Jobs, jobs, jobs ... or lack thereof

Employment is becoming more and more precarious. It's getting harder and harder to find what we used to call a "permanent" job, with a good salary, with benefits and with no specified end date.

Unifor, Canada's largest private sector union held an event to address this issue earlier in October. There was a wide range of speakers, and today we're devoting the show to some of the ideas that were presented. The Good Jobs Summit was cosponsored by Unifor, Canada's largest private sector union, The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Ryerson University's Sam Gindin Chair in Social Justice, and the Canadian Federation of Students.

2:26 Jessica McCormick, National Chair of the Canadian Federation of Students.

How to counter the trend towards part-time precarious employment is a subject which all the unions struggle with.

10:48 Hassan Yussuff, President of the Canadian Labour Congress.

You can hear more of the presentations by going to rabble's soundcloud page at www.soundcloud.com/rabbleca.

Unifor, one of the sponsors of the Good Jobs Summit, is a new union. Sort of, anyway. Unifor was created through the merger of two unions — the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union, and the Canadian Auto Workers Union.

One of our podcasts, Twelve Canadians, by Dave Kattenburg of the Green Planet Monitor, is a portrait of Ken Lewenza. Ken is from Windsor, from Local 444 at the Chrysler plant. He has held almost every union position there is … from Shop Steward in the plant all the way up to President of the Canadian Auto Workers.

21:31 Stephen Dale prepared this profile of Ken Lewenza for the Green Planet Monitor.