Open Sources Guelph #439 - August 31, 2023

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we're getting you ready for Labour Day! No, not the holiday weekend widely considered the last break of the summer, we mean the "fight the power" version where you get out on the streets and fight for workers' rights. We've got work on the mind with labour negotiations for Ontario's teachers, and we've got fighting on the mind with the latest from Ukraine. In terms of a labour fight, we've got someone who's a picket line right now.

This Thursday, August 31, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:

Bold School. Kids across Ontario go back to school next week, but... For how long?! Well, that's more of a pressing question for elementary, Catholic school and French-language school students because members of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation reached a deal with the Ministry of Education to enter arbitration, which was kind of a coup for Stephen Lecce, but left the other unions out in the cold. What does labour look like at Ontario's schools this fall?

Cloak and Wagner. Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Russian private army called the Wagner Group, was killed on a flight outside Moscow last week almost two months to the day he gave up his apparent coup attempt on the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin. Why Prigozhin quit when it looked like he had the momentum is still a mystery, and speaking of a lack of momentum, what happened to the Ukrainian counteroffensive that was supposed to be so effective? We'll have an update.

TVOn Strike! They're not the first workers to go on strike this year, they're not even the first group to go on strike in the last month, but the workers of TVO, Ontario's public broadcaster, have been on the picket line for nearly two weeks now. What do they want? A long delayed pay raise and an end to contract labour that's creating instability in the work force would be a good start. This week, we're joined by Canadian Media Guild president Annick Forest about the stakes of the strike for TVO workers and the stakes more broadly for journalists and public broadcasting in Canada.

Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.