Why Trudeau is no friend of labour

[tay]

So now we've got a finance minister, some guy named Morneau, telling the kids that their job security is going to be a lot like the Arctic sea ice - vanishing and then gone. "Sorry kids, but you're fu*ked. Thanks for playing." Then, like Pilate, he washes his hands of their plight.

Morneau's announcement is a capitulation, a brazen dereliction of duty. He didn't say, "This is a nightmare for our kids. We have to deal with this." No, the Trudeau government's response is a simple, "Sorry kids, you're fu*ked."

Which brings me back to Osawatomie, Kansas in the summer of 1910 when Roosevelt delivered his Square Deal speech. A good part of that speech dealt with the struggle between labour and capital. He observed that a good worker was an asset to the employer but, more importantly, an asset to his family, to his community and, ultimately, to his nation. The wellbeing of the worker was the foundation of democratic governance. The duty of a democratic government was to regulate the struggle between labour and capital in accordance with Lincoln's declaration that, of the two, labour must be "by far the superior" of capital.

It strikes me that doesn't sound anything like what came out of the mouth of that guy, Morneau. Just what kind of a country does he think we will have when this precariat becomes the new normal? Let's face facts. The name "Liberal" has no meaning. This is a government in the "movement conservative" model. Laissez-faire leaches, the *****s of neoliberalism.

If ever there was ever any doubt about the neoliberal agenda being pursued by our 'new' government, Finance Minister Bill Morneau's recent comments (link is external) removed all uncertainty. He asserted that precarious work is here to stay and Canadians must adapt to having a variety of jobs throughout their lives as they experience the euphemistically phrased 'job churn.' Never have I read a more bald admission of submission to the corporatocracy agenda.

The above was just one of the frustrations about the Trudeau government that a group of youth was voicing yesterday (link is external) as a number of them turned their backs on the Prime Minister at the Canadian Labour Congress National Young Workers Summit in Ottawa. While precarious work is the problem they most immediately feel, they also did not forget about climate change, pipelines, and a litany of other issues that reveal the disparity between Trudeau's lofty rhetoric and the reality of the Harperesque policies the Liberals are following.

In my mind, we owe these young people a debt of gratitude for their refusal to be polite and pretending all is well. They are the voice of all who care about our world.

 

[coldstream]

The Liberals have never lost their link to the Classic British Liberalism of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus.. free market exponents and social darwinists.

They have survived in the Canadian political sphere by NEVER standing for anything. By placing themselves between ideologies.. by casting off all moral principle.. and pandering to broadest, most temporal and least resistant of electoral paths.

But they are in a fix now.. with the failure of modern epoque in economy and culture.. polarizing society and decimating the middle class, their base. They have no answers.. no identity.. no character.. just a empty headed pretty boy front man.. an irreconcilable and unmixed mish mash of feminist, homosexual, agnostic, gnostic idolatry.. floated on the jargon of radical individualism, enviro fascism, globalism. All of which casts a pall of death and despair.

The Liberals are finished in Canada. Justin is the last pathetic manifestation of a politics without a soul.

 

[JLM]

Labouring is not conducive to being ready for selfies on a moments notice!

 

[tay]

The economy is changing, there's no doubt about it.

But even though Canadian workers are producing more than ever, what they're getting in return is declining job quality with lower-wages and insecure contract work.

In honour of International Workers Day, here are three big fights for Canadian workers struggling in the 21st century economy:

1. Good jobs

Some people say precarious work is the way of the future.

For example, Finance Minister Bill Morneau suggested young people struggling in today's economy dominated by low wages, job insecurity and hopping from "job to job to job" thanks to short-term contract should just get used to the "job churn."

"It's going to happen," said Morneau. "We have to accept that."

That's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's view too – earlier this year, Trudeau suggested job security was an "archaic" idea and that young workers need to learn to accept "the new reality" that "we're going to have multiple careers over the course of our lives."

Except most Canadians aren't jumping from "job to job to job" – what's actually happening is employers are structuring jobs so workers take on a series of flexible, short-term contracts at low-pay instead of stable, predictable, long-term employment.

As economist Angella MacEwen points out, the average length of time Canadian workers spend working at the same job has remained "remarkably stable since 1976":

In other words, people are still working, it's the terms of employment that have changed.

Even CIBC observes that the quality of Canadian jobs is undergoing "a slow but steady deterioration"

A report released at the end of last year found that good paying, full-time jobs are increasingly being displaced by precarious part-time jobs and self-employment.

And CIBC points out that also has an impact on wages, noting that "the share of workers who are paid below the average wage has risen over the years to just under 61% in 2015."

2. The "sharing economy"

Ever heard of the "sharing economy"?

Sounds pretty cool, sounds pretty hip, but

https://www.pressprogress.ca/here_a...t_century_economy_is_failing_canadian_workers

 

[taxslave]

The economy is changing, there's no doubt about it.

