August 14, 2013     http://operationmaple.ca

Driving down wages is like a lobby for Big Business and its’ propagandists. Just look at the anger and vitriol produced by Fast Food workers walking off the job, or campaigns to raise minimum wage levels. It’s as if the 1% or the people who shill for the 1% have never met a wage that they didn’t think could be lower.

We have all heard the argument that outsourcing work to low wage countries lowers wages at home ( read more here ) and it’s true. But that’s not the only way the Canadian Establishment has of driving down wages.

There’s bringing in temporary foreign workers ( view our video ‘the Canadian Slave Trade’ here), there’s creating the climate for drastically cutting back Employment Insurance ( read more here ) under the guise of taking “politics out of policy”.

But the really crass way that the rich have of driving down wages is by subtly and not so subtly feeding people’s envy and greed…making us worry that someone else might be getting ahead, might be doing better than us. We aren’t talking about getting us riled over the wages of bankers, brokers and sports stars; we profile them in the fashion and shopping pages of the papers.

The Rich and their Media Mavens saved the corrosive power of envy and greed for school teachers, fireman, bus drivers…all the folks that live next door and shop at the same stores we do. Let’s get agitated and angry with Joe down the street and Alice around the corner for having a job with a union, a negotiated wage and benefits and let’s try and pull them down to our situation…part time work and no benefits and lousy pay. Because when their economic situation is as desperate as ours, then everything will be ok.

TODAY’S STUNNING EXAMPLE OF job character assassination and greed inducing vitriol comes courtesy of Margaret Wente at the Globe and Mail. Her target: Firefighters. They get paid too much and work too little and couldn’t we all get by with a volunteer firefighting force? Just because they are the ones who run into burning buildings when the rest of us are running from burning buildings, in Wente’s view, doesn’t justify the wage they get.

Check it out here …it is a classic drive by smear campaign based on the idea that 100,000 a year is too much. And if her cheap take-down doesn’t depress you sufficiently, check out the comments…check out the piling on of insults, cheap shots and anger directed at a group of people who save our houses, rush to car accidents and medical emergencies.

It used to be the case that when people got decent wages and benefits through collective action we’d all cheer them on and try to copy their efforts, create our own unions and seek our own collective success. Not anymore. Now we just want to tear down those folks lucky enough to have a union. The drive to lower wages by making all of us envious of our neighbours is succeeding. That’s why the 1% and their media allies, their media employees go after Employment Insurance and Firefighter wages…because it works and it distracts us from the folks that are truly criminally over-paid: bankers and brokers.