Big Labour getting sweet deals from Trudeau

[Rwede]

Kevin Libin: Big Labour is getting the same sweet deal from Trudeau that it gets from Kathleen Wynne


Whether Wynne’s Ontario Liberals or Big Labour enjoy the biggest clout in Justin Trudeau’s government may be a mere matter of semantics. Their agendas are often aligned, as with the CPP, where the unions were craving a bigger slice of the government pension to make negotiated defined-benefit pensions richer and more affordable, and Wynne wanted a new pool of pension cash to fund her spending plans. Both are on board with the Liberals’ plan to run sizeable deficits to fund bigger government programs and heavier infrastructure spending. And both are vehemently anti-Conservative, with Ontario’s unions having spent millions in provincial elections on advertisements attacking the provincial PCs, and mobilizing volunteers to campaign for the Liberals. The Liberals have returned the favour by arranging handouts to the unions’ political action groups and tailoring provincial policy and public contracts to buy “labour peace.”

Given that the arrangement has kept Ontario’s Liberals in power for 13 years, despite a record of scandals that would make even a Chicago politician jealous, it’s not hard to see why the federal Liberals would seek to make their own cozy alliance with organized labour, while neatly dismembering the longstanding marriage between the NDP and the union movement. Some of the same architects that helped invent the formula for Liberal unbeatability in Ontario are now working for Trudeau, including principal secretary Gerald Butts, who held the same position under former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty, and Katie Telford, Trudeau’s chief of staff, formerly a senior cabinet operative in the McGuinty government. The prime minister was already getting cozy with labour while he was still an opposition MP, hiring himself out to numerous union groups for speeches (and pocketing five figures a pop), while promising to reverse the Harper government’s hard-nosed labour approach. The unions came out in force to campaign for Trudeau last year, running anti-Conservative ads through a front group, Engage Canada, run by Don Guy, another veteran McGuinty aide. One trade group even paid members to attend Trudeau’s photo ops, violating the Elections Act.

As in Ontario, the favour is happily being repaid. In addition to ramming through the bigger CPP, the Trudeau Liberals are repealing two Conservative laws that infuriated union leaders. One requires unions to disclose their spending to the Canada Revenue Agency, including political activity, and another ended for federally regulated workplaces the old “card-check” system of certifying unions, which allowed shop bosses to intimidate or manipulate workers’ votes, replacing it with secret ballots. Recently, Treasury Board President Scott Brison said he would soon introduce a bill that would undo Conservative rules that defined an “essential service” in the public sector and limited the ability to strike.

But three years ago, a Harris/Decima survey (commissioned by a teachers’ union, actually) found that most Canadians don’t think public sector workers should be allowed to strike at all. And the percentage of private sector workers belonging to unions has been steadily declining for decades. Still, it appears the death of the labour movement has nevertheless been greatly exaggerated. In Canada’s halls of political power, big unions are enjoying as much influence as ever.


Full account of Trudeau's pork-barrelling with unions is here: http://business.financialpost.com/fp-co ... leen-wynne

[maryjane48]

great news

[Jx3]

great news

How so?

[maryjane48]

unions put canadians to work at decent wages . site c comes to .mind . teck logan lake another.

nurses . soon it will include police

[The Green Barbarian]

Disgusting. But more of the same vote-buying crap we see from every Liberal government, federal or provincial, including Justin's best bud Christy Clark here in BC.

[Rwede]

Disgusting. But more of the same vote-buying crap we see from every Liberal government, federal or provincial, including Justin's best bud Christy Clark here in BC.

Notice how Christy has been playing all cozy with BC's unions, just like Justin is with the national unions?

Total corruption from the top down in both the Liberal parties and the unions.

Disgusting is an understatement.

[Donald G]

First Greece hired Union workers to get votes.
Then they kept increasing their wages and benefits to encourage them to Vote Liberal.
The Greek Govt ran a deficit year after year.

They forced the country into bankruptcy.
Now they can't pay any of their bills.
Thanks Trudeau.

[maryjane48]

as mentioned clark doing same thing hee in bc. wheres you scorn for that

[Rwede]

as mentioned clark doing same thing hee in bc. wheres you scorn for that

Where's your scorn for Justin doing the same thing as Clark?

[maryjane48]

lol i dont have scorn for clark or jt over this issue. if their going to pander i rather it was to unions . all politicians pander .

[Deean]

So now we know....I hope our memory lasts until the next election!

[hobbyguy]

Unfortunately Unions remain the strongest defense for the average Jack and Jill in terms of labour market power for them. Imperfect, but still somewhat viable.

To hear some here, unions are a bogeyman. Your fear (or envy) betrays you. There is a need for unions that represent the interests of working Canadians (and I agree, at times they don't).

When government shifts away from kow-towing to corporations, then perhaps unions become unnecessary. But for now, they are very necessary to the "Main St." economy. It is the "Main St." economy that drives the business climate for small and medium businesses.

Of course, I have been bashed for taking a very dim view of large corporations. However, if you look at the way in which the large corporations and the "Wall St." economy operate, it is difficult not to take a dim view. "The Walmart effect" is clearly bad for small and medium businesses. Those small and medium businesses are the big job creators, as opposed to the big corporations who in fact are net job destroyers. Every time a corporation is involved in M&A jobs disappear from the "Main St." economy. Those lost jobs are then fewer customers for the small and medium businesses that are both the backbone of the "Main St." economy and the economic opportunity that many look for. Almost all real technological innovation comes from small and medium business, educational institutions, and spin offs from government innovations (like the internet). Think about it, the folks that have driven positive change in the world have NOT been the big corporations - they most often just get in the way.

The kind of things we see from large corporations these days are things like the jerk who wanted to jack up the price of life saving medicines, and predatory nonsense like this: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-36879241 where the prior owner deliberately underfunded pensions so that money could be milked out of the company, and when all that could be milked was taken, sold it for 1 pound to dissolve further responsibility. And of course this crud: https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/04/15/apple-microsoft-among-top-50-us-corporations-using-offshore-tax-havens.html

So while the union model as it stands is deeply flawed, unions do represent somewhat of a counterbalance to this rubbish. That means that any government that cares about the average citizen has to "hold their noses" and keep unions relevant. Especially if that government cares at all about the growing problem of income inequality.

[Glacier]

unions put canadians to work at decent wages . site c comes to .mind . teck logan lake another.

nurses . soon it will include police

Wait, I thought you were against Site C. Plus, don't forget about Kinder Morgan, Keystone XL, Energy East, and Northern Gateway. Great union jobs, you would, of course, be in favour of that, right?

[hobbyguy]

It is easy to be against export bitumen pipelines. They pose the maximum risk to society with the lowest return (by some measures less than zero) to society.

But site C? Now that's a good 'un.