But even though Canadian workers are producing more than ever, what they're getting in return is declining job quality with lower-wages and insecure contract work.

In honour of International Workers Day, here are three big fights for Canadian workers struggling in the 21st century economy:

1. Good jobs

Some people say precarious work is the way of the future.

For example, Finance Minister Bill Morneau suggested young people struggling in today's economy dominated by low wages, job insecurity and hopping from "job to job to job" thanks to short-term contract should just get used to the "job churn."

"It's going to happen," said Morneau. "We have to accept that."

That's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's view too – earlier this year, Trudeau suggested job security was an "archaic" idea and that young workers need to learn to accept "the new reality" that "we're going to have multiple careers over the course of our lives."

Except most Canadians aren't jumping from "job to job to job" – what's actually happening is employers are structuring jobs so workers take on a series of flexible, short-term contracts at low-pay instead of stable, predictable, long-term employment.

As economist Angella MacEwen points out, the average length of time Canadian workers spend working at the same job has remained "remarkably stable since 1976":

In other words, people are still working, it's the terms of employment that have changed.

Even CIBC observes that the quality of Canadian jobs is undergoing "a slow but steady deterioration"

A report released at the end of last year found that good paying, full-time jobs are increasingly being displaced by precarious part-time jobs and self-employment.

And CIBC points out that also has an impact on wages, noting that "the share of workers who are paid below the average wage has risen over the years to just under 61% in 2015."

2. The "sharing economy"

Ever heard of the "sharing economy"?

Sounds pretty cool, sounds pretty hip, but

https://www.pressprogress.ca/here_a...t_century_economy_is_failing_canadian_workers

Funny(sad) but the left that are doing most of the complaining about the low paying service industry jobs are also the ones that are most responsible for this happening. The left has been actively inhibiting industry for decades with their protests against any real jobs and the overpriced labour in many industries.The claims we can run the country on service industry are proving false as many of us stated more than 20 years ago.

 

[tay]

Temporary foreign workers used in jobs Canadians could fill, auditor general finds

Canada's temporary foreign workers program is rife with oversight problems that appear to have allowed lower-paid international workers to take jobs that out-of-work Canadians could fill, the federal auditor general says.

Michael Ferguson's examination of the controversial program, part of a battery of spring audits tabled Tuesday, details a litany of problems.

Employers hired temporary foreign workers without first proving they had exhausted all options with the domestic workforce, Ferguson found. At times, requests for temporary help were approved for head-scratching reasons that officials didn't challenge.

more

Temporary foreign workers used in jobs Canadians could fill, auditor general finds | CTV Kitchener News

 

[taxslave]

I can't believe that we had to spend tax dollars to tell us what we already knew.

The bigger problem is that just because there are Canadians available to fill the jobs there is nothing forcing them to do so.

 

[JLM]

Are the Kennedys gun shy? Do Fish swim? Duh! Would it have something to do with the fact that no one in his family tree was ever acquainted with labour?

 

[tay]

Earlier this week, the federal government announced an expansion of the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) program for high-wage occupations. The precedents for reform of this program are not encouraging. Just last month, the auditor general released an assessment of reforms to the same program made by the Conservative government in 2014. These reforms were a response to the surge of temporary foreign workers when employers in western Canada found it increasingly difficult to hire workers.

That assessment provides a textbook case of the problems in administering many government programs. The most obvious is that the surge of temporary foreign workers was disappearing on its own by the time government reacted with a proposed solution. The motivation for 2014’s tightening of the program was the perception that some employers were using it as their preferred source of labour, not a last resort after exhausting Canada’s hiring pool. However, the end of Alberta’s boom and rising national unemployment led to a 50-per-cent drop in temporary foreign workers entering Canada before the reforms were implemented. So it was unnecessary to enact a number of changes to the program that required more bureaucracy and increased costs to business. But as often happens in government, the cost of the bureaucracy and regulation remain even after the original problem has mostly disappeared.

There were also numerous problems with the implementation of the 2014 reforms. To start, the original TFW program was designed to alleviate shortages, but the concept of shortages is hard to define. Some economists maintain they don’t really exist, since any shortage can be alleviated if wages rise enough. Even in the real world, it is hard to come up with a workable definition of shortages: Bureaucrats settled on phoney statistics such as the unemployment rate in the local area or the record of layoffs by a company.

Philip Cross: The Liberals expand the Temporary Foreign Workers program just as proof arrives of what a mess it

 

[tay]

Bill Morneau's plans to further erode workers' retirement security by attacking their pensions


On October 19, 2016, Finance Minister Bill Morneau introduced Bill C-27, which would bring in target benefit pension plans for the federal private sector and Crown corporations. Harper's Conservatives had considered the target benefit plan as a replacement for employees and retirees' guaranteed defined benefit pensions. Target benefit pensions shift all the risks of pension liabilities away from employers and governments onto the backs of employees and retirees, to be paid through reduced benefits and pensions.

