A Commentary by Doug Draper
Don’t know whether you heard this because it did not get a lot of coverage in the mainstream press, but Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has announced his intention to freeze the minimum wage.
Ontario government seems like it is asking for a Wisconsin-like labour rebellion here.
McGuinty chose a talk he gave to some well-healed group in Oakville earlier this February to announce his Liberal government’s decision to freeze the minimum wage for countless many families across this province. Lest there be any doubt, these are people who are trying to pay their ever higher hydro, heating, transit, grocery and health-care bills, not to mention their property taxes, for work they are performing at the lowest end of the wage scale.
And isn’t that nice.
It isn’t enough for McGuinty and company to dish out billions of dollars in cuts in corporate taxes to companies like Walmart – Fortune 500 corporations that are making more profits than Genghis Khan could ever imagined on the labour of people in this country and others who could never imagine having enough money to stop worrying about next week’s grocery bills.
That’s right Dalton. Just go ahead and freeze the $10.25-per-hour wage for those on the lowest end of the pay spectrum. Freeze it for students who are going further and further into debt, paying ever higher tuition and user-fee costs for colleges and universities where there seems to be no end of the wage increases you will allow for teachers there. Freeze it for those of us who watch you sit back and do nothing about the unaccountable arbitrators your government appoints who hardly never say no to whatever wage and benefit are demanded by some of the most powerful interests in this province, most particularly the police union, however hard it hits back on ratepayers in communities like Niagara.
Seems like it is easy to pick on people at the bottom of the pay scale. They are so busy working 60 or more hours a week just to pay the bills, they have no time to fight back. And virtually none of them belong to unions, including college and university students across this province who are going further and further into debt paying outrageous tuition and user costs in this province, so they don’t have well-oiled and organized groups fighting for fighting for them.
So they don’t count. And maybe, just maybe, that is why McGuinty is dumping a wage freeze on them, even after he walked more gingerly when he asked public sector unions last year, including the powerful police and elementary, secondary, college and university teachers unions, to “please” accept a wage freeze or something closer to it during a time of recession and heavy provincial debt while others are being down-waged or losing some or all of their hours at a job.
These unions mostly answered him with the same old demands for two-to-three per cent per year salary increases and buttressed-up benefits, and the McGuinty government’s hand-picked arbritrators for public sector comments almost always said ‘yes’ to these demands. Never mind that people making trying to get buy on minimum wage and people who are struggling to pay these escalating public sector wages and benefits through their taxes are living several thousands of dollars below Ontario’s $27,601 poverty line, even if they are working eight hours a day, every week of the year!
Where are these public sector unions – the teachers, police and others – when it comes to fighting for better wages for people other than themselves – people at the lower end of the wage spectrum? Do they not know that these are the people who have children in their classrooms, and the neighbourhoods and communities they serve – people who are struggling to pay the taxes that cover their wages?
Now, according to a front-page article in the February 21 edition of The Globe and Mail, the McGuinty government is now in the process of cutting more than 1,000 public sector jobs in the province. That could gut the provincial government bureaucracy by some five per cent, and what we might fear is that most of these jobs will involve front-line workers in areas like natural resources, environment and health care that actually did something. The higher senior people back at Queen’s Park hardly ever seem to be effected by such cuts, if history is any example.
So here we are. We got a government that is freezing minimum wages, while failing to say no to unreasonable wage and benefit demands from the most powerful public sector unions, and now moving to gut public sector jobs. Talk about a recipe for the kind of mess now occurring in Madison, Wisconsin, where public sector workers and the state government are engaged in a war that is reportedly disrupting services across the state.
But we don’t have to go as far away as Madison, Wisconsin. Look no further than right across the border in New York State where the recently elected governor, Andrew Cuomo (son of former state governor Mario Cuomo who was hardly a conservative) is threatening to axe as many as 10,000 public sector jobs because, as he has noted, the state is virtually bankrupt and simply can’t afford to do otherwise unless the unions representing these workers are willing to make some sacrifices.
It may be instructive for public sector unions in Ontario to note that since Cuomo had the courage this province’s premier does not to make that declaration, his popularity rating in the polls has soared as high as 77 per cent – the highest of almost any governor in the last hundred years.
One of the late, great U.S. senators from that state, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, predicted more than a decade ago before his death that the demands too many sectors, public and private, were placing on the economy for short-term gain could ultimately lead to class and generational warfare as wage gaps widen and younger generations are left with the debts down the road.
We tasted a bit of that kind of ugliness in the 1990s with the former Conservative government of Mike Harris wielding the meat axe on public sector workers and services, and may be dangerously close to moving to an even uglier version of that picture in this province in the near future.
Is that what we want in Ontario? Unless some kind of sanity and reasonableness sets in on what we can afford in an age of tough times for too many people in this province, an uglier version of axe wielding may be what we get.
When is someone going to show some leadership and ask all of us to share in a bit of a sacrifice rather than demanding continuously more and more for ourselves, to keep our province from slamming into a brick wall of debt it may take generations to recover from?
(Please share your comments below and visit Niagara At Large at http://www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to residents in our greater Niagara region and beyond.)
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Doug I could not have said it better. No surprise here if it does happen in Ontario and across Canada. It has been waiting in the wings to fly. Now I believe it has. Wisconsin style problems here we come. Some times greed ..gimme gimme more..and to heck with the rest.
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Doug, aren’t you arguing out of both sides of your mouth?
One moment complaining that public service unions (eg. police) successfully bargain for too-high wages & benefits. The next, you complain that McGuinty co-operates with union methods by laying off people with the lowest seniority, but keeping the high wages of the union contract.
