North America's long winter of discontent

In the wake of a blizzard of economic hardship across North America, native land of the financial crash of 2008 and ensuing Great Recession, the shapes of other possible worlds are emerging from the drifts. Some are frozen and dystopian, but others may harbour green shoots of hope. An unapologetic financial oligopoly led by investment bank Goldman Sachs, revived from a coma by an torrential transfusion of government cash, has emerged from the intensive care unit even more concentrated and voracious. Yet other potential scenarios seethe with popular and intellectual ferment challenging the free-market fundamentalism that has gripped the levers of political and economic power for most of the past 30 years. Amidst the rubble left by the implosion of the financial system, working people and labour organisations across North America have suffered massive collateral damage. Major unions in the U.S. and Mexico have been seriously weakened, but here and there cross-border labour solidarity has blossomed. "Workers are paying the price for the mistakes of Wall Street," said Ana Avendaño, director of the Immigrant Worker Programme of the AFL-CIO, the biggest U.S. labour confederation.