from the Ontario Public Service Employees Union
The Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General, ignoring a court order issued in March this year, has announced it intends to contract out the transcription work of about 650 court reporters, says OPSEU.
from the Ontario Public Service Employees Union
Three Ontario colleges–Fanshawe, Mohawk and Seneca — have formed a consortium requiring each to commit $2.5 million to a college in Saudi Arabia, says OPSEU president Warren (Smokey) Thomas.
from the Newfoundland and Labrador Association of Public Employees
Eighty-one percent of respondents to a poll commissioned by NAPE disagree with government cuts announced in the recent provincial budget.
from Our Times
Writing for Our Times, Karl Flecker wonders how, in the face of copious evidence of their systemic involvement in "supersizing" the temporary foreign worker program, the Tories can now claim ignorance that it was actually a wage-suppression tool. The government's record since coming to power in 2006, he writes, has consistently increased temporary work visas and lessened the already-limited oversight of the temporary foreign worker program.
from the Canadian Union of Public Employees
The Harper Conservatives are putting corporate profits ahead of the safety of airline passengers, says CUPE National President Paul Moist.
from OtherWords
OtherWords' Sam Pizzigati reviews Gar Alperovitz' book What then must we do? Straight talk about the next American revolution and finds he offers more than fantasy. Alperovitz calls for an "evolutionary reconstruction" of society, and says that the seeds are already in existence: credit unions, co-ops and worker-owned enterprises.
from The Little Education Report
Tim Hudak has rolled the dice on a Class Warfare approach to the seemingly imminent Ontario election and, in the process is helping to breathe life into the moribund Ontario Liberal Party with an extremist message. Broadly speaking Hudak will attack the entire Labour movement with Right to Work (RTW) plus an attack on the public sector labour movement. One only needs to look at the fundraising speech where he clearly lays out his totalitarian plans.
RTW is a blatant attempt at nothing more than undercutting labour lowering wages benefits and pensions and using the savings to reward capital. As Bill Clinton aptly put it, Right to Work means the Right to Work for less.
Hudak doesn’t pull any punches as he attacks wind and solar power as official fart catcher for the fossil fuel, and nuclear industry.
Under Hudak we, are in for another round of deregulation. Haven’t we seen this movie before, fewer environmental, food, health and safety regulations? Hudak openly proposes this stupidity.
He clearly states that tax savings will go to job creators, large corporations that are already enjoying a low tax regime and still sitting on their …um… assets and refusing to invest.
Hudak’s plans include removing Toronto control over TTC rail assets.
He is demanding Merit Pay (performance pay) for teachers and nurses as an example. This is compounded by a two-year wage freeze, unclear whether includes the Bill 115 period or only begins when Hudak legislates.
In a staggering attack on the teaching profession and all public sector workers, Hudak plans to phase out defined benefit pension plans such as OTPP and OMERS.
This breathtaking plan will provoke an equal and opposite reaction as the two sides of the classic dialectic meet in mortal combat over the highest stakes in many elections.
I sometimes despair at the slow plodding response of the labour movement and some of its allies at the increasingly obvious agenda of some major sectors of the business community to roll back every single gain made by labour and workers since WW2.
At this point, teachers, education workers, CUPE, other PS unions and private unions take note. Everything you have ever worked for and everything you have achieved in the last almost 70 years in on the chopping block with Hudak.
Where do we go from here?
On one hand, Hudak and his Tea Party followers are at the gates leading most polls but without, at this point, enough strength to win a majority but elections matter.
On the other hand, teachers, CUPE, other education workers have not yet recovered from a bitter struggle with the Ontario Liberals over Bill 115. Asking them to rise up and smite Hudak by backing the OLP is close to asking too much. On the other hand, doing nothing leads to Hudak and;
Some major private sector unions such as the recently merged CEP-CAW union do not have the NDP support clause in the new constitution. UFCW is considering some support for Liberals under the circumstances.
The good news is that Hudak and the PCs are not positioned to win a majority at this point.
That could lead to a highly circumscribed Hudak minority unable to implement the worst aspects of its agenda or some form of Liberal-NDP cohabitation an accord, a coalition government or a bill by bill negotiation similar to the present situation.
What are the federations, unions, teachers, education workers and progressive allies to do in this situation?
“The good news is that Hudak and the PCs are not positioned to win a majority at this point.”
There are 11 seats on top of the NDP incumbents where the NDP has an outstanding chance to defeat the Liberals and supporting the NDP does not allow the Tories to come up the middle.
This includes two seats in Windsor, four more seats in Toronto, Oshawa, and Ottawa Centre, two seats in Thunder Bay, Sudbury and Sault Ste Marie. If the election goes well there are more seats in Toronto, Kitchener, and Peterborough.
Beyond NDP incumbents and these 11 – 15 seats, if the Hudak PCs are to be defeated, it is only by supporting Liberals that this is possible.
That leaves education progressives exactly where they have been since 2003, strategic voting but that is not the same as supporting ALL Liberal and NDP incumbents. The Liberals must pay a stiff price for their treachery. The seats above are the price.
On the other hand, cutting off one’s nose to spite your face seems a bit foolhardy. Minority government is the answer.
Our future is in our hands.
from Friends of Medicare
Friends of Medicare is concerned that a recent full-page ad that looks like a news story in the Edmonton Journal is designed to mislead Albertans.
"The Copeman Healthcare Center's advertisement in the Edmonton Journal, misleadingly presented as a news article, is a clear indication that the proponents of private, for-profit clinics are actively attempting to normalize the idea of American-style health care in Canada," said Sandra Azocar, Executive Director of Friends of Medicare.
For years now, she said, promoters of for-profit health care have been doing their best to convince the general public that the only way to improve Canada's health care system is to open it to private, for-profit interests. The promotion of for-profit care includes the suggestion that private medical facilities may provide faster access to those who pay.
"In Alberta, private facilities, and even some public facilities, do offer enhanced services. If enhanced services are of higher quality and private facilities allow people who can pay to have quicker access, then access and quality of care received will be based on the patient's ability to pay. The Copeman clinic's very existence shows that we already have two-tiered care in Alberta," said Azocar. "The 'queue jumping' evidence that came out of the preferential access inquiry shows that such activities are already present in our system."
“For years now, promoters of for-profit clinics have been doing their best to convince the general public that the only way to improve Canada’s health care system is to open it to private, for-profit interests.”
"Canadians and Albertans know that if we lose our public health care system, most people would not be able to afford health care," she added. "Allowing for-profit clinics to operate threatens the equality of access to medical services. They distort the public system. They don't save money, they don't fix any problems that the public system itself can't fix and they introduce a whole world of new problems. You cannot turn doctors into medical entrepreneurs with a completely different set of incentives and expect the system to work the same way."
from the New Economics Foundation
Britain's New Economics Foundation, self-described as a "think-and-do" tank, co-sponsored a recent conference on transforming the UK's financial system. Smaller, local banks focused on retail businesses and cooperative banks such as Canada's credit unions are critical to regional economies, according to NEF's Tony Greenham. However, in Britain, smaller local banks have long since been swallowed up by a handful of giant, remote institutions.
from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
Iglika Ivanova blogs that while both the Liberals and NDP accused each other of overspending in BC's election campaign, an active government is not inimical to a healthy economy. In reality, she notes, a government can create the conditions that help business and communities thrive.
