Briarpatch Articles

Fed up with poor working and living conditions, migrant workers are organizing. The Yukon’s labour movement needs to step up and support them.

Workers are fed up with measly wages that don’t pay the rent while their bosses’ profit margins soar.

Behind the newest AI technologies are hundreds of Canadians labouring for a fraction of minimum wage.

Without a public home-care system, disabled people are forced to choose between living in a long-term care home, medical assistance in dying, and hiring an underpaid migrant home-care worker.

As Big Tech unleashes new technologies increasing worker surveillance and eroding working conditions, workers can learn from the Luddites’ example.

Not only do labour-focused publications RankandFile.ca and Labor Notes report on workers’ struggles – they help workers build a stronger labour movement. Here are a few articles for workers looking to organize more strategically.

Food service workers struggle under weak protections from extreme weather. B.C. labour advocates are fighting to change that.

Of the hundreds of unionized Starbucks locations in Canada and the U.S., only two have negotiated a collective agreement. Baristas fight against the coffee giant is just beginning.

The Allium was a community hub with a vision for a more equitable service industry. Now closed, its success offers lessons for future worker-owned co-ops.

As bosses and Big Tech push us to make every second productive, this issue’s articles show that we can take control of working conditions, from status for all, to a just transition, to Big Tech’s reach, if we’re willing to make those demands – and to act for them.

An interview with the judges of Briarpatch’s 13th annual Writing in the Margins contest: Helen Knott, Juliane Okot Bitek, and Kevin Settee.

As thousands of workers push to unionize, their bosses are hiring union-busting companies to cling to power. Here’s how you can out-organize your boss.

On medical assistance in dying

Our new print design, Meta’s tax tantrum, and more.

On the tail end of the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, these articles, books, and podcasts demonstrate Palestinians’ strong spirit of refusal.  

Anti-sex work feminists endanger the lives of sex workers and prop up the far right. To fight fascism, the left must adopt a sex worker feminist politic.

Tithi Bhattacharya, Nora Loreto, and Naomi Klein on the impact of COVID-19 neoliberalism and working through pandemic-era isolation to build a better world.

It’s not a coincidence that so many prisoners are disabled – the system was designed that way.

Governments are selling off the health-care system to the private sector, compromising patient care and nurses’ working conditions. If nurses organize, we can stop the sell-off.

To stifle Indigenous organizing, the Canadian government is investing in Indigenous police officers.