climate change activist and science communicator; photographer; mapmaker — advocate for a stable global climate, reduced nuclear weapon risks, and safe human-AI interaction
Matters of money
Today’s 1pm – 5pm picket shift was good fun. We occupied the Munk Centre, where President Gertler was meant to be taking part in an event:
Then we marched all over campus: to the administration offices at Simcoe Hall, over to Queen’s Park, through University College, around Robarts, and back to Munk:
The university has not yet accepted the union’s offer to resume negotiations.
Twitter is probably one of the best places to watch the strike. Search CUPE3902 and #WeAreUofT.
I am at Convocation Hall for a meeting of the members of CUPE3902 Unit 1 – the union for teaching assistants at the University of Toronto.
We are discussing a tentative agreement which the bargaining team reached with the administration late last night.
To me, the proposed deal looks deeply inadequate. They are proposing wage increases of 1%, 1%, 1.25%, and 1.25% over the next four years.
For starters, the Bank of Canada calculator shows that the real value of the funding package has fallen by 9.89% since it was set in 2008. In addition, the proposed wage increases don’t even keep up with inflation for the years in which they happen.
We will see what happens in this meeting, but I hope my fellow union members won’t accept something so inadequate. The objective here is to get beyond poverty wages for TAs – not to reduce them further.
Today Toronto350.org was at the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) to call attention to the need to shift investment away from fossil fuels. We can’t build a prosperous future with fuels that wreck the climate, and the billions we are putting into fossil fuel development now will prove wasted in the long term.
My photos from the event are on Flickr.
Graham Henry, one of the organizers of the fossil fuel divestment campaign, has an op-ed in the Toronto Star today: Universities should get out of the fossil fuel business
At UBC, faculty have spent the last week voting on whether or not to endorse fossil fuel divestment.
We should get the result today. A strong positive turn-out would be a help for the campaign at U of T.
The creation of Canada was only possible through the negotiation of treaties between the Crown and indigenous nations. While the wording of the treaties varies from the peace and friendship treaties in the east to the numbered treaties in the west, most are based on the core treaty promise that we would all live together peacefully and share the wealth of the land. The problem is that only one treaty partner has seen any prosperity.
The failure of Canada to share the lands and resources as promised in the treaties has placed First Nations at the bottom of all socio-economic indicators – health, lifespan, education levels and employment opportunities. While indigenous lands and resources are used to subsidize the wealth and prosperity of Canada as a state and the high-quality programs and services enjoyed by Canadians, First Nations have been subjected to purposeful, chronic underfunding of all their basic human services like water, sanitation, housing, and education. This has led to the many First Nations being subjected to multiple, overlapping crises like the housing crisis in Attawapiskat, the water crisis in Kashechewan, and the suicide crisis in Pikangikum.
Palmater, Pamela. “Why are we Idle No More?” in The Kino-nda-niimi Collective. The Winter We Danced: Voices from the Past, the Future, and the Idle No More Movement. Arbeiter Ring Publishing; Winnipeg. 2014. p. 37-8 (paperback)
To sum up, petroleum rents might well enable the oil states to buy the rest of the planet (or much of it) and to live on the rents of their accumulated capital.
Piketty, Thomas. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. (Translated by Arthur Goldhammer) 2014. p. 462 (hardcover)
The first industrial revolution, centered in Flanders, happened almost entirely because of the arrival from the Arab world of a new, horizontal loom, equipped with foot pedals to lift the warps. This innovation left the weaver’s hands free to throw the shuttle back and forth, which made weaving much faster and more profitable and, above all, made possible the production of long pieces of cloth. Because of their centuries of experience in working wool, the Flemish were the best weavers in thirteenth-century Europe. Flemish cloth was sold everywhere in the known world, and its manufacturers went from the East Indies to the Baltic to obtain their dyes, and to the mines of the Middle East for the alum which was used to fix the dye so as to make their colors fast.
Burke, James. The Pinball Effect: How Renaissance Water Gardens Made the Carburetor Possible. 1996. p.80 (paperback)