The Toronto Airport Workers’ Council: Renewing Workplace Organizing and Socialist Labor Education

Abstract

Among the 40,000 workers in Canada’s largest workplace, Lester B. Pearson International Airport in Toronto, a small but significant group of worker-organizers has created the Toronto Airport Workers’ Council (TAWC), a nonunion organization open to all Pearson workers. In this paper, we discuss the capitalist context of Canadian labor relations and the neoliberal restructuring that has attacked working conditions and workers’ solidarity across the airline industry. Then, after examining the insufficient responses by the twelve Pearson unions, we explain how workers formed the TAWC, whose participatory structures, direct action strategy, and broader class focus have achieved considerable successes, despite tensions with union leaders wary of potential “dual unionism.” We also discuss how the TAWC provides a space for socialist-led workplace organizing training and political education by the Toronto Labour Committee. Finally, we explore the possible roles of this council model in labor movement renewal and labor education in socialist movement renewal.

Online Labor Education Optimization Method Based on Computer Intelligent Algorithm

“…The scholar Schuhrke studied a labor education project in Latin America and used it to study the influence of labor education on labor relations [ 5 ]. House and Gray discussed the labor education under Canadian labor relations and upgraded labor education to the level of social practice [ 6 ]. In his research, Morin pointed out that the elements of labor education should be integrated into the content of all subject areas, and the guidelines of labor education have been raised to a very important position [ 7 ].…”

The Impact of Wireless Network Mobile Devices on College Students’ Labour Concept Education in Artificial Intelligence Environment

“…Many scholars have conducted research on the content of labour concept education. House et al (2019) discussed how the Toronto Labour Council can provide a space for socialist-led workplace organisational training and political education; and finally, the possible role of the labour concept education of the committee model in the revival of the socialist movement was discussed [ 6 ]. Chen and Xie (2020) used labour concept, labour skills, and labour consciousness as independent variables and labour habits as dependent variables for analysis and established a regression model to predict the labour habits of college students.…”