Jim Stanford separates rhetoric from reality on the Harper economic record

Tax the Rich: An Animated Fairy Tale

Minimum wage increases have a "positive" impact on business

On January 12, 2011 the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour forwarded a supplementary submission to the Saskatchewan Minimum Wage Board.  The Board had asked the Federation to respond to 2 questions in follow-up to a brief that the SFL had submitted at the end of 2010.

The supplementary submission makes a compelling argument for increasing the minimum wage, and for ensuring that a system is in place to guarantee that minimum wage earners do not lose ground to inflation (indexing).

Below are some interesting facts about Saskatchewan's current minimum wage.

Minimum Wage Facts

• Roughly 31,000 Saskatchewan people are paid the province’s lowest permissible wage.
• Nearly 40% of low-wage earners in Saskatchewan are between the ages of 25 and 55.
• 78% of low-wage earners in Saskatchewan work in permanent jobs.
• 60% of minimum wage workers are women.
• Increases to the minimum wage are often followed by an increase in employment rates.
• Viewpoints Research found in December 2010 that 71.9% of Saskatchewan people want to see the minimum wage raised.

You can read the full (12 page) submission by downloading a copy here....

Corporations and the Rich are destroying society and the planet

We Were There - Women and Labour History

Check out Bev Grant and the Dissident Daughters

Also see: www.bevgrant.com

Struggles span decades

Struggles span decades

(This is the lead article from the September 2010 issue of the SFL Labour Reporter)

What makes someone stand up for their rights?

For the unemployed men 75 years ago, it was relief camps that offered no ‘relief’. No work, no wages, and little hope of turning around their own situation, the On to Ottawa Trekkers made their way across the country. It was an act borne of destitution, riding on the coattails of courage.

The state resorted to using force to beat back the Trek’s progress, culminating in the Regina Riot. It is still aweinspiring 75 years later to recall the deep roots of workers’ uprising, right here in our province.

Because of workers’ struggles in the past, we can celebrate that we have decent work, and unionized jobs. But does the work pay the bills? Listen to the voices of the workers from Casino Regina, whose strike story reminds us all that an anti-worker government is determined to keep wages low in our entertainment industry and across the public service.

Indeed, public sector workers in healthcare and in all of our Crown corporations are facing substandard wage offers and concessions at the negotiating table. What lessons can we draw from the past about how to turn this around?

Let’s also pay close attention to the voices and experiences of our youth. Thanks to our government’s erosion of labour standards, children as young as 14 and 15 can now work. The teenagers at the SFL summer camp have concerns about getting proper training and working in a place where the employer plays by the rules. As parents, are we confident that our children’s health and safety rights are respected and enforced at work?

Can we count on employers to abide by labour standards, especially in the service industry where so many start out? The stories of our youth should renew our commitment to build the labour movement.

Past, present, future … the workers’ movement continues on. Let’s stand proudly on the shoulders of the workers who faced destitution and violence. Let’s build solidarity between all of us who are fighting a government who puts profit before people. Let’s empower our young workers to create safe workplaces and to advocate for fair and enforced labour standards and living wages for all.

Download complete PDF Version of the September issue by clicking here...

I will never buy another sandwich from Subway, EVER!

Photograph by: Jean Levac, Ottawa Citizen

As a result of the firing of an employee from her job at a Subway in Dartmouth, N.S for giving her free employee lunch submarine sandwich to the vicitms of a fire, I will never buy another thing from Subway, EVER!

You can not treat decent hard-working folks this way and face no consequences.

StarPhoenix coverage see here: Subway employee fired for feeding fire victims

75th Anniversary of the On To Ottawa Trek

Click here to download the event calendar in PDF.

Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us - RSA Animate

The Regina Riot - A Documentary (Trailer)

The Curious Case of the Missing Recovery

Canada's Pro-Democracy Movement: The Real News

"People take to the streets accusing Prime Minister of shutting down Parliament to avoid a war crimes inquiry into his administration. For more visit http://www.therealnews.com/. Produced by Jesse Freeston"

Top CEOs still raking it in: CCPA

The national office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives released it's new analysis of CEO compensation in Canada today:

"National Office Update
Projects & Initiatives: Growing Gap
January 4, 2010

Canadians may have been hit hard by a worldwide economic recession, but it appears Canada’s 100 highest paid CEOs are enjoying a soft landing.

