Category Archives: Canadian Austerity

Signs Harper Is Gearing Up to Declare War on Unions

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Tory tweets, convention chatter and looming legislation hint at what may be coming, say labour advocates.

By Tom Sandborn, Today, TheTyee.ca

“Just wrapped up a meeting with several staff members, at midnight. Good thing they’re not unionized!”

Federal Conservative Employment Minister Jason Kenney’s tweet was the object of some derision on social media in the early hours of Nov. 19. Although quickly deleted, the tweet’s sentiment hit a deep nerve for some trade unionists across the country — particularly those already worried about what the federal Conservatives have in mind for labour legislation in Canada.

A set of non-binding resolutions was adopted earlier this month at the federal Conservative party convention in Calgary. The resolutions include a call on government to reduce wage and benefit levels for civil servants. The resolutions also call for stripping unions of the right to use member dues to support social policy campaigns and other expenditures not part of a set of narrowly-defined workplace issues.

The resolutions, in addition to clauses in Bill C-4, the omnibus budget bill currently before Parliament, aren’t merely expressions of Conservative anti-labour sentiment; according to trade unionists and labour advocates, they signal a growing war on Canadian workers.

For one, trade unionists argue because Tony Clement, Conservative cabinet heavyweight and president of the Treasury Board, supported a resolution at the convention that calls for public-sector wage and benefit roll-backs, it suggests that the Harper majority government may be inclined to implement them.

“We’re not here to buy labour peace through caving in to every single public-sector union boss’s demands,” Clement told The Globe and Mail at the Calgary convention. “We’re not here to do that. We’re here to represent the taxpayer.”

Bob Jackson, vice president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, describes Conservative actions on labour as “an all-out declaration of war on unions, coming from the highest levels of the party.” Jackson traveled to Calgary to participate in a union-sponsored demonstration outside the Calgary Stampede Grounds where the convention took place.

“We have never encountered this level of animosity and ill will from the government before,” Jackson said in an interview. “They want to get rid of us and to strip away things we have maintained for decades.”

Fears over labour gain roll backs

Hassan Yussuff, secretary treasurer of the Canadian Labour Congress, shares Jackson’s concerns about a turn to more anti-labour confrontations by the government. Yussuff said he thinks Minister Clement is “fixated” on rolling back gains that organized labour has won over the past half century.

Yussuff expressed particular concern about provisions in Bill C-4, the latest signature government omnibus budget bill, that would strip away rights from public-sector workers to refuse unsafe work. He also raised concerns about Bill C-4’s reduction of independent federal work-site safety inspections.

As well, Yussuff highlighted language in the bill that would allow the government to unilaterally define workers as “essential” during a labour dispute, a definition that has previously been negotiated between the employer and public-sector workers.

This power could conceivably allow government to define workers in a particular job setting as essential, rendering strike action impossible.

Simon Fraser University professor Marjorie Griffin-Cohen is also concerned about the Conservatives’ get tough approach to labour, as evidenced both in the Calgary resolutions and the provisions of Bill C-4. In particular, she said the right of unions to use member dues in social policy campaigns is important.

“If trade unions were not active in encouraging governments to deal in fair ways with labour issues, they would be derelict in their support of labour,” Griffin-Cohen told The Tyee via email.

“Corporate spokespeople, of course, are really objecting to labour uniting on political issues — they would much rather every individual work organization deal with their mighty power all by themselves,” she added.

Resolutions ‘not an attack on labour’: CPC activist

If the Harper government is declaring war on organized labour in Canada, John Mortimer has no apparent objections.

Mortimer, president of the Labour Watch Association and a board member of the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation, is a prominent spokesperson for Canadian conservatism who ran for Parliament in 2000 for the Canadian Alliance.

“Unionization doesn’t belong in the public sector,” Mortimer said, adding that he does not endorse any specific party because of his role in the taxpayers’ federation.

Mortimer said that Canada is the only country in the world in which unions can collect compulsory dues and spend part of what is collected to campaign on broad social issues like poverty, minimum wage levels and environmental protection.

“Look at what the Canadian Autoworkers did not so long ago. They used auto workers’ dues to bring Saint [David] Suzuki to a meeting to tell the members their industry was ‘disgusting’,” he said. “I have no issue if a union wants to donate to a party or to promote a cause, but they shouldn’t be able to use mandatory dues collected from all of their members to make those donations.”

Vancouver lawyer and Conservative Party activist Scott Lamb, a member of the party’s national council, said there was broad party support at the Calgary convention for the labour-related resolutions. He disagrees with critics who characterize them as a “war.”

