Harper Inc's attack on the collective bargaining rights of postal workers and Air Canada employees and their latest move with bill C-377 are just the opening salvos in their scheme to destroy unionism as a force capable of mounting any effective opposition to their neo-liberal agenda. The real screwing will come in the form of so called right to work legislation. Of course each step has been and will be couched in the language of doublespeak and outright lies.
"We are protecting the economy" Meaning we are suppressing wages and stripping workers ability to retire with decent pensions.
"We are ensuring union members know how their money is being spent" When in fact they already have access to this info and in all but two provinces unions are already required to have their finances audited and to submit this audit to the province.
"We are merely giving workers the freedom of choice." Yes the freedom to choose to accept all the services the union will be forced to provide you without having to pay for those services, see how long your union survives under that model. Right to work is often referred to as the right to work for less and with good reason.
US dept of Labor figures show that four of the five states with the lowest average wage are right to work states while the top five in term of average wage are all states without such legislation. Right to work states have a median wage that is approximately two dollars an hour less than non right to work ones, based on a forty hour week that equals a loss of more than four thousand dollars a year in earnings.
As I said at the top the choice is ours, do we stand up and fight back or do we shrug our shoulders and meekly accept our fate. I eagerly await your response.
Fight to the end. Fight and win.
ReplyDeleteI know no other way
DeleteInstead of punishing unionized workers and stirring public antipathy against so-called "gravy train" labour, we need to redirect the conversation back to the obscene and growing inequity. We need more business reports clearly indicating executive salaries and bonuses as well as outlining the types of jobs created including wage rates. Business reporting focuses on global profits and jobs, and the rise and fall of stock prices. When you hear of 500 new jobs in the the retail and services sector, it should be clearly understood if those jobs are part-time, shift work at Tim Hortons or temporary holiday sales clerk positions at Walmart.
ReplyDeleteEven the new immigration policies are not clearly reported or understood. Skilled labour positions as they stand require lots of training to actually get to a point that you earn a good salary. Two years experience doesn't cut it. This new fast track policy along with the foreign workers program are both ruses to further undermine the potential for good wages. We need more journalists willing to connect all these anti-labour dots.
Hi BY, Absolutely, I see very little examination of patterns and connecting of dots in today's media. On the executive compensation front I saw but one brief report on this A Ten Billion Dollar Orgy
DeletePlus as you noted the coverage of the last set of job numbers while trumpeted far and wide contained no analysis of the types of jobs created. If it did it would have noted that manufacturing shed approx. 20,000 and indeed all jobs created were in service sector and likely due to the xmas rush thus doomed to quickly disappear.
It is truly funny how all the news is up beat all of a sudden. Scare tactics have changed. look we fixed it. next year will be different. Buy buy buy. BY BY
ReplyDeleteGreat article!
I vow that I am not a space monkey or a lemming.
Down with the bloody big heads, the bloody big heads
Loganzheroes