news
Weekend Newsstand: July 4, 2015
In the news today: Uber has won an important legal victory in Toronto, and strike actions: a one-day walk-off at Pearson Airport yesterday, and a strike deferred at Loblaws.
A Toronto judge has ruled that Uber and, more specifically, the company’s UberX app, are not operating an illegal taxi service. The city’s request to shut down the company’s business in Toronto has been rejected. UberX allows regular people to use their personal vehicles to drive paying customers, and has been decried by taxi services in many cities as an illicit and unregulated taxi service. Mayor John Tory has said he is in favour of crafting regulations that take such new technologies into account, but there will be stiff opposition from some councillors and from the city’s taxi industry.
After a surprise job action yesterday from Pearson Airport employees responsible for refuelling planes, things are more or less back to normal today. Fewer than half the scheduled employees showed up yesterday in protest of the job losses they say they face when refuelling contracts switch hands later this year. The action, which grounded and delayed flights throughout the day (there are still expected to be some hiccups in service today for Air Canada flights), was not sanctioned by the workers’ union, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.
About 12,000 workers at 60 Loblaws-owned stores across the province have deferred a planned strike by a week in order to vote on an amended offer. The strike will now begin at 12:01 am on July 11 if the vote, which will take place July 5 to 8, is rejected. Nine stores that already went on strike on July 2 will continue pending the results of the vote. At issue are “wages, work schedules, benefits, and limits on third-party providers.”