Are wages in Canada stagnant or growing? The short answer is another question: do you live in an oil boom province? There’s a fairly common meme that while Canada, like the US, saw wages stagnate, this is no longer true. Indeed, overall wage growth has picked up since the last crisis. “Stagnant
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Left Over: Any Cardboard to Spare?
Affordable housing in Vancouver within reach: Michael Geller Michael Geller says innovative design and financing ideas are key to creating more affordable Vancouver homes By Margaret Gallagher, CBC News Posted: Feb 02, 2015 7