http://rankandfile.ca/ December 5, 2013
Author Archives: CanucksBanter
Why the Rich Want You to Hate Your Union
Stephen Elliott-Buckley Thursday, December 5th, 2013
Greed is a powerful thing. It motivates the greedy to convince workers that they should hate any efforts to make their work better and reduce the level of abuse and oppression they suffer.
If you’d like a list of why they want us to hate our unions, click through to enjoy this brilliant cartoon.
And while you enjoy this light, graphic representation, remember that the list isn’t exclusive. We can also add in this idea that non-union workers are trained to hate unionized workers who make more money than them. The goal, apparently, is that if you’re suffering with pay below a living wage, inferior benefits and no pension, those pesky union workers should suffer just like you, not that HEY, MAYBE YOU DESERVE A LIVING WAGE, DECENT BENEFITS AND A PENSION ALSO!
The rich, and their corporate media, are trying to break down our solidarity and make us fight each other while our wages have barely budged since the 1970s when you factor in inflation.
That, my dear friends, is how the rich get richer.
Enjoy the comic! Then figure out how to stand up for yourselves, remembering that millions already have your back!
Shhh! Don’t utter the word "strike"
Dec 5, 2013 by PressProgress
Has the Progressive Conservative government in Alberta outdone the federal Conservatives when it comes to the rights of workers?
New labour laws in Alberta don’t just strip the right of members of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees to arbitration. Going forward, provincial employees also “won’t even be able to talk about a strike or a disruptive labour action that could be seen as leading to a strike.
“If there’s a hint of a work stoppage, just a puff of smoke from a shop floor, the union will have to forfeit $1 million a day, unless it can convince the court it didn’t encourage the strike talk from locals or random militants,” explains Calgary Herald columnist Don Braid.
Braid is talking about what he characterises as an “exceptionally vague ban on ‘an act or threat to act that could reasonably be perceived as preparation for an employees’ right.'”
Don’t be surprised if this provision makes its way to the Supreme Court of Canada, though. “It’s hard to imagine a more blatant violation of free speech,” Baird writes.
Just down from the street from the top court in Ottawa, the Conservatives are poised on Friday to pass a giant omnibus budget implementation bill that also takes a whack at workers’ rights.
The Conservative government stuffed the 322-page bill with amendments to 50 separate laws, most of which have nothing to do with budget implementation.
They include 60 amendments to the Canada Labour Code, including a watered down definition of danger to make it harder for workers to refuse dangerous work, and new rules to appeal the definition.
Twenty-three amendments to the Public Service Labour Relations Act are also in the bill, including deleting the existing definition of “essential” and replace it with one described as anything that the government in its “exclusive right” determines is or will be necessary for the safety or security of the public.
Photo: movetheclouds. Used under a Creative Commons BY 2.0 licence.
Public sector wage bonus tied to B.C. economic growth puzzles experts
Proposed five-year contract has 5.5-per-cent increase guaranteed
By Gordon Hoekstra, Vancouver Sun December 4, 2013
A tentative five-year deal struck by the B.C. Liberal government with some public-sector unions that would tie additional wage increases to improvements in the economy is unusual, say labour experts.
In the private sector, prospective wage or income increases would normally be tied to workers’ efforts.
But there’s little government workers could do to improve the larger provincial economy, noted Ken Thornicroft, a professor of law and labour relations at the University of Victoria.
“The thing that differentiates this thing in my mind from private sector arrangements of the same ilk is that often in the private sector it’s a profit sharing arrangement, whereby the employees have a more direct linkage between the firm’s performance and their own efforts,” observed Thornicroft.
“Whereas here you are talking about the macro economy, and it’s hard for me to see how public sector employees could do much if anything to influence GDP,” he said.
GDP, or gross domestic product, is the value of all goods and services produced in an economy.
Simon Fraser University professor Mark Thompson said essentially the deal provides a productivity bonus, but what is interesting is it depends on the productivity of everybody else.
“It’s not like people can say we are going to process twice as many welfare recipient claims in an hour. It sounds like the kind of thing that a government desperate to hammer out a deal might throw in to soften it,” said Thompson.
So far, three tentative five-year deals cover 51,000 workers in government, social services, environment, community living and aboriginal services. The workers are represented by a number of unions including the B.C. Government and Service Employees’ Union, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the Hospital Employees’ Union, and the Health Sciences Association.
The government has yet to negotiate deals with teachers or nurses.
The three tentative agreements, which would expire in March 2019, includes wage increases amounting to about 5.5 per cent.
The agreement also provide the possibility of increased payments to workers if the province’s real gross domestic product exceeds the forecast by the independent Economic Forecast Council published each year in February. That will be determined using Statistic Canada data that will be compared against the forecast.
If the real GDP growth is one per cent above the forecast, then workers would receive a 0.5 per cent wage increase above the already-negotiated increase. Therefore, a worker earning $50,000 a year would receive an extra $250 if the economy outperformed the forecast by one per cent.
As the B.C. government would expect to increase revenues by at least $200 million a year for a one per cent growth in GDP, it would be able to fund the wage increase.
“There is a dimension to this that is new and novel, and one that I’d be kidding if I didn’t say I’m intensely interested and excited about,” said Finance Minister Mike de Jong. “Under this mechanism, public sector workers will share in the benefits that flow from that additional (economic) growth. We think that’s appropriate.”
A similar deal was struck in Quebec in 2010, although it was tied to nominal GDP growth, which is not adjusted for inflation. The five-year deal provided guaranteed wage increases of seven per cent, which could increase another 3.5 per cent if Quebec’s economy grew faster than government estimates used to achieve a balanced budget.
