Category Archives: Canadian Economy

On Tim Hudak’s Evangelical Political Fervour

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Thursday, August 15, 2013                 From:http://politicsanditsdiscontents.blogspot.ca

Crazed clerics are not the only ones possessed of an evangelical fervour. Young Tim Hudak, leader (at least for now) of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, is well-known for wanting to bring back some of that old-time religion in the form of union-bashing and dismantlement, something he likes to describe eupehmistically as workplace democracy.
Happily, the agenda clumsily yet avidly embraced by Mr. Hudak and his federal brethren is transparent to many, as the following Star letter makes clear:

Re: A Conservative banner you won’t see, Aug. 10

Susan Delacourt misses the point. While home ownership is the dream of all middle-class and would-be middle-class Canadians, the changes to tougher mortgage restrictions by the Conservative government is not the problem.

The problem is that fiscal Conservatives like Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mayor Rob Ford, not to mention the wanabee premier Tim Hudak, bash unions and are thereby responsible for the loss of middle class and fair wage jobs.

In the name of fiscal responsibility we have seen in the last decade the radical decline of good paying employment. Unions protect not only their members but, by raising the bar on wages and benefits, also protect non-members. But, these fiscal elites bash unions and give jobs to the minimum-wage-paying private for profit sector.

The real culprit in the decline of the middle class and the smashing of their dreams is not changes to mortgage lending, but rather the overall decline of wages and salaries. The growth in wealth of the 1 per cent does not make for a sound economy. Unions are the major defence against the one-sided economy we now have.

If the middle class hopes to regain some of its vitality (and surely the entire country depends on this) then it’s time for union bashing to end. Conservatives like the prime minister and the mayor and Mr. Hudak believe that divide and conquer, by creating jealousy on the part of non-union workers of those lucky enough to be protected by group action, is the way to keep wealth in the hands of the few. That’s the secret agenda.

It’s really time the electorate woke up to this Machiavellian plan and took back their power.

Stephen L. Bloom, Toronto

Marine Drive Golf Club Lockout Enters Third-Week: workers rallied at Club today

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August 12, 2013   http://www.uniteherelocal40.org/

The lockout of food and beverage workers by the exclusive Marine Drive Golf Club has now entered its third week. The Club, one of Vancouver’s most prestigious private golf clubs in which an initiation fee can cost $75,000, locked out its servers, cooks, bartenders, locker room attendants and janitors on July 26.  The lockout affects 48 workers who work in the Bullpen (Men’s Lounge), the Mixed Grill, the dining room as well as those who work in the women and men’s locker rooms.   Many of the workers are long-term employees of the Club, some with more than 30 years of service.

The Club has refused to let workers return to work and has terminated workers’ medical benefits.  The workers are members of UNITE HERE Local 40. 

Management enforced the lockout after workers turned down the company’s long-standing proposal offering average wage increases of only $0.17 cents.   The Club’s proposal reneges on an earlier promise made by Club Management in 2010 to offer a better agreement during this current round of bargaining.  In 2010, when the Club was struggling financially, workers agreed to minimal wage increases and made other sacrifices for the good of the Club.  At the time, the Chief Operating Officer of the Club told workers the Club would “do better” by the food and beverage staff during the 2013 round of bargaining.  Instead, the Club has locked out workers – a move that was particularly unexpected given relatively smooth labour-management relations in previous years. 

Meanwhile, the Club’s financial performance has bounced back.  In May, Club COO, Ron Pauls, told BC Business (May 6, 2013), that the Club had turned its performance around:

“In 2011, we hit it out of the park and added 160 new members.  We’re bucking the trend.  But for us it’s not about cash for the present, it’s about maintaining a fun, vibrant, healthy and sustainable club for years to come.” 

In spite of the lockout, workers and Local 40 have been willing to continue bargaining with the Club in order to reach a settlement and resolve outstanding issues.

Labour force numbers worse than they look

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Jim StanfordBy Jim Stanford  August 12, 2013  http://rabble.ca

Last week’s Labour Force numbers provide more evidence that Canada’s labour market is still mired in a three-year funk. Following one year of decent recovery from mid-2009 (the trough of the recession) to mid-2010, driven mostly by extraordinary monetary and fiscal stimulus, further progress has been stalled ever since.

Most headlines focus on the unemployment rate, but that is a misleading indicator — especially during sluggish times (when many workers give up looking for non-existent jobs, and hence disappear from the official unemployment rolls). The Canadian unemployment rate rose to 7.2 per cent in July, and is now just a smidge below the U.S. rate (7.4 per cent). Conceivably those two lines could cross imminently, casting some additional symbolic doubt on the Harper government’s broken-record claim that Canada survived the recession much better than other industrial countries. As previously noted, adjusted for population, Canada’s labour market performance since 2008 has clearly been worse than most other industrial countries.

The employment rate is a better indicator of labour market performance (relative to population trends), and by that measure July’s performance was even worse than the headline unemployment number seems to suggest. Labour force participation declined one-fifth of a percentage point in July; its decline has continued despite the so-called “recovery.” Indeed, at 66.5 per cent of the working age population this month’s participation rate (tied with April) is now at the lowest level since early 2002. This exodus of workers from the formal labour market helps to artificially suppress the official unemployment rate.

The employment rate also declined a fifth of a point, to 61.7 per cent. That’s lower than June 2010, the level reached after just the first year of stimulus-fuelled recovery (and not much better than the miserable 61.3 per cent recorded at the trough of the recession). Summer of 2010 is when governments shifted from stimulus to austerity, and the recovery stalled. (Erin Weir’s post illuminates the strong link between austerity and the falling employment numbers.) Job-creation for the past 3 years has only just kept up with population growth. The decline in the unemployment rate over the past three years is thus purely due to Canadians abandoning the labour market in droves. That’s hardly an accomplishment; it implies isolation, inactivity and poverty.

At the pre-recession participation rate (67.8 per cent), July’s unemployment rate would have been over 9 per cent. Add in involuntary part-time workers and other pools of hidden unemployed (e.g. those waiting for a job to start), and Canada’s true unemployment rate is over 12 per cent — or over 2.3 million people.

The painful reality is this: Labour is not scarce; jobs are scarce. And Canada’s labour market is not healthy; it’s been stalled in recession-like conditions for years. So much for the myth of Canadian exceptionalism.

Jim Stanford is an economist with CAW.