The Wisconsin governor seems to be trying to completely destroy collective bargaining right s for a co-operative union – one that has already agreed to 3% labour cuts (fourloughs).
On the other hand, McGuinty has done whatever he can to co-operate with his unions. In the 2010 budget, he froze contracts for NON-union people serving the public. The clear message is to join a union.
Harris was abusive to many in the public service, but his clear ‘common sense’ was the same as yours today – the public service had outpaced the private sector’s ability to pay.
The big difference between New York State and Ontario:
– Ontario has 13M people with a $21B deficit … and we’re hoping that
our economy will just simply ‘get better’.
– New York has 19M people with a $9B deficit … and they’re doing
everything they can to bring it down to Zero. Ex-Gov. Patterson
forced 100K civil servants to take 1 day off per week. Gov. Cuomo
is doing what he sees as needed for New York to break even. He might
be wrong, eh?
Oh, and it’s nice to see McGuinty finally wake up and freeze the minimum wage at $10.25/hr. Doesn’t it seem obvious that raising the minimum wage puts upward pressure on ALL wages? If you earned $11/hr when minimum wage was $10/hr and rose to $11, wouldn’t you want to have the same 10% difference? Wouldn’t you want your employer to raise yours to $11.10? It’s a perfect excuse for unions to negotiate , eh?!
New York State’s minimum wage is $7.25/hr. How can Ontario companies compete with New York companies? By relocating across the Niagara River! People can’t change companies – companies can.
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EDIT: last line should read:
“People can’t change (move to other) countries – companies can.”
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Cutting the public sector can be easily achieved through attrition, that is to say not replacing retiring or individuals who have left government service. The trick is for government to get out of their old bad habits and put in to place much needed structural reform to make the public service more efficient. That is a management problem.
The public service unions on the other hand have shown through their demands in this recession a disconnect between themselves and the rest of society in general. The gap between public sector wages/benefits and the private sector has steadily widened with increases even through difficult economic times.Public sector employees perception of themselves as employees is their reality meanwhile the public’s perception of them is resentful of their renumeration, pensions and most of all job security. (Take a straw poll in any Timmy’s throughout the province.) That is human nature.
A further increase in the minimum wage as Lorne pointed out makes Ontario less competitive on one hand but more importantly hits small businesses hardest. Small business is the economic driver in Ontario not large corporations. (Special care in my opinion is needed to make it easier and lest costly to do business in this province.)
The events in the US like Wisconsin will continue to unfold over the next months and Ontario will feel that same pain. I do believe we are ramping up to a battle between public sector workers and government simply because of the simmering frustration of the public that will lead to the making of a perfect storm with the October 6 election.
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I can see truth in general in some things that have been said in reply to Doug’s and others letters by other people. I am glad we have the freedom to express them. I am also glad to see respect in our replies. I have been so at the end of the filth that spews out of the comments I have read on other replies and other sites on the internet that this site leaves me with a breath of fresh air. I am glad we are civil even when we don’t agree with each other. Thanks everyone for that respect.
That makes me more inclined to come in and share my thoughts and hear others.
I will take a day or two to think of what and how to comment on other letters on here and hope to be respectful as I do.
It will give me a chance to better my grammar and writing skills which I am sure one can see needs work..lol.
Have a blessed day and peace
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The “competitive” mantra doesn’t fly with me. The minimum wage is not a living wage, and it should be. Certainly, it shouldn’t be frozen; we’re talking people here. Small businesses that offer great service etc. at last have a better chance. Cut back on the box stores, and the market will be more sane, and easier for these same small businesses.
Of course, places like WalMart just love it when mnimum wages are frozen.
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Was minimum wage meant to be a living wage for everyone?
Perhaps it was meant as a starting wage, as the base for promotion.
Also for part-time workers: students, stay-at-home, parent-spouses after their children are all school-age, retired people.
Unfortunately, we seem to have moved to a society where, because we all encourage competition to give us the Lowest price, we’ve stopped looking at the labour/environmental/human-rights/financial policies of the companies and countries that produce our goods. Accordingly, we manufacture very little in Canada any more (look at Niagara). Even worse, we are about to be bought by companies from countries who don’t give a d*amn about their workers (Tribune today about a new Chinese solar panel maker coming to Welland, plus several stories about Chinese companies buying into the Alberta oil patch).
Do we read the package in the grocery store, or just buy the Cheapest product – without thinking?
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Somewhat ironic. We have a lot to learn from the Chinese as far as prioritizing alternative energy sources is concerned. We should recruit them to teach us how it’s done. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but currently we’re learning the ropes a bit too slowly.
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During the Industrial Revolution, the English wouldn’t even bury someone unless the shroud was made in England.
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Canada makes very little these days we bought into the idea of NAFTA the brainchild of the Canadian and US Chamber’s of Commerce.and never repudiated by the local chapters,a recent study by the TD bank and BOM found that trade between Canada and the US is the lowest in 28 years, we sent all our jobs, gratis to Mexico, where they routinely murder union leaders and have no environmental laws or safety laws, a country on the verge of civil war.also we need a Mid=Pen Highway like a hole in the head, our politicians are out of their minds, pursueing this outdated idea.
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I think we have to be vigilant about cuts and attacks on everyone.
I am very well educated, yet I cannot find a decent job in this region and because I am not able to earn what I worked for, I can’t afford to leave (move out) of this region. Many, many people are in this boat. I know people with Master’s Degrees working for minimum wage at call centres; older people with insufficient pensions despite working all their lives working for low wages at Wal-Mart.
The truth is there are fewer jobs that pay well in this region, and there is huge competition even for minimum wage, part-time jobs, such as the ones at Sobey’s a few months ago. What is needed is a correction, before we lose everybody in this economic shuffle.
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Suggestions please?
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