“That’s not fair. We are a grassroots party,” he said in an interview. “Those resolutions came from all across the country. They were not an attack on labour.”

The business-friendly Fraser Institute recently weighed in on public sector wages in an April report that suggested public-sector workers have, on average, a 12 per cent better wage level than comparable workers in the private sector, with most of the difference due to the higher level of unionization in the public sector.

The tone of the Institute’s report suggests that it would be better for public employees to have their wages reduced than for private sector workers to earn more in order to address this disparity.

‘Social unionism’ under threat?

Since 1946, after an influential arbitration ruling by Justice Ivan Rand in an auto industry dispute, Canadian labour law has permitted unions to collect dues from all workers in a bargaining unit, whether they choose to join the union or not.

This led to government and the courts allowing unions to use dues not only for narrow job site issues, but also for campaigns, such as the BC Federation of Labour’s long-standing push to increase the minimum wage in British Columbia.

In the early 1990s, for example, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in Lavigne v. Ontario Public Service Employees Union that “the state objectives in compelling the payment of union dues which can be used to assist causes unrelated to collective bargaining are to enable unions to participate in the broader political, economic and social debates in society, and to contribute to democracy in the workplace.

“These objectives are rationally connected to the means chosen to advance them, that is the requirement that all members of a unionized workplace contribute to union coffers without any guarantee as to how their contributions will be used,” the judgment continues. “An opting-out formula could seriously undermine the unions’ financial base and the spirit of solidarity so important to the emotional and symbolic underpinnings of unionism.”

Unionization in the Canadian private sector is down from 30 per cent in 1997, to 18 per cent last year in both Canada and B.C. Public-sector unionization is just over 70 per cent, even after a 4.7 percent reduction in that sector over the same period — a reduction created mainly by the contracting out of public services to for-profit providers whose workers are often not unionized.

If the recent Tory convention resolutions ever make it into Canadian law, trade unionists worry the kind of “social unionism” described in the Lavigne case will become illegal, and union membership could continue to shrink across the country. [Tyee]

Growth of inequality in Canada cannot be denied

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Statistics Canada’s National Household Survey confirms the gap between rich and poor in Canada has become enormous.

 

By: Jordan Brennan Jim Stanford Published on Thu Sep 26 2013

In a famous 2011 article in Vanity Fair, Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, first warned that our economic policies were increasingly dominated by the richest 1 per cent. Then the Occupy Wall Street movement electrified the concept with political urgency.

Now Statistics Canada has turned its attention to the problem, too. The agency’s National Household Survey has documented the stark differences in personal income between the richest 1 per cent and the rest of us. The data are less precise than would have been attained from the former long-form census (which was cancelled by the data-phobic Conservative government). But despite its flaws, the report confirms that the gap between rich and poor in Canada has become enormous.

Incomes for the bottom 90 per cent of Canadians averaged just $28,000, according to the report. In contrast, the top 10 per cent took home an average of $135,000. And the top 1 per cent pocketed $381,000.

Despite data like these, some still argue that income inequality in Canada isn’t an issue because it isn’t increasing. Others admit that the level of inequality is high, but we should graciously accept it because it encourages people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Neither argument carries much weight.

The accompanying figure starkly describes the historical trend. The thick gray line indicates the share of national income going to the richest 0.1 per cent of the population (the richest of the rich, if you like). The thin red line shows the Gini coefficient: a broader measure of income inequality, which ranges from a low of zero (perfect equality) to a high of one (total inequality).

By either measure, income inequality has reached a historic extreme. Inequality was high during the 1920s and 1930s (the “gilded age”), but fell sharply during the Second World War (as Canadians got back to work and taxes were raised to pay for the war effort). The three decades after the Second World War — a “golden age” of controlled capitalism — saw further decline in inequality. The economy was booming and powerful institutions (like progressive taxation and surging unionization) ensured the wealth was broadly shared.

Since 1980, however, we’ve entered another “gilded age.” Business-friendly economic and social policies replaced the former Keynesian welfare regime. In recent years, inequality has reached levels higher than at any time since the 1930s. And it is clearly staying that way, regardless of small year-to-year fluctuations.

Does income inequality matter? There’s a growing consensus among scientists from many disciplines that it does: in complex, surprising and economically important ways. Numerous studies document a powerful relationship between income inequality and varied dimensions of social pathology.

Indicators as diverse as happiness, mental illness, infant mortality, children’s educational performance, teenage pregnancy, homicide, imprisonment, social trust and social mobility all get worse as the income gaps within society deepen.

The reigning economic orthodoxy assumes the distribution of income reflects “market forces” and “productivity,” but history confirms distribution is actually shaped by the power institutions of society. In Canada, three core institutions have been especially important: corporate power redistributes income upward, while labour unions and governments redistribute income downward.

