allies continued to fight for dignity and respect for the over 250,000 migrant workers that enter Canada annually.  For instance, in British Columbia, migrant farm workers at Abbotsford’s Sidhu and Sons Nursery (and see) became members of UFCW Canada Local 1518 and successfully negotiated a first collective bargaining agreement with their employer.   What makes this victory so important is that, for the first time in Canadian labour legal history, migrant workers were organized as a separate bargaining unit from domestic workers. Similar successes occurred in Quebec as well.

On December 24, 2009 four migrant workers were killed and another critically injured when the scaffold they were working on collapsed and sent them plunging 13 stories to the base of a Toronto apartment building. In the wake of the investigation of the Christmas Eve tragedy — and in large part because of pressure from UFCW Canada, labour allies and community groups — more than 60 charges in total were filed under Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act against various construction and repair companies.

At 6 a.m. Thursday December 9, the plant employees at Malteurop in Winnipeg walked off the job to start a strike that is expected to last into the New Year.

Over 150 UFCW Canada activists, friends and family members recently gathered in Scarborough, Ontario – a community in Toronto – to celebrate the holiday season and to raise over $3,000 for Leukemia and Sickle Cell research.