Another victory for the unions!

[Michael Hardner]

I think that's indeed part of it. How did other countries do post WW2 ?

France and Germany did well. England not so much.

Clearly there are a lot of factors involved. But a meritocracy that supports investment, innovation and growth is clearly a good thing.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient for a description of measuring the distribution of wealth in a society. It's just one measure, but notable that Canada is dead in the middle.

[bush_cheney2004]

No North America became the wealthiest continent on the planet BECAUSE laborers fought for good pay and good working conditions. Thats what allowed us to build the gigantic middle class thats responsible for all the consumption that accounts for the majority of our economy.

Except that North America is no longer the wealthiest continent on the planet. The gigantic middle class in Mexico is so disappointed.

[CPCFTW]

No North America became the wealthiest continent on the planet BECAUSE laborers fought for good pay and good working conditions. Thats what allowed us to build the gigantic middle class thats responsible for all the consumption that accounts for the majority of our economy.

It's true. All we have to do is look at the timelines: the growth of the middle class, the increased secularization, advances in technology and knowledge in medicine, scientific knowledge generally, the decrease of corruption in the legal and political spheres, the increase in civil rights...heck, even the unprecedented increase in the numbers and holdings of the wealthy class....all occurred under the auspices of the social safety nets...of the "welfare state," if one prefers that language.

Now, sure, one could protest that "correlation does not necessarily imply causation".

But we'd be talking quite the coincidence, I'd say.

You're both confusing cause with effect. It is wealth that gave people the power to fight for greater rights, not the other way around.

[dre]

You're both confusing cause with effect. It is wealth that gave people the power to fight for greater rights, not the other way around.

No Canadians always had a decent slate of political rights. They had to fight for good wages and working conditions though, and thats how the middle class was built, and they were the engine that drove our economy.

[bush_cheney2004]

No Canadians always had a decent slate of political rights. They had to fight for good wages and working conditions though, and thats how the middle class was built, and they were the engine that drove our economy.

Yep...them thar middle class Canadians made the entire North American continent the richest on the planet !

[Wilber]

You're both confusing cause with effect. It is wealth that gave people the power to fight for greater rights, not the other way around.

Who's wealth? Poor people shouldn't bother fighting for rights because they aren't wealthy enough? It's only wealthy people who have ever fought for rights?

[CPCFTW]

Who's wealth? Poor people shouldn't bother fighting for rights because they aren't wealthy enough? It's only wealthy people who have ever fought for rights?

I don't know who wealth is. I guess Warren Buffet?

Poor people can fight for rights all they want but when there isn't enough wealth to support their entitlements then they are fighting to get blood from a stone... it's a losing battle.

[Wilber]

I don't know who wealth is. I guess Warren Buffet?

Poor people can fight for rights all they want but when there isn't enough wealth to support their entitlements then they are fighting to get blood from a stone... it's a losing battle.

So according to you, rights equal entitlements? You have to be wealthy to have rights.

[Bonam]

A corporation can invest in something. Is a corporation a person ?

It can, but people can also invest in things, and people are people. As for corporations, there are many corporations such as mutual funds, etc, that invest in order to generate money for their customers, who are also people. And corporations tend to pay their employees, which are also people. So I'm not sure of the relevance of your point here.

[blueblood]

No Canadians always had a decent slate of political rights. They had to fight for good wages and working conditions though, and thats how the middle class was built, and they were the engine that drove our economy.

No, it wasn't through fighting the big wigs, it was the people with money investing in workers and getting a profit and creating a situation where everyone wins. This scenario is happening in Latin America and southeast Asia now. Many people being elevated to the middle class and inflation isn't an issue. They may not be getting north American wages, but things they buy are priced accordingly. There are many instances of countries like that being far better off now than when it was only north Americans working.

You can also look at the oil patch, not much for fighting the big wigs out there, yet the bottom of the totem pole workers are making scores of money.