BCGEU president Darryl Walker said he didn’t necessarily disagree that public sector workers do not have a big impact on the province’s economic growth, but noted there are revenues that are produced in the work they do.
Crown agencies such as B.C. Timber Sales generate revenues for the province, which are indirectly accounted for in GDP.
Walker said the union was aware of the Quebec situation, but didn’t instantly jump at the idea. When they discovered an analysis of the past dozen years showed workers could have received an additional raise of 1.5 per cent, they decided to look at it, noted Walker.
“We thought it was worth agreeing to,” he said, noting they are already guaranteed the 5.5 per cent increase.
Thornicroft believes the unusual deal, ultimately, is a way for the B.C. government to get a longer deal than unions may have been willing to agree to because now workers will benefit if the economy improves more than forecast.
Normally, you’d expect unions to sign a three-year deal, he said.
The B.C. Liberal government under Premier Christy Clark has floated the idea of a 10-year contract with teachers.
Thornicroft believes that unionized workers will vote in favour of the five-year agreement.
Thompson said while not a lot of money is at stake in the portion of the agreement tied to economic growth, workers might be concerned that the unusual deal will set a precedent where future raises are tied to economy’s performance.
In some way, they’ve increased the risk on their paycheque, he said.
With file from Canadian Pressghoekstra@vancouversun.com
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
Georgetti: The Tories Attack on the Middle Class Should Worry You
Ken Georgetti President, Canadian Labour Congress
12/04/2013 http://www.huffingtonpost.ca
The Conservative government is engaged in a campaign to distract their supporters from a series of Senate scandals and cover ups. The Conservative fundraising machine believes that if it feeds its base a constant diet of someone to dislike, the donation cheques will keep rolling in. Workers and their unions are their current targets with a long list of legislation designed to keep their base happy.
The Conservative government’s recent volleys against workers and their unions will only serve to undercut the well-being and security of middle-class families in Canada if they succeed in pushing through their anti-union legislation. The Globe and Mail said as much in a recent series of articles on growing inequality in Canada — “declining unionization has contributed to wage inequality.”
Canada’s labour movement is not just about decent jobs, it’s about a better life for everyone. Unions have worked to protect good jobs, make workplaces safer, fought for paid vacation time, public health insurance and the Canada Pension Plan. When union members stand up for fairness everyone benefits — whether you belong to a union or not.
Canadians will see through the government’s attempts to divide people against one another. At one end of the legislative spectrum, the government uses giant omnibus bills to throw everything but the kitchen sink into one piece of legislation. The current budget bill runs to 308 pages and in the fine print it makes sudden and dramatic changes to the Canada Labour Code. One of those changes would place workers’ lives at risk by eroding their right to refuse dangerous work.
Other amendments to federal labour laws would erode workers’ constitutional right to bargain collectively by letting the government unilaterally, without negotiation, change the rules for bargaining with their employees. To add insult to injury, witnesses to the parliamentary committee studying the bill who would speak out against the changes were deliberately scheduled to testify after the deadline for the committee to make amendments passed.
What is the government really trying to fix here? We know that well over 99 per cent of all collectively bargained contracts in Canada result in an agreement rather than a strike or lockout. There was no consultation with any of the parties affected by this proposed legislation, and changing the rules without consultation and negotiation is simply heavy-handed and unfair. Given the Supreme Court of Canada will soon rule on very similar legislation introduced by the Saskatchewan government, the ideological cousins of this government, it’s also premature.
At the other end of the legislative spectrum, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) is offending parliamentary tradition by using its influence to introduce Private Member’s Bills and to force their passage. That is what happened with Bill C-377, an unconstitutional piece of legislation that will force labour organizations (but no one else) to undertake costly and time consuming reporting of even the most minute of financial transactions.
Bill C-377 was supposedly the initiative of backbench Conservative MP Russ Hiebert but we know that special interest groups met frequently with the PMO, including the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff Nigel Wright, and the PMO exerted pressure in order for the bill to pass.
The senate found Bill C-377 to be so offensive that it was sent back to the House of Commons in June with numerous amendments. But then the Prime Minister shut down Parliament and Bill C-377 is now going to be sent to the senate all over again. Bill C-377 is ideologically-motivated and aimed at wasting union members’ money and it is not needed. Our members already have access to financial information about the unions to which they belong.
Bill C-525, another Private Member’s Bill put forward by a Conservative MP, would make it nearly impossible for workers in the federally-regulated sector to join a union. The bill would consider workers who don’t bother to vote in a certification vote as casting “no” ballots on having a union. That’s not democratic — giving those who don’t vote control over those who do. If those rules applied to electing MPs, Parliament would be empty. One set of rules for Conservatives and a different set for workers — that’s unfair.
Finally, the recent Conservative Party convention in Calgary passed a number of aggressively anti-worker resolutions. One of them would allow some workers to stop paying union dues but still receive all the benefits that the union negotiates – all at the expense of their coworkers who do pay their dues. Leave it to ethically-challenged Conservatives, counselling people that it’s okay to dine and dash at a restaurant while leaving others at your table to pay the bill. That’s unfair and it’s a recipe for conflict and disruption in the workplace.
This government puts its extreme ideology ahead of all other considerations, but Canadians see these bullying tactics for what they are. The CLC and its affiliates ran a television advertising campaign during October and November 2013. We talked directly to Canadians about the positive role that the labour movement plays in our society. The response to our campaign has been overwhelmingly positive from both union members and the public at large. That response and our polling shows that we are on the side of the vast majority of Canadians. They will support a labour movement that works in the interest of fairness for everyone.
Ken Georgetti is president of the 3.3 million member Canadian Labour Congress.
Andrew Phillip Chernoff 