Graham Cox
Graham Cox is a labour union researcher at Unifor focusing on economic, bargaining, and policy in the energy, road, rail, and marine sectors.
Previous to Unifor, Graham was a researcher at the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE). At CUPE his work focused on economic and policy analysis for the anti-privatization, trade, post-secondary education, utilities, employment insurance, special projects, and organizing files.
Before working at CUPE, Graham served the student movement as National Researcher of the Canadian Federation of Students and chairperson of the National Graduate Caucus.
Graham has worked as a union organizer for the PSAC, CUPE, and the CFS with a focus on graduate student teaching assistant, research assistant and contingent academic staff union drives. This included leading drives to organize academic workers at the University of New Brunswick, UPEI, and Memorial University of Newfoundland.
Please also see articles under the author Editors (What’s left).
Unemployment Stats in PEI Shows Potential Devastation of Tory's EI Changes
There has been a massive increase in the unemployment to job vacancy ratio in PEI. A year ago this measure was eight unemployed to every available job. Latest data shows there are a staggering 15.5 job seekers for every available job. The increase is likely related to the recent changes to Employment Insurance (EI) brought in by the federal Tories.
French 75% 'millionaire's tax' gets constitutional go-ahead | Reuters
The French President Francois Hollande has won against the constitutional council's challenge to the 75% tax on individuals. The tax will be levied against individuals (not families) that make over 1 million Euros. It is currently being applied to businesses.
Free trade rules undermine local economic growth: Ontario Liberals remove local content requirements for green energy
Ontario is removing the requirement that new green energy generation capacity has to include local content and labour.
Tories Announce Privatized Social Financing for Skills and Literacy Training
The Conservative government continues its long-term project of replacing government services with those provided by the private sector. Even financial support and oversight of social services such as literacy and essential skills development for those most in need are being privatized.
Income Inequality and Falling Wages for the Working Class
Health Care, Overcharging and the Continued Scourge of Privatization
CUPE Facts: Bill C-525
Universal and Public: A union's role is to fight for expanded public services, not to replace them.
With the neo-liberal program still in full swing after nearly fourty years, some on the political left fall victim to cynicism. Some even start to question labour's ability to win victories or even hold ground. They advocate for unions to take-up services dropped by the state such as unemployment support. Unfortunately, the promotion of this analysis is ahistorical, leads to short-sighted insular politics and undermines the longer-term project for working-class power.
Blaming Students for the Supposed Lack of Skilled Tradespeople Is Nonsense | Citizens' Press
The neo-liberal promise of a future with high demand for knowledge economy workers (that never came) moved many away from skilled-trades and toward university degrees. For the Tories to now blame students for getting BAs instead of going to trades college and becoming a welder shows both a cynical disregard of history and this government's own incompetence when it comes to economic planning. Workers and students must show that the alternative to the Tory economic program is the only way forward that will work for Canada.