The middle class was built by an investment in workers, not this "fight" people talk about. Workers are finding out the hard way there are other countries who are able and willing to do the work much more agreeable than north Americans. As a result there is massive wealth growth all over the world and more people around the world are in the middle class. If your in the right industry in north America, having wealthy people all over the world is a good thing.

[dre]

No, it wasn't through fighting the big wigs, it was the people with money investing in workers and getting a profit and creating a situation where everyone wins. This scenario is happening in Latin America and southeast Asia now. Many people being elevated to the middle class and inflation isn't an issue. They may not be getting north American wages, but things they buy are priced accordingly. There are many instances of countries like that being far better off now than when it was only north Americans working.

You can also look at the oil patch, not much for fighting the big wigs out there, yet the bottom of the totem pole workers are making scores of money.

The middle class was built by an investment in workers, not this "fight" people talk about. Workers are finding out the hard way there are other countries who are able and willing to do the work much more agreeable than north Americans. As a result there is massive wealth growth all over the world and more people around the world are in the middle class. If your in the right industry in north America, having wealthy people all over the world is a good thing.

No, it wasn't through fighting the big wigs, it was the people with money investing in workers and getting a profit and creating a situation where everyone wins.

Sorry thats just objectively false.

[CPCFTW]

It can, but people can also invest in things, and people are people. As for corporations, there are many corporations such as mutual funds, etc, that invest in order to generate money for their customers, who are also people. And corporations tend to pay their employees, which are also people. So I'm not sure of the relevance of your point here.

Most corporations (other than financial firms like you mentioned) also don't do much investing outside of M&A and buying short-term money market instruments.. Most corporations would rather invest in their own growth/operations, or pay dividends to investors. Investors wouldn't be too happy if a non-financial corporation they had invested in spent a lot of capital on making their investment decisions for them. I'm not really sure where Michael is going with this.. I guess he's feeling like Michael Moore instead of Michael Hardner tonight?

[CPCFTW]

Sorry thats just objectively false.

Sorry it's not.

Debating is easy!

Edited November 21, 2012 by CPCFTW

[dre]

Its easy if you know absolutely nothing about the history of organized labor in your own country. Read a little bit of economic history from between 1900 and 1960. There was a massive boom in the early 1900's, a new railway was built and there was massive economic growth. But workers saw none of the benefits from it. They were forced to work 60 hours a week for a pittance, in disasterous conditions, and when they complained about it they were simply replaced with immigrants. The federal government was implementing policies like the IDIA (industrial disputes investigation act), that gave employers all kinds of rights but gave none at all for workers. During all the economic growth and boom years inflation adjusted wages for Canadian workers had not grown one cent.

Then Borden administration started declaring labor organisations as socialist and illegal, and tossing people in jail. The Canadian government gave tacit approval to mobs of vigilantes who attacked unionists as socialists... at this point they were convinced a full blown revolution was imminent in the west.

Canadian workers had had enough. On May 15th 1919 they staged the most complete general strike in North American history in the city of Winnipeg. 33 000 workers, many of them not even unionized walked off the job and brought the city to a complete stand still, over the right to negotiate for better wages and safer working conditions.

Despite the the moderate demands of these workers, the Borden administration immediately condemned the general strike as a some kind of soviet styled rebellion with the goal of establishing a socialist government. Instead of giving the workers the right to negotiate for better wages and working conditions Borden sent tanks and troops, and leaders of the strike were arrested and thrown in jail. The climax was bloody saturday, June 21st when police attacked peaceful labor demonstrators injuring scores and killing 2.

