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Another great victory for the unions.
People have to understand that skilled-workers industries DO NOT need unions. Only easy replaceable jobs places like McDo or Wal-Mart. In other companies, unions are just another type of mafia.

   

And ? You prefer socialism where everyone has the same pay ? The difference between the boss salary and the others DON'T CARE. As far as EVERYONE gets more. That argument that the difference between the twos are becoming bigger and bigger and it's bad is bullshit. I don't care if the company makes profit as long as my earnings are increasing too. And they are, look at the numbers. We are much richer than 10-20 years ago.

Also, don't forget that profit = dividends = more money for you when you retire. You prefer that the companies make no profit and that all the mutual funds drop so that our retirees have to live in poverty ? You are not alone in this world you know. Stop being selfish.

   

Holy Gross exaggeration Batman! Both about the conditions in third world countries, and the way we can compete with them.



You really think economies are that simple? Let's say GM builds an assembly plant in...let's say Brazil. Now, Brazil is a developing economy, and not the African hellhole you described. So GM builds a new plant there. After the millions of dollars invested in construction, as well as the jobs created by the construction companies and such, GM hires 1500 new workers, from lowly janitors to factory managers. Those 1500 people will then reinvest in their local community, and thus the community grows. Rinse and repeat a few dozen times, and you have a modern society.

The fact is, cars cost money to make. Outside of the cost of materials, they have dozens of other expenses. After that, you need to make some profit on said product, or nobody will build it. Then you have the cost of the vehicle. The labor cost of a vehicle is massively too high compared to the value of the work by union employees. So therefore, the company will make a cheaper product making it somewhere else.



Protectionism 101, right? Our markets have been globalized for years, and the fact is, it's dangerous and not economical to make a Canada First economic policy, ESPECIALLY since most of our consumer goods are produced overseas.



They do. GM hires service staff, advertisers, administrators, car dealers, and hundreds, if not thousands of other people. Companies like Dell, Sony, and basically anything that deals with the products you use in your daily life hire people here, but they aren't hiring them to make the product. They hire them to sell, fix, and manage the product.



You're ignoring the fact that mot all third world countries are the same. The abject poverty of Haiti isn't the same as it is in Mexico or Brazil. Many of their issues over sanitation and other quality of life issues are the same that we faced two hundred years ago when we had thousands of people packing cities not prepared for them. Nobody is calling for a march towards poverty. But I'd rather call for a march towards adaptation and progress.



Wait wait...who decided this? Oh right, it was the corporations who decided this. They're the ones who built the factories and the manufacturing centers, and all of these "middle class", which I really think you mean "manufacturing" jobs. So unless you're going to nationalize every corporation, or turn us into a Soviet style economy where even the most stubborn, most inefficient businesses can be kept producing no matter what, then your idea won't work.

In the end, I bet you, you can find 1500 people in Windsor to work at the Chrysler plant for 30 dollars (benefit and wages) or less. However, the union, whose use back 100 years ago was critical, is now no different from some corporations today. Their tactics and ideas are backwards and commonly not adapting to the modern realities. So therefore, both the corporation, and the unions related to said corporation, go crashing and burning together.





I never proposed anything like that. But okay. I just said that A) These union jobs priced themselves out of a job, and B) executives making millions are making millions because the choices they make affect billions of dollars and thousands of lives. Why do you think a General or another military officer is paid more than the lowly soldier?