Prequel to privatization

In 2013, the Harper government commissioned a study of the Royal Mail privatization. The study revealed that, to facilitate privatization, the U.K. government took on the £8.6-billion pension liability they had guaranteed. Royal Mail's privatization resulted in the elimination of 11,000 jobs, the closure of a fifth of its mail centres, and the closure of 5 per cent of its delivery offices, with more to follow as shareholders exerted pressure to maximize their profits.

Rather than ensuring the government live up to their pension commitments as was done in the U.K., Harper came up with the Conservative solution by taking a page out of Morneau Shepell's 2012 playbook. Morneau Shepell played a key role in the development and implementation of the outcome-based and risk-managed shared risk plan -- a type of target benefit plan. This plan had nothing to do with sharing the risk and everything to do with shifting the risk onto employees and retirees.

The Conservatives saw the target benefit plan as a way to shift the Canada Post paper pension solvency deficit -- $5.9 billion at the time -- away from the Corporation and the government, and onto employees and retirees. Without first eliminating the pension solvency liability, no one would buy the profitable Canada Post Crown corporation, which pays yearly dividends to government coffers and has a going-concern pension surplus of $81 million. Going into the 2015 election, the Conservatives shelved their target benefit plan due to opposition from union and retiree groups, representing 6.9 million members. On July 23, 2015 Trudeau promised: "defined benefit pensions, which have been paid for by employees and pensioners, should not retroactively be changed into target benefit pensions."

Conflict of interest

Bill Morneau, former chair of the CD Howe Institute, resigned as executive chair of Morneau Shepell after his election. On September 15, 2015, reports indicated Morneau still indirectly owned 2,066,480 common shares in Morneau Shepell, worth about $32 million, through a numbered company in Alberta. In a submission to the federal government, the firm wrote that target benefit pensions entail "excessive operating costs." These actuarial firms would be big winners if defined benefit pensions were converted to target benefit pensions, which require more frequent and more complex services from firms like Morneau Shepell.

Domino effect

Public service, military and RCMP defined benefit pensions plans are not directly affected by Bill C-27, but if the Liberals are successful in forcing the target benefit plan onto Crown corporation employees and retirees, the domino effect will come into play -- and it will only be a matter of time before they come for all defined benefit pensions. The CD Howe Institute floated the idea on April 4, announcing that the expanded CPP should be a target benefit plan. Surprisingly they did not call for the entire CPP defined benefit plan to be converted to a target benefit plan.

C-27 has to be changed! Liberals must be forced to keep their pension promises. A 2014 Ipsos Reid poll showed "that 92 per cent of Canadians agreed with the proposition that employers and governments must live up to their pension promises." Help stop the elimination of defined benefit pensions and prevent the selling off of our public services by contacting your MP.

View a video of CUPW president Mike Palecek addressing Bill C-27 at a demo here.

Target benefit pensions open the door to privatization and shift risks to workers | rabble.ca

 

[Jinentonix]

Trudeau is no friend to labour because you can't befriend someone or something you have never had contact with in your entire life.
Trudeau's concept of "labour" is when he has to dress himself in the morning.

 

[JamesBondo]

I don't understand. Our conservative friends hate labor, so why would they be upset that Trudeaubama isn't a friend to labor?

I grew up where you worked hard and got paid well. It was unionized.

Then i moved to Alberta, worked hard, got paid well, and it wasnt unionized.

Ive never hated labor. I probably never will.

But i definitely have a dislike for self entitlement.

 

[Angstrom]

Now a days you work hard, to pay taxes. Its not worth anyone's time.

Money doesn't buy you 1/3 what it used too and we don't earn much more then when it was worth thee times what it's worth today. Most families owe in debt what they pay in taxes.

Canada is a good country to live in if you can't take care of yourself. For everyone else. You work hard to never get ahead .

 

[JamesBondo]

Taxes is debt.

 

[JLM]

A question.........................Should a person pay taxes to buy services he doesn't need or want?

 

[JamesBondo]

A question.........................Should a person pay taxes to buy services he doesn't need or want?

I"m paying taxes to service a debt that I don't need or want.

 

[JLM]

I"m paying taxes to service a debt that I don't need or want.

Same thing!

 

[Vbeacher]

Trudeau is no friend to labour because you can't befriend someone or something you have never had contact with in your entire life.
Trudeau's concept of "labour" is when he has to dress himself in the morning.

You're being unfair. Trudeau has had servants all his life.

 

[JLM]

You're being unfair. Trudeau has had servants all his life.

Be interesting to know what he paid them when he had to do it with his OWN money! Anyway he'll be a one term wonder. (Trump will still be in power after he's gone)

 

[petros]

A question.........................Should a person pay taxes to buy services he doesn't need or want?

There are plenty of things I don't want or need that I have no issue paying for.

I wouldn't even mind paying for incentives like $20 a kg for every kg someone loses and keeps off or $500 to quit smoking or $1000 for every junkie that gets off coke or opiates.

In the long run we'd save $billions