Hugh Mackenzie's latest report on executive compensation shows the total average compensation for Canada's 100 highest paid CEOs was $7,352,895 in 2008—a stark contrast from the total average Canadian income of $42,305. They pocketed what takes Canadians earning an average income an entire year to make by 1:01 pm January 4—the first working day of the year.

Click here to read more and download the full report. Click here to use our CEO pay calculator to find out how quickly a top CEO will earn your salary."

CLAC promotes slashing minimum wage for young workers; Wall gov’t hiding Bill 80 information from public

The best investigative writer/journalist in the province, citizen blogger Joe Kuchta, has just posted a new article over on the Owls and Roosters blog entitled: Christian Labour Association of Canada (CLAC) promotes slashing minimum wage for young adults; Wall gov’t hiding Bill 80 information from public.

In signature comprehensive Kuchta style, the posting exposes the love affair between the Sask. Party government, a number of ultra extreme anti-union business groups, Wall's/Norris's anti-worker legislative agenda, government secrecy, growing Saskatchewan poverty and CLAC.

Check it out!

Like Father, Like Son

In 1989 the province of Saskatchewan was nearly bankrupted by an incompetent and corrupt government under the leadership of then Conservative Premier, Grant Devine.

20 years later, and 2 short years into the first term of Grant Devine's protégé, we appear to be headed down that same slippery slope. Where did all the money go?

NDP slams minister for missed deficit signals - CBC

Saskatchewan likely facing recession (weasel word for deficit) by end of fiscal year: finance minister - Leader-Post/StarPhoenix

Deficit talk rises in Saskatchewan as potash revenues fall to unprecedented low - P.A. Herald

Study reveals growing income gap in Saskatchewan - Labour Day 2009

Labour Day is a national holiday to celebrate workers’ economic and social achievements. On the one hand, workers in Saskatchewan have much to celebrate: they continue to be a fundamental driver of the economic and social life of our province. Our labour creates the infrastructure, services and goods that support our communities. We contribute to the economy through our taxes and we spend most of our wages locally.

But this Labour Day, Saskatchewan’s working families are faced with some stark facts about how they have fared from 1976 to 2006. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) Saskatchewan Office has just released the report Boom and Bust: The Growing Income Gap in Saskatchewan. It analyzes Saskatchewan family earnings from 1976 to 2006 and reveals that thousands of low and middle income families have failed to thrive during these years of neoliberal economic policies.

Even though the overall economic pie has been growing, the slices for families raising children, the cohort in the study, showed that income of the bottom half of earners has remained the same, or even worse, decreased in size.

The benefits of the larger pie have gone almost exclusively to the richest 10 per cent of families.

For the half of Saskatchewan families with children that were the least well off, median earnings and after-tax income were actually lower in real terms in 2006 than they were in 1976. And their share of total earnings and after-tax income was lower in 2006 than in 1976. In contrast, the richest 10 per cent of families increased both their real income and their share of total income.

Through periods of both bust and boom in Saskatchewan’s economy, the income gap has widened. Income inequality reached an unprecedented level in 2006.

The data also shows that families are employed more weeks in 2006 as compared to 1976, yet only the richest 10 per cent have made gains in income.

So why does income inequality matter and why should we care that inequality is increasing?

The CCPA study, authored by retired sociology and social studies professor Paul Gingrich from the University of Regina, argues:

The economic costs of poverty are staggering, for taxpaying households and for governments.

• An Ontario report The Cost of Poverty reveals that in real terms poverty costs every household in Ontario from $2,299 to $2,895 every year. The Ontario government loses $10 to 13 billion a year due to poverty, between 10 and 16 per cent of the provincial budget.
• Treating the symptoms of poverty is expensive. Consider the incremental costs to the health system that result from the lower health status of those who are poor, the costs to the justice system, and the costs of government social transfers, when thousands are living on the margins.
• The social costs of poverty are well-known. Societies that allow their social capital to decline face growing incidence of social dysfunctions. When such conditions become endemic, breaking the cycle is extremely difficult, which in turn discourages new capital investment, perpetuating a negative cycle.