   

When I grew up in Windsor, I got to watch the unions do their thing. I watched them force Dominion Forge to close up and move,(and the union thugs made sure it was violent). I saw them force Wicks Mfg to close up shop and move. I've seen Honda, Volkswagon and DeHavilland all take a look at Windsor(because it was also close to a huge US market), ALL of which decided against Windsor because of its decidely miltant unions.
Kelsey Hays was given a huge tax break for retooling to aluminum wheels so they'd stay in Windsor. They left, because of the unions.
Yep, unions are real good for the economy. And I'm not going to even GET into the public service unions, they are just bullshit and should have never been allowed in the first place.
Pray tell Mr. Fever, how is it that city workers need protection from the city as their employer. Why do they feel they should be able to strike and force even more money out of taxpayer pockets. Especially when a good number of them live OUTSIDE of the cities that pay them?? What do the taxpayers have to do with CEO's profits and pension funds??? I haven't seen any American raider companies buying up Canadian cities, have you?
I think you fail to realize that OPSEU, CUPE and PSAC combined, have more members in them than any other union in the country.

   

When the negative press was happening because of the strike in Toronto, they had a call in on radio. An elderly woman in her 80s called from Vancouver. She said that her husband had worked for 60yr, no pension, no benefits. He died and she is living on only the Government pensions. She had praise for the unions and talked about the Winnipeg strike. She was well educated and knew her shit about the unions, labour laws and said... " without unions there would be no economy.. after she was on, an economist called in.. he backed her up... people who criticize unionized workers are jealous they don't have the same standard of living... unless you are the man that the drones are working for!

   

Back when the Winnipeg strikes were happening, I'm sure unions had a place. I also find it funny that they had to go all the way to Vancouver to find someone who'd say something nice about the striking Toronto garbage workers.

   

Really, so if Toronto went with contracted garbage pick up for example, this would damage the economy how exactly? Wow just imagine, tax payers not being held up for more money so they have less to spend so unionized labour has more to spend.
I'm sorry, but when you go on strike in the middle of a global recession, when 10's of thousands of Canadians(or more) are out of work, you look like the greedy asshole you are.
Jealousy? Hardly, it's just common sense. Besides, I'm quite comfortably retired at a nice age to enjoy my life still. I got dick all to be jealous of anyone about.
But if one feels that interrupting and interfering with our children's education is an appropriate tactic. Or thugs threatening or assaulting private citizens, or potentially endangering peoples lives and/or health by cutting off city services, then I guess unions are the way to go.

I find it interesting that when the teachers in BC unionized, anyone that didn't want to join, couldn't teach unless it was in a private school. Yep, gotta looooove that union mentality. I had NO idea that a union had the right to decide who can work and who can't and where. I always thought this was a free country and people are free to work where they want.
How do you justify preventing a perfectly qualified teacher from teaching in the public schools just because they don't want to be in the union? Funny, I thought the taxpayers funded the schools, yet once again, the taxpayer has no say and gets fucked over because of a stupid union.

   

So, the moral of the story is, Unions should be there to protect people too stupid to save for their own retirement after working for 60 years?

Unions, at one point, served a great purpose. Now, they are symbols of greed and are often out of touch with reality and the marketplace.

As for those who criticize unions, I'm not the least bit jealous. Then again, I'm a business owner and have made my own way in this World, following in my fathers footsteps and starting a company when I was 18 years old. I'm not waiting around for some job that I can latch onto for 30+ years save no money, invest nothing and rely on a union to bail me out when I'm done.

   

Because when the union negotiates a wage increase, all teachers get it, the school boards don't do one-off's. They're not going to do one deal for 1,000 teachers and another seperate deal just for Mrs. Parker down at Mapleview Secondary.

Well the contracted garbage workers in Etobicoke make $10 and hour, no benefits and forget about BANKED sick days, these guys don't even get paid sick days when tha ACTUALLY ARE sick!!

I'm guessing youre not saying that garbage pick-up is obscolete and needs to be discontinued, so if not then you're advocating that all garbage workers and the millions of other workers in similar "unskilled" jobs across the country should become $10 an hour workers, which is low-income. So by privatizing garbage pickup and going with that model YOU ARE SHRINKING THE MIDDLE CLASS AND GROWING THE LOWER CLASS. It's not rocket science. A large middle class is what makes us a first world country, period. All the Banana Republics have millionaires and billionaires and they have plenty of peasants, what they dont' have is a sizeable middle class in between the two extremes.