Previous research by one of us revealed the historical relationship between corporate power and the distribution of personal income. It turns out that relative size of the largest firms in Canada strongly affects the distribution of personal income: the inexorable corporate concentration in recent decades has clearly produced greater inequality.

This study, “A Shrinking Universe,” also documented the downward redistribution of income resulting from organized labour. Union density grew steadily from 16 per cent in 1940 to 37 per cent by 1975, but has declined steadily since then. As union density increased, income inequality decreased — and vice versa during the new gilded age.

Governments are also downwardly redistributive. The most obvious effect is through the tax and transfer system (although the progressivity of Canada’s tax system has diminished). Government spending also redistributes income downward. This is partly because public sector pay scales are more compressed than the private sector — with a higher floor and a lower ceiling. As public sector activities form a larger proportion of GDP, inequality moderates. The retrenchment of the Canadian public sector since 1992 has thus contributed to upward redistribution.

All of this suggests some obvious conclusions regarding how to reduce inequality: strengthen the voice of organized labour and amplify the redistributive aspects of the Canadian state. Our own history proves there is nothing “natural” or “inevitable” about the level and trend of inequality. The present lopsided balance of institutional power in our economy and society (with big business increasingly calling the shots) and the resulting skewed distribution of income reflect past political and economic decisions. We need not replicate those decisions in the future.

Jordan Brennan and Jim Stanford are economists with Unifor, the new union founded on Labour Day weekend through the merger of the CAW and the CEP.

Examining Harper’s record and spotting a fake economic recovery

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Duncan Cameron

By Duncan Cameron    August 20, 2013   http://rabble.ca

Photo: Liam Richards/University of Saskatchewan/flickr

A new report from Citizens for Public Justice (CPJ) on job creation in Canada arrived just as the Prime Minister said Monday he intends the next election to be about jobs and the economy. As part of a study of poverty, CPJ has published a set of fact sheets on job creation in Canada since the 2008 recession. It looks at regional and generational differences, assesses job quality and measures newly created jobs against new job seekers.

Anyone who believes what Conservative cabinet ministers have been repeating about job creation in Canada should read the CPJ fact sheets.

Carol Goar of the Toronto Star identified the CPJ report as explaining why many Canadians are still experiencing the recession. The Canadian employment rate is down: the number of jobs created (950,000) has not increased as fast as the population (1.8 million). Unemployment is stuck at 1.4 million. When talking about the unemployed, the government does not include discouraged workers, people with part-time jobs looking for full-time work, temporary jobs, or the under-employed. Add them to the total, and the real unemployment rate is one out of ten out of work.

CPJ explain about 500,000 jobs are needed to get Canada back to where it was before the recession. Stronger job growth where resource prices are strong (Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba) and in construction mask weaker job growth in services and manufacturing.

Employment trends are weakest for Aboriginal Canadians. Young Canadians suffer disproportionately from unemployment — about one in five is without work.

Sadly, paid work increasingly means precarious jobs: part-time, low-wage and unstable. Older workers are relying more and more on temporary work.

Policy analysts divide over what to do about a lackluster economy. Some want to leave the market alone, most think governments need to lead in order for it to recover.

Conservatives believe the marketplace works fine, and any problems can be fixed by allowing prices to adjust. Unemployment is explained by the failure of rates of pay to fall, because of minimum wages, unions, employment insurance, welfare and other market imperfections, which need to be eliminated or reduced.

The problem with this view is that rates of pay are falling — policies to reduce wages have been successful, increasing inequality as Stephen Gordon has shown in Maclean’s. For the Harper government, business-funded think-tanks, and other supporters of the market view, this just means wages have not fallen enough. More of the same is just what is needed.

Those unwilling to wait for the economy to correct itself will want to know how it can be improved.

In Canada the standard strategy for an underperforming economy is a currency devaluation, accompanied by fiscal tightening. Exports incomes increase, import increases are cut off, and the private sector leads the recovery.

Floating the Canadian dollar down used to only require lowering Canadian interest rates below U.S. rates. Unfortunately, the U.S. beat Canada to the interest rate bottom, with a “zero bound” rate, introduced to revive American capitalism.

Historically low rates do prevail at the Bank of Canada. This is supposed to encourage recovery, though without bringing a currency devaluation, it is hard to see how it is going to happen.

Former Bank of Canada Deputy Governor William White called low interest rates having one foot on the accelerator. With the Harper government curbing spending, White observed, Canada has the other foot on the brake.

