Following concern expressed by the IMF, the Conference Board and of course thousands of protesters around the world, the OECD has just released an extensive 400 page report on the problem of growing inequality: Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps on Rising. I haven’t read through it yet, and it
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Excited Delirium: Open The Books for Everyone
Here’s a great piece from David Climenhaga contributing to rabble about fiscal openness. While it’s extremely unlikely that the Harperites will follow his advice, I fully agree that now is the time to open all books for any organization that receives (or received) public funds of any kind. If unions
Continue readingcmkl: Bribing your audience: how much do contests matter to email open rates?
I sent out an email to ten or fifteen thousand of my closest union friends today, asking them to do an online survey about what the union’s priorities should be.
Continue readingDavid Climenhaga's Alberta Diary: It’s not just unions any more: Time to consider fiscal openness for professional associations, private companies, think tanks, churches
The board of the Fraser Institute meets to discuss their next dubious call for lower taxes on billionaires and the corporations they own. Who finances them, anyway? Secretive organizations may not appear exactly as illustrated. It’s not just unions any more. The more I think about this, the more the
Continue readingcmkl: Yeah, see? OC Transpo driver had a story too
So this OC Transpo driver is recorded yelling at a passenger to shut up. The video goes on YouTube and a short time later he’s fired. There’s much outrage focussed on the driver and much trash talking of the union that had the chutzpah to suggest there was more to
Continue readingcmkl: Air Canada arbitration: so what was that decision all about?
Air Canada was happy. The union was not. But then, this is Lisa Raitt’s shop, we could have predicted that, right? So here is my understanding – as an outsider – of what was at stake.
Continue readingBlunt Objects: Garry Queale Says Video of Bus Driver Threatening Autistic Man Is "Inconclusive"
If you have yet to see the video of an OC Transpo bus driver yelling at and threatening an autistic man named Matthew Taronno, you need to see it. It’s posted at the end of this post.This is, obviously, something that offends almost every person who ev…
Continue readingDavid Climenhaga's Alberta Diary: Too many non-union managers, not union members, drive up Alberta government costs
A typical Alberta civil servant, who apparently can’t be trusted to work alone, helps his manager doff his coat. Actual unionized Alberta public employees may not be exactly as illustrated, but the manager is probably depicted pretty accurately. Belo…
Continue readingcmkl: Dear commerical media quit using “union boss” to describe our leaders
I know y’all are into brevity and everything. I’m with you. But is the pain of adding three extra characters to your titles and content really so onerous that you have to completely misrepresent the relationship between someone who is the head of a uni…
Continue readingcmkl: Writing web content for union members: is it public voice or intimate voice?
Most of the how-to manuals on web writing focus on writing in public voice. They presume that the words will be the product of many pairs of eyes, the writer being only the first. Editors, revisors, approvers, translators etc. It’s a safe assumption be…
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Lisa Raitt’s Three Principles of Labour Law
Posted below is a slightly longer version of my column in today’s Globe and Mail regarding the Harper government’s highly creative approach to making up labour law on the run. Also posted is a graph showing the dramatic decline (of 95% or more) in the frequency of work stoppages in Canada since the mid-1970s. In […]
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Peggy Nash announces candidacy for NDP leadership
Peggy Nash, the NDP incumbent for my riding of Parkdale-Highpark and the candidate I voted for, has just announced that she is running to be the next NDP leader. I wanted to share my thoughts on her announcement and recall some previous comments I have…
Continue readingcmkl: Welcome to Toronto, mister president
Alrighty then. That’s another website to get redone then. Stuck my hand up once again at the wrong time and I am now overseeing the redesign/reengineering of calm.ca. In truth, it had to be me. After all, it’s what I do for a living and I a…
Continue readingcmkl: Lisa Raitt sends labour relations back to the 1920s
When I first saw reference to this on Twitter I thought maybe it was some sort of hyperbole. Or that some progressive soul, like myself, prone to Swiftian rhetoric, had done the whole reductio ad absurdium thing to normal Tory talking points. But no. L…
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Small Business and the Attack on Unions
In case you had any doubts where the escalating attack on Canadian unions is coming from, check out the web site of the Canadian Labour Watch Association. The Labour Watch site provides detailed information and advice to individual workers and employers on how to fight unionization drives and how to decertify existing unions, including by […]
Continue readingcmkl: Air Canada vs CUPE: the company charges ‘bad faith’
It would be funny if I didn’t think that the livelihoods of 6,000 or so people hung in the balance. But Air Canada has charged the union with bad faith bargaining because the membership refused to accept the second tentative agreement CUPE negotiators …
Continue readingcmkl: The federal labour board ‘reviews’ the situation at Air Canada
Journalism can be so maddeningly vague at times. This business of the federal labour relations board “reviewing” the negotiations at Air Canada and therefore rendering any strike illegal is just one of those times.
Continue readingcmkl: Air Canada flight attendants vote down two tentative agreements
Wow. This does not happen a lot. Air Canada flight attendants – CUPE members – have voted down not one but two tentative agreements that the union’s leadership was recommending.
Continue readingcmkl: Power Workers Union caught astroturfing
I believe PWU official John Sprackett when he tells Postmedia that social media is new territory for the PWU. It’s a plausible form of denial given how bad unions are at social media.
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Private Member Bill on Union Financial Disclosure
Conservative MP Russ Hiebert tabled his private member bill in the Commons yesterday, calling for changes to the Income Tax Act to require unions (which are income-tax-exempt under the Act … duh! since they are, after all, non-profit organizations) to publicly disclose their financial statements. Here are a few quick points that came to mind in […]
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