About 1/3 of the middle class workforce is autoworkers, garbagemen, soap-makers, mail carriers, etc. It's not a small number, its a huge population and that has REAL direct economic consequences. The indirect consequences are that once the people below you take a pay cut, your job becomes less valuable. Now the number of people willing and desperate to do YOUR job for less that what YOU make has grown.




Good for you but neither the world nor your business would function if we were all entrepreneurs and none of us were workers, would it? We NEED people to perform wage labour in order to make the world go around. In fact we need MOST people to work for somebody else for a living. In order to be a first world country, we need MOST people to earn a decent living and not low-income wages.





Ironically, Brazil grew to an emerging market economy by rejecting IMF reforms and establishing tarriffs that allowed its industry to grow without competition to a competitive size. Only after this was established is the country lowering its protectionism. But with other countries, your description is naive. The 'new' economy of the last 20-30 years doesn't grow prosperity, it is about supressing wages and keeping all the money at the top. First, they get the local government to finance some or all of the investment, then they pay the workers the pre-existing wage because unemployment is so high they don't face labour shortages sufficient enough raise the rate. Then they use their political clout to supress tax or labour reforms that will cause them to raise wages. The 1500 people are only marginally better off than before, usually not due to increased income, but due to the regularity of the income. However those 1500 people are subjected to such unpleasant and unsafe conditions that turnover is very high so few people ever see any long-term difference in their lives. If things really worked according to your description, Mexico should look like Canada by now as they have had US and European business there for decades, long before NAFTA was ever conceived.


Germany and Japan are highly unionized, their autoworkers and workforce in general are paid the same or better than North American workers and most of their product is still made there. So that is just false business propaganda.


It was the prevailing economic thought from the depression right up until the late 70's. What are you saying, that the middle class is there for corporations to destroy if it so pleases them? They're destroying because government said they could. They deregulated the financial sector, signed all these trade agreements, used the IMF to force developing countries to open their doors privatize everything including things we would never dream of doing here, and accrue massive levels of debt servicing these companies. Do you know that the Phillipines spends 40% of its budget just on IMF interest payments?? For what? Money we loaned to them at usurous rates so they could build factories and facilities for OUR corporations to relocate to. And theyre not alone, this is the new normal. I mean who's really running the show here?

I bet you could find a laid-off single mother to toss your salad in exchange for some baby formula, whats your point? And for every one of her, there's another who will do it for less.

The problem is not the supply of labour. The supply is now global. The problem is the redistribution of wealth from middle class to executive class and an entire segment of the working population being re-designated as "low-income" for no real reason. Corporate profits are the highest they've ever been in history. It's not "hard times" out there, generally for corporations, this is their golden age. The people for whom its "hard times" are average citizens who have no where to go but DOWN in this economic model.


I never said they should make the same money but come on! Workers have to take pay cuts for no reason at all. To use the army metaphor, this like a soldier being told he has to go into battle with no body armour because its' no longer in the budget meanwhile there's a newspaper in his desk with the headline reading "army budget highest ever on record: all funds to pay general's new million-dollar bonus". Ironically in Germany and Japan, the executives are paid more in line with military standards. There is a graduated pay scale, the new worker earns pay level 1 and the CEO works his way to pay level 25 (or whatever). Its not as based on bonuses and stock options and rewards from happy absentee investors. That's why THEY lead innovation and NOT us. THEY invest in their businesses and their people, we take pay cuts and give our money up to the multi-national financial interests that really "own" business nowadays.


Ha ha really? Checked your RRSP lately? Hey, what company do you work for, I'll buy some stock and tell them to cut your wages so I can get better returns. You won't mind, will you? Ah, divide and conquer...never fails on some!


*sighhh*...no, dummy....


