From The Maple
How did labour fare in 2025?
In many respects, last year was a mixed bag for workers and unions in Canada. Though union wage gains were relatively healthy, the overall economy continued to cool with unemployment creeping up and many workers still feeling the cost-of-living crunch.
Sources: Pinduoduo and Temu owner PDD fires dozens following a fistfight between employees and Chinese officials probing fraudulent deliveries on its platform (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-17/pd…
'They don't consider their work heroic' — 4 energy workers die amid Kyiv repairs following Russian attacks: https://benborges.xyz/2026/01/29/they-dont-consider-their-work.html
Anger at the regime continues to spread,
even beyond the borders of the United States.
Millions of workers worldwide are following the fortunes of their brothers and sisters in the US
with intense sympathy for their struggle.
In Germany in particular, Trump’s actions vividly bring to mind Hitler, the Second World War and the Holocaust.
More and more people are becoming aware that a third world war can only be stopped if we succeed not only in overthrowing the…
Opinion | The Health Care Debate We Really Need - The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/10/opinion/health-care-aca-cost-insurance.html ""...decades’ worth of research shows that, even though employers pay most of workers’ premiums, t…
And speaking of @… , send an email to their president robin.sparkman@propublica.org with text similar to the following:
Dear Robin Sparkman,
I am writing to you in solidarity with the ProPublica Guild. It is past time that you agree to a fair contract, complete with the protections these workers need to continue producing award-winning journalism…
After years of failing to produce a profitable augmented reality platform,
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta is pounding one of the final nails into the coffin of its metaverse efforts
— the ones that were once so central to its vision that it renamed the entire company after them.
This week, the Wall Street Journalreported Meta was laying off some 1,500 employees from its Reality Labs division,
-- the department working on Meta’s virtual reality products.
As part of the …
Federal data belatedly released Tuesday shows that the
US unemployment rate
rose to the highest level in four years last month
as Donald Trump’s administration continues its assault on the government’s workforce
and American corporations lay off workers at a level not seen in decades.
The unemployment rate rose to 4.6% in November,
up from 4.4% in September,
according to the Labor Department report, whose release was delayed due to the recent governme…