Violence

On June 10 the federal government ordered the arrest of eight strike leaders (including J.S. Woodsworth and Abraham Albert Heaps). On June 21st, about 25,000 strikers assembled for a demonstration at Market Square, where Winnipeg Mayor Charles Frederick Gray read the Riot Act. Troubled by the growing number of protestors and fearing violence, Mayor Gray called in the Royal Northwest Mounted Police who rode in on horseback charging into the crowd of strikers, beating them with clubs and firing weapons.^[1] This violent action resulted in many people injured, numerous arrests and the death of two strikers. Four eastern European immigrants were also rounded up at this time and eventually two were deported, one voluntarily to the United States and the other to Eastern Europe. This day, which came to be known as “Bloody Saturday”,^[8] ended with Winnipeg virtually under military occupation.

At 11:00 a.m. on June 26, 1919, the Central Strike Committee officially called off the strike and the strikers returned to work.

The eight strike leaders arrested on June 17 were eventually brought to trial. Sam Blumenberg and M. Charitonoff were scheduled for deportation, although only Blumenberg was deported, having left for the United States. Charitonoff appealed to Ottawa and was eventually released. Of the other eight leaders, five were found guilty of the charges laid against them. Their jail sentences ranged from six months to two years.

The Royal Commission which investigated the strike concluded that the strike was not a criminal conspiracy by foreigners and suggested that "if Capital does not provide enough to assure Labour a contented existence ... then the Government might find it necessary to step in and let the state do these things at the expense of Capital."

This strike is now considered the largest general strike in Canadian history and debated to be the largest in North America.^[9]

Organized labour thereafter was hostile towards the Conservatives, particularly Meighen and Robertson, for their forceful role in putting down the strike. Combined with high tariffs in the federal budget passed in the same year (which farmers disliked), this contributed to the Conservatives' heavy defeat in the 1921 election. The succeeding Liberal government, fearing the growing support for hard left elements, pledged to enact the labour reforms proposed by the Commission.

J. S. Woodsworth, a strike leader, had seditious libel charges against him dropped after a jury acquitted Fred Dixon. Woodsworth went on to found the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, forerunner of the New Democratic Party.

But the strike was not a total loss for Canadian workers, and it greatly increased the ammount of solidarity between workers. When the election rolled around people in Manitoba sent 12 labor candidates to the legislature one of them JS Woodworth, who played a key roll in pushing through social legislation to benefit workers, and went on to be a member of the CCF.

The next couple of decades saw strikes by just about every type of worker. It also saw 100 thousand young Canadian men, working for peanuts in Government labor camps ran by the military. In the 1940's there were strikes by coal miners, gold miners, aircraft workers, steel workers, munitions factory workes, and general manufacturing workers protested the anti labor policies of Mackenzie king. It also saw a growing rift between trade unionists in the TLC who opposed industrial unionists.

In 1943 there was more strikes than any other year in Canadian history and finally the Federal government was forced to act. It authored Order in council PC 1003, granting Canadian workers the same rights Americans had fought for and won under the Wagner act... and more.

Labour's pressure in the workplace and in the political arena forced the government's hand. In early 1944, the ruling Liberal government passed anemergency Order-in-Council, P.C. 1003, that protected the workers' right to organize and required employers to recognize unions chosen by a majority of workers. This emergency law was extended by two years after the war's end to ensure labour stability in the transition to a peacetime economy. This pivotal change in our labour laws had far-reaching effects on industrial relations in Canada. It meant that employers now had to bargain with legally certified organizations of their employees.

This was truly the beginning of the end of both Capital, and the Canadian government treating its workers like cattle. In the next 20 years they would use these new rights to increase the wages of ALL Canadian workers whether in a union or not, and vastly improve worker conditions for all Canadian workers.

So fo you guys to come on here and suggest that Canadian workers did not fight for wages and working conditions is just such an utter load of BS... such a blatant fabrication, and expression of such complete ignorance of the history of your own country that it really just boggles the mind. Read a god damn book about Canada for crap sakes. People literally spilt blood for the dignity you enjoy and the respect you have in your work place today.

Put quite simply... without these people there IS no middle class, and unfortunately with a growing number of Canadians like you people, born into an easy life of privilege and taking for granted rights that other people had to fight for, there wont be a middle class in the future either.