CEO's dont own companies. The problem, as stated above and every post previous, is that the CEO pay and the money that is subtracted out of the business to satisfy the new multi-national finance owners is indicative that there is more than enough wealth around. It's not the companies "can't afford" to continue paying their workers, its that owners have decided they are going to start taking a bigger cut of the profits, which are also increasing exponentially. The problem is that the end result is an economy that increasingly produces only permanently low-paying jobs with few benefits, which in turn puts downward pressure on everyone else's wages whether they are union or labour or manufacturing or what have since they are all in the same economy. THe problem is that the "good" jobs you describe are the ones being destroyed. THe problem is that wealth is being SUBTRACTED from the local economy and redistributed GLOBALLY and ONLY to financial interests.


But hey guys, don't take my word for this, people more important than I have weighed in on the topic:


These are the words of John Bogle, founder and retired CEO of The Vanguard Group of mutual funds (2nd largest mutual fund co in the US, behind my employer) FORTUNE magazine named him one of the four giants of the 20th century in the investment industry. TIME magazine called him one of the world's 100 most powerful and influential people.discusses how the financial system has overwhelmed the productive system:

   

Welcome to Twilight Zone Beaver!!!
A reality so warped people can say

with a straight face.
And people will agree.
And vote for them.
Even when THEY decide what is "skilled" is THEM and not the unwashed masses with their mere diplomas, certificates and experience.

The ambulance workers here would be better off asking for a raise one by one. Yah right.

   

"Because when the union negotiates a wage increase, all teachers get it, the school boards don't do one-off's. They're not going to do one deal for 1,000 teachers and another seperate deal just for Mrs. Parker down at Mapleview Secondary."

Oh, well that's a perfectly acceptable reason to deny qualified teachers that don't want to join the union. But I guess our children's education is secondary to the union getting whatever they want. And what about the teacher in BC who was forced out of her job after 25 years because she didn't want to join the newly formed union? Once again, the union shows it only cares about itself.
I also have to question the competence (or loyalties) of any economist that claims paying someone $25/hr for a $15/hr job is just good economics. I mean who cares if a company goes bankrupt or moves out of country because their unionized employees keep squeezing them for more and more, driving prices higher and higher so that no one buys their products anymore right?
Who cares if our kids can't go to school for 3 months cuz the unionized teachers think the taxpayers that pay for the schools and their salaries should cough up more? Meanwhile, I'm seeing kids come out of high school that can't comprehend fractions beyond a half. I even had one genius ask me why a 25 cent piece is called a quarter. Kids coming out of high school that can't read, spell, or write.
THIS is what unionizing teachers has done to our schools. Altho, to be fair, sometimes it's outside factors that cause this, but then again, teachers seem to have quit failing kids, despite the fact they didn't really pass.
Unions are also protectionist. People get away with shit that would have their asses fired anywhere else, unless that shit happens to be a criminal act.
But I guess that's just good economics as well

   

First of all, who says it's "a $15/hr job?" We're talking about a job that's been paying $25 an hour for decades and then the company gets bought out by some multi-national equity group or the Bank of Hong Kong who decides theyre going to start slashing wages just to raise some short-term revenue for their hedge fund.

It doesn't take a genious to understand that when wages are cut are people loose work, the local economy suffers. What do you think a recessions is? It's when people lose jobs and lose income.

The problem is you think of other people's wages as wasted money, as if these workers cash their paycheques and then flush the cash down the toilet. What you forget is that their money gets spent in the economy supporting other local businesses and local jobs. So when they lose money, so do all the businesses who have them as customers. But it doesn't work in reverse. Making some wealthy investors in Hong Kong and Switzerland and Tokyo richer doesn't help the local or Canadian economy, so you see wealth is actually be SUBTRACTED from the equation when pay is cut.

that's the lie that you've bought into and probably what's at the root of our diagreement...that workers have gotten "more and more" and that companies are struggling to balance the books. But the facts of the past couple decades tell a different story altogether. The stats show that hourly wages and median income have not budged in 30 years. 30 Years of fixed labour costs. Meanwhile, the facts also show that corporate revuenues are greater than they have ever been at any point in history! They are more lucrative than ever! And their revenues are GROWING at greater rates than they ever have at any point in history, especially in the financial sector!

