By Ella Bedard, Rabble.ca
This holiday season, members of USW local 9176 are asking beer drinkers to bring home a cold case of solidarity in bottles, not aluminum cans.
The workers at a Crown Holdings canning plant in the north Toronto neighbourhood of Weston went on strike on September 6, 2013 after negotiations reached a stand-still. Those 124 Toronto factory workers have been on the strike for almost 16 months.
With support from the Ontario Federation of Labour, a province-wide day of action, and new youtube and radio ads, the union is amping up publicity just in time for the holidays. As part of the Take Backs No More campaign the USW hopes to remind listeners that while family and friends come together to raise their glasses in cheers, Crown Holdings workers are being served a frosty glass of concessions and little else.