The latest international research based on United Nations data sources demonstrate that social problems are related to the distribution of wealth in a society, not to its overall wealth.

• The growing gap in income inequality results in more social problems like mental illness, substance abuse, teen pregnancy, male violence, homicide, incarceration and shortened life expectancy.

Gross income inequalities stand in the way of a vibrant democratic system.

• Frank Cunningham, professor of philosophy and political science at the University of Toronto, sees three attitudinal trends emerging from the growing gap:
• Inequalities foster elitism and resentment. The well off resist progressive change and exert disproportionate influence in the political system.
• As the most well off continue to succeed, they are encouraged ‘to leave the boat’. They isolate themselves from the rest of society physically and psychologically and resist economic measures that are fundamentally redistributive.
• Poor families are threatened with becoming beggars and become dependent on the charity of the well off and of government transfers. These conditions lead to disillusionment, despair, cynicism and low participation in the political system among those at the bottom of the social ladder.

Inequality reduces the life chances and opportunities for children.

• There are too many children trapped in poverty; their full potential to contribute economically and civically is lost. There are also intergenerational and opportunity costs: consider how much productivity and tax revenues society loses when children of successive generations fail to escape poverty.

The findings of this study are critical food for thought and action for governments and communities. Without unions, the gap between rich and poor would be much worse. Unions help reduce the gap by giving workers a vehicle to negotiate better wages, benefits and protections.

This Labour Day let’s celebrate the efforts that the union movement makes to build a more caring and sharing society.

Larry Hubich, SFL president

To read the full the full study, visit www.policyalternatives.ca and www.growinggap.ca

CFIB supports Child Labour

There's an excellent posting over on the "Owls and Roosters" blog entitled: "Sask. Party gov’t sets ‘absolute’ minimum age of employment at 14, CFIB complains it’s not lower; labour shortage main reason for change".

Citizen blogger, Joe Kuchta pulls the covers off the real reason why Labour Minister Rob Norris and his team are lowering the miminum working age in Saskatchewan - it's because the CFIB told them to.

Read all about it here.

Could union ownership reshape auto? - The Real News

"Richard Wolff: Unions should convert their position as owners into active participation in making decisions."

Those Poor Beleaguered Canadian Banks!

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The Canadian Bankers Association is all offended that workers rallying to protest against job loss, inadequate unemployment insurance, government inaction and tough economic times would dare to point a finger at the obscene profits being racked up by the banks.

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So sensitive are the Banks to criticism that they want slogans removed from rally posters that say - "It's time to protect people instead of profits for the banks".

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Check out a couple of articles about this story over at the NUPGE web-site: Banks cry foul - ask CLC to remove slogan from poster.

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and at the CLC web-site: EI Rallies in Hamilton and Belleville!

Federal budget threatens waterways, students, women, workers

The reason the world is teetering on economic collapse is because of decades of right-wing policies that opened the door to the most rampant display of corporate greed in recent history. One of the biggest culprits of these policies is the wholesale deregulation of many sectors (including the financial sector) and putting the foxes in charge of the hen house.

Almost everybody on the planet acknowledges this fact - well except the corporate puppets sitting on the government benches in Ottawa.

There's a great article over on the PublicValues.ca web-site entitled: "Hidden horrors" of federal budget threaten waterways, students, women, workers. Here's an excerpt:

"Hidden horrors" of federal budget threaten waterways, students, women, workers

Conservatives pursue deregulatory agenda by gutting environment assessment

by Ish Theilheimer

OTTAWA, February 26, 2009, PublicValues.ca: It has become clear since the federal budget was introduced that the Conservatives are using it to sneak ideologically-driven measures through Parliament. Opposition MPs have condemned many elements of the omnibus budget bill known as C-10, but the Liberals appear unwilling to press for amendments.

Among the most contentious "hidden horrors" of the budget are the elimination of the right to make human rights complaints in pay equity cases; punitive treatment of public servants, unions and students; and opening Canada's waterways to industrial exploitation without environment assessment." Read more here....