Let me see if I can put this another way: Your contention, -which is the popular idea spread by the business community- is that corporate profits are being syphoned off by workers. But the reality is that coprporate profits are being syphoned off not by the workers, but by financial investors, the hedge funds, etc who now control the rest of the business world and are now demanding bigger and bigger slices of the pie. The workers are the ones who are (and have been) losing money to make up for this loss.



Driving wages lower and lower has the same effect of product affordability. The difference is, as long as wages keep rising, price increases are affordable, and indefinitely so. I mean, if everyone's wages are going up, why would they stop buying products? Back in the olden days people made a dollar an hour and family night at the movies cost a dollar. Today a family night at the movies costs thirty dollars but if those same workers now make thrity dollars an hour, its not "more expensive", its the same cost. One hour of labour for a night at the theatre.

But it has limited benefit in reverse. Since prices and wages must always be > 0, (ie. something can not cost negative dollars and corprations haven't figured out how to pay you a negative salary - yet)price and wage reductions can only go so far and then must stop. What then? Things are really cheap in the thrid world where wages are a dollar or two a day, but look how poorly those people live and they STILL can't afford enough of the things they produce. Also, not all prices and costs are tied to wages and labour costs -like gasoline, for example- so reducing wages for all canadians will not necessarily reduce prices. In fact some things will become outright unaffordable. Even in the best economic times inflation exists and prices always increase at some rate. Besides if the cheapes labour is always in the third world, they will always set the wage price. You are avoiding the obvious point that so long as companies are allowed to move jobs to the developing world as they please and we must compete with third-world workers for "low labour costs," what you are really advocating for whether you know it or not is the adoption of third-world wages in Canada. There will always be some poor bastard in some god-forsaken part of the world willing to do your job for a fraction of what you earn and you are saying that workers here should therefore be willing to work for the same low pay just to keep their jobs. But who wants a job that no longer allows them to feed their families or keep a roof over their heads? What government would want those kind of jobs to become "normal" for their citizens?

   

Hey Herbie, great to see ya. Is this where you've been hanging out now? had enough of UNA?

   

bootlegga,

What do you suppose kept the "robber barons and industrialists" mindset at bay since that time? Do you think "greed is good" just whithered and disappeared? What's so appealing about the "I'm alright Jack. Fuck you." mindset? Does it not occur to you that as manufacturing jobs such as those ones that were lost and others like it are off-shored so we can save a dime and buy the same stuff made in India at WalMart, we are hobbling ourselves while emptying our national treasury?

Sure, your response'll be something along the line of 'better to let low and middle-class jobs go and focus on creating high-end jobs only. The trouble with that argument is that not everybody's cut-out for high-end jobs and even if they were, there's only so many of them to go around. This country is stuck in the 'hewers of wood and drawers of water' mythos and cheerfully exports its raw materials for a dime to buy them back modified for a dollar. We seem satisfied to let someone else make the buck off the poor rubes known as Canucks. We're fuckin' stupid that way.

Take beer for instance. 85% of barley in Mexico is imported from Canada. So we send them the raw material and like a bunch of beer-swilling sheep, we buy back the Corona brand for a premium, thinking that lime makes it oh-so-Mexican when the beer you're drinking has more to do with the Prairies than La Pas.

We need to have a cross-section of manufacturing jobs in this country and quit exporting raw or near-raw materials. Otherwise, our nationalism will continue to be a joke and we'll be even more of some other country's bitch.

   

More to the point, the "high-end" jobs are only high end because there are only a few people who can do them. If we all went to school and trained for those jobs, they wouldn't be high-end anymore because anybody could do it and the workers in those fields would be easily replaceable and no longer considered to have "special" skills. We'd be back to the same argument of how they're "overpaid".

   

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