This contradictory policy needs to be fixed. The obvious choice is for the government to take the foot off the brake and spend borrowed money for needed public investments in urban transit, retrofitting buildings to reduce energy use, recreation, culture, the arts, advanced education, child care, and straight job creation.

The Harper government is ideologically opposed to government spending, but expect it to consider taking its foot off the brake by lowering taxes. Another reduction in the GST would inject new money into the economy, for instance. And it would also be an excuse to reduce direct spending (and reduce wages) further down the road.

The Official Opposition have their work cut out for them just to expose the poor Canadian economic record, let alone engage Conservatives in a rational debate based on economic evidence.

Stephen Harper does not expect Canadians to discover that job performance has been poor and that the economy is not improving, while the standard of living for most Canadians is declining. He has announced plans to prorogue Parliament, cutting the fall session short. This will limit the time for parliamentary debate and the subjects raised by the opposition.

If the economy is going to be the ballot question in the next election, as Stephen Harper suggests, Citizens for Public Justice have afforded parliamentarians and all Canadians with what is needed to examine his government’s record.

Duncan Cameron is the president of rabble.ca and writes a weekly column on politics and current affairs.

Photo: Liam Richards/University of Saskatchewan/flickr

Most Canadians doubt health care system prepared to handle ‘tsunami’ of aging boomers, new poll shows

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From:     Sharon Kirkey, Postmedia News  13/08/19

Three in five Canadians surveyed said they will have to rely on the public system for home care and long-term care if they need it later in life.

Canadian Physiotherapy Association/CNW GroupThree in five Canadians surveyed said they will have to rely on the public system for home care and long-term care if they need it later in life.

Canadians have little faith the country’s health system is prepared to handle the needs of a looming “tsunami” of aging boomers, a new poll has found.

Six in 10 Canadians surveyed said they lack confidence in the health system’s ability to care for Canada’s rapidly greying population.

Women, as well as Canadians aged 34 to 54, and those already caring for an elderly person, are among those least confident that hospitals and long-term care facilities can handle the demands of a population that is living longer than at any other time in the nation’s history, according to the Canadian Medical Association’s annual report card on health.

Only in Quebec does a majority (54 per cent) believe that hospitals and long-term care facilities in their area are sufficient to meet the needs of the elderly, according to the survey.

The anxiety Canadians have about health care in their so-called golden years is both real and well-founded

The Ipsos Reid poll of 1,000 Canadians was released to coincide with Monday’s opening of the CMA’s annual meeting in Calgary, where main items on the agenda include a special session devoted entirely to end-of-life care issues.

“The anxiety Canadians have about health care in their so-called golden years is both real and well-founded,” outgoing CMA president Dr. Anna Reid said in a statement released with the poll.

All levels of government, including the federal government, “need to act to address the demographic tsunami that is heading toward the health care system,” she said.

A vast majority of Canadians — 93 per cent — support a national, seniors’ health strategy for home care and long-term care, the poll found, with support highest in Alberta and Ontario, as well as among women and Canadians nearing retirement age (55 to 65).

Three in five Canadians surveyed said they will have to rely on the public system for home care and long-term care if they need it later in life.

Half are “very” concerned about maintaining their health in their retirement years; seven in 10 are worried about their financial future, the poll found.

Those already caring for an older adult are among those most worried about there not being enough services should they ever need home or long-term care in their own old age.

Reid, who has been caring for her own elderly father, who suffers from dementia, said more resources are needed for nursing care, home-based care and palliative care, particularly in smaller communities. “We know how to do good palliative care, it’s just not being practised across the board,” she said in an interview.

We could be saving the system an enormous amount of money by providing far more support in the home environment

It costs nearly $1,000 a day to keep a senior in a hospital bed, and $126 a day for a bed in a long-term care facility, said Dr. Louis Hugo Francescutti, incoming president of the doctors’ group.

“To keep them in home with supportive home care and assisted living costs about $35 to $50 a day,” he said. “We could be saving the system an enormous amount of money by providing far more support in the home environment.”

The average life expectancy of Canadians has increased by more than 30 years since the early 1900s, to 78 for men and 83 for women in 2011. But the number of years lived in good health is sliding. The majority of today’s seniors have at least one chronic condition; as many as one in four has two or more.

Overall, the 2011 census counted nearly five million people aged 65 and older in Canada.

By 2031, 22.8 per cent of the population will be 65 or older, jumping to one quarter — 25.5 per cent — by 2061.

The Ipsos telephone poll was conducted between July 17 and July 26. A sample this size is considered accurate within 3.1 percentage points.

Three-quarters, or 75 per cent, of those surveyed gave an “A” or “B” grade to the overall quality of health services. However, views on the future are split — about half think health services will get better and the other half believe things will get worse.

Only about half gave an “A” or B” grade to access to diagnostic equipment such as MRIs and CT scans, or access to specialists. The marks were worse for mental health, with only 41 per cent of those surveyed giving an “A” or “B” grade for access to mental health services.

Few — 29 per cent — gave the federal government top marks in dealing with health care in Canada.

A Race To The Floor For Minimum Wage: Can It Be Stopped?

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just-saying_thumb      By Andrew Chernoff     https://andrewchernoff.wordpress.com/

First it was Jordan Bateman of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation with his article, “The pay of government workers is way out of line” published July 31, 2013 in The Province, to which I made my feelings known about on August 3, 2013 in my commentary, “Bateman Advocates A Race To The Floor For Minimum Wage…You First, I’ll Give Ya A Push”.

Just like a bad smell you can’t get rid of, or a bad itch you just can’t seem to scratch, another proponent of the drive to lower wages——–using a corrosive and mean-spirited abuse of the privilege of free speech for hateful, venomous and spiteful unsupported comments with the intent to rile, incite anger and get an antagonistic reaction——comes forward.

Ms. Margaret Wente, a so-called journalist for the The Globe and Mail, woke up recently seemingly during that bitchy time of the month (the only way I can explain it), and decided to lambaste, insult and take undignified shots at Canada’s firefighters—all of the “Nations” firefighters—-without exception.

In her article on August 8, 2013,  “A Nation of $100,000 Firefighters”, Wente charges, “municipalities do not love firefighters.”

Further, she claims to speak and know the feelings of our municipalities and regions, proclaiming, “ Across Canada, towns and cities are getting hosed by the skyrocketing costs of their fire departments.”, of which firefighters, she suggests, are the main reason for those increased costs because, municipalities, “simply match the settlements that everybody else got, including police. So the costs spiral ever upward,”

She continues, by adding insult to injury when she claims, “Thanks to arbitration settlements, your firefighters are the best paid (and possibly the most underworked) guys in town.”

Really?? Possibly the most underworked in MY town? Hmmm….she’s been in my town??….I think not!

She claims to have nothing against fire fighters. “I have nothing against firefighters, personally. But times have changed. We can’t go on like this. I could write the same column about the police. You guys are supposed to protect us. But we can’t afford you any more.”

But she does say, “They look good on calendars.”  A sexist comment I dare say. And dare I do.

So nobody is safe. The police make too much. School teachers? Bus drivers? Janitors? Airline pilots? Ambulance drivers? Paramedics? Who is not a target for Ms. Wente?

She obviously has a lustful crush for Stephen Harper and his Canadian Austerity plan. In her desire to drive down wages, she is a true Harperite, spreading propaganda for that race to the floor for minimum wage, to increase that disparity between those that have, and those that don’t—between the 1% and the 99%.

According to Wente, our firefighters have barely anything to do, “Working conditions are pretty sweet too. Thanks to modern safety standards, there are very few fires left to fight. These days, most fire department calls are medical. To prove that they’re still needed, fire departments have been adding defibrillators and Jaws of Life, and frantically expanding their repertoires to respond to even minor non-fire emergencies. Still, there’s an awful lot of what we shall euphemistically call “down time,” which firemen fill by preparing meals, sleeping, watching television, polishing the trucks and rewinding the hoses.”

She claims that the costs and salaries for Canadian firefighters are for smaller cities, “typically the largest item in the budget. It accounts for upward of a quarter of their costs.” And that firefighters and their unions are so insensitive, greedy in the community and regions they live in, that “the costs spiral ever upward, and towns are forced to cut back on libraries and roads.”

This is one woman who has one hell of a bitchy time of the month; so much so, that a grizzly bear would be no match for her spite and hate.

“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.”, OperationMaple writes in its reaction to Wente’s column, titled, “Let Us Count The Ways of Driving Down Wages”.

I continue with the following quote from OperationMaple’s article referred to above:

“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.

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.

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.”

I conclude with the following remarks.

The drive to lower wages may be succeeding in some minds, but it has not succeeded everywhere and with everybody. Are you going to let it happen to you? Will you start fighting back now, and let yourself be heard? Will you stand up? Will you get involved in civil disobedience and fight the good fight?

The drive to lower wages is nothing but a race to the floor of minimum wage. We are expected to give up more, so the rich can get richer? I think not.

The richest 300 people in the world are more wealthy than the poorest 3 billion combined, and every year rich countries take over 10 times more money from poor countries than they give in aid, according to therules.org. Find out more by visiting  http://www.therules.org

Don’t let yourself succumb to the race to the floor of minimum wage.