Edited November 21, 2012 by dre

[CPCFTW]

There was a massive boom in the early 1900's, a new railway was built and there was massive economic growth.

Cause.

But workers saw none of the benefits from it. They were forced to work 60 hours a week for a pittance, in disasterous conditions, and when they complained about it they were simply replaced with immigrants. The federal government was implementing policies like the IDIA (industrial disputes investigation act), that gave employers all kinds of rights but gave none at all for workers. During all the economic growth and boom years inflation adjusted wages for Canadian workers had not grown one cent.

Then Borden administration started declaring labor organisations as socialist and illegal, and tossing people in jail. The Canadian government gave tacit approval to mobs of vigilantes who attacked unionists as socialists... at this point they were convinced a full blown revolution was imminent in the west.

Canadian workers had had enough. On May 15th 1919 they staged the most complete general strike in North American history in the city of Winnipeg. 33 000 workers, many of them not even unionized walked off the job and brought the city to a complete stand still, over the right to negotiate for better wages and safer working conditions.

Despite the the moderate demands of these workers, the Borden administration immediately condemned the general strike as a some kind of soviet styled rebellion with the goal of establishing a socialist government. Instead of giving the workers the right to negotiate for better wages and working conditions Borden sent tanks and troops, and leaders of the strike were arrested and thrown in jail. The climax was bloody saturday, June 21st when police attacked peaceful labor demonstrators injuring scores and killing 2.

But the strike was not a total loss for Canadian workers, and it greatly increased the ammount of solidarity between workers. When the election rolled around people in Manitoba sent 12 labor candidates to the legislature one of them JS Woodworth, who played a key roll in pushing through social legislation to benefit workers, and went on to be a member of the CCF.

The next couple of decades saw strikes by just about every type of worker. It also saw 100 thousand young Canadian men, working for peanuts in Government labor camps ran by the military. In the 1940's there were strikes by coal miners, gold miners, aircraft workers, steel workers, munitions factory workes, and general manufacturing workers protested the anti labor policies of Mackenzie king. It also saw a growing rift between trade unionists in the TLC who opposed industrial unionists.

In 1943 there was more strikes than any other year in Canadian history and finally the Federal government was forced to act. It authored Order in council PC 1003, granting Canadian workers the same rights Americans had fought for and won under the Wagner act... and more.

This was truly the beginning of the end of both Capital, and the Canadian government treating its workers like cattle. In the next 20 years they would use these new rights to increase the wages of ALL Canadian workers whether in a union or not, and vastly improve worker conditions for all Canadian workers.

Effect.

So fo you guys to come on here and suggest that Canadian workers did not fight for wages and working conditions is just such an utter load of BS... such a blatant fabrication, and exp<b></b>ression of such complete ignorance of the history of your own country that it really just boggles the mind. Read a god damn book about Canada for crap sakes. People literally spilt blood for the dignity you enjoy and the respect you have in your work place today.

Put quite simply... without these people there IS no middle class, and unfortunately with a growing number of Canadians like you people, born into an easy life of privilege and taking for granted rights that other people had to fight for, there wont be a middle class in the future either.

You just made my point for me. Economic growth gave people the power to demand more rights/privileges. Yes people are now born into relative privilege. We're arguing about the people who are fighting for more rights/privileges in a shrinking economy, we're not talking about the early 1900s.

Edited November 21, 2012 by CPCFTW

[Wilber]

You just made my point for me. Economic growth gave people the power to demand more rights/privileges. Yes people are now born into relative privilege. We're arguing about the people who are fighting for more rights/privileges in a shrinking economy, we're not talking about the 1940s.

We are talking about people who are fighting to retain a piece of their rights and privileges, not get more.

You present an interesting scenario though. What happens to these rising middle classes in developing countries as they gain more rights and privileges? Do they see their conditions stagnate and decline as business moves on to the next lowest bidder, only to see the cycle begin again somewhere else?

Countries like Germany and Japan have done relatively well in this environment by realizing that if they can't compete on price, they need to concentrate on up market higher quality areas and they do it with a largely union labour force.

[bush_cheney2004]

We are talking about people who are fighting to retain a piece of their rights and privileges, not get more....

Right...but they have to compete in a much larger domestic and international work force as well as economic conditions that are hampered more than ever by government policies and fiscal mismanagement. Even at the height of labour union membership, it was not a majority circumstance for all workers.

[Wilber]

Right...but they have to compete in a much larger domestic and international work force as well as economic conditions that are hampered more than ever by government policies and fiscal mismanagement. Even at the height of labour union membership, it was not a majority circumstance for all workers.

The same government policies and fiscal mismanagement that was justifying raises of up to 85% for this company's incompetent executives? Bully for them but damn those uppity workers trying to do damage control and salvage what they can of their diminishing compensation.

[bush_cheney2004]

I have never understood the "class warfare" argument leveled by workers when the ship is sinking. Take away all the "excess" executive pay and it does not solve the larger problem. The very same workers had far less of a problem when fat cat bosses were paying the union $30 per hour to bake cupcakes. Management is not unionized....it can't go on strike.

[Wilber]

I have never understood the "class warfare" argument leveled by workers when the ship is sinking. Take away all the "excess" executive pay and it does not solve the larger problem. The very same workers had far less of a problem when fat cat bosses were paying the union $30 per hour to bake cupcakes. Management is not unionized....it can't go on strike.

And I have never understood the class warfare argument leveled at workers when the ship is sinking. Often, taking way all the "excess" workers pay does not solve the larger problem. It is the executives responsibility to provide a vision for the company and run it efficiently. If all they can offer is grinding their workers down, they are grossly over paid.

How can you expect to lead anyone if you set such a piss poor example yourself. All you are saying to your employees is that you don't give a shit about them and are only concerned with how much you can pile into your personal life raft before the ship sinks.

[bush_cheney2004]

And I have never understood the class warfare argument leveled at workers when the ship is sinking. Often, taking way all the "excess" workers pay does not solve the larger problem. It is the executives responsibility to provide a vision for the company and run it efficiently. If all they can offer is grinding their workers down, they are grossly over paid.

Then the workers should seek love elsewhere. High talent management cannot be attracted with less pay, yet low talent workers with senority can wreak havoc on the production floor.

How can you expect to lead anyone if you set such a piss poor example yourself. All you are saying to your employees is that you don't give a shit about them and are only concerned with how much you can pile into your personal life raft before the ship sinks.

If you have ever read an executive's total compensation package you would know that high risk and responsibility are coupled to higher reward(s).

[Wilber]

And highly paid, mediocre executives will bankrupt a company.

Their parachutes generally compensate for any risk or lack of performance. Executive salary's have increased drastically in the past 25 years. Their performance hasn't.

[Wilber]

Then the workers should seek love elsewhere.

Who's looking for love? How can employees take a management that is grinding them while it stuffs its own pockets seriously, when it comes to the company's welfare?

[bush_cheney2004]

And highly paid, mediocre executives will bankrupt a company.

So what? Bankruptcy is provided for in tax law, and is often the best strategy to reduce liabilities.

Their parachutes generally compensate for any risk or lack of performance. Executive salary's have increased drastically in the past 25 years. Their performance hasn't.

Again...so what? You are using an hourly worker's metric to measure middle and upper management. So called "parachutes" are designed for quick exits and transitions for corporate positions.

If the poor workers are so much better, why aren't they running these companies instead?

[bush_cheney2004]

Who's looking for love? How can employees take a management that is grinding them while it stuffs its own pockets seriously, when it comes to the company's welfare?

Then leave....nobody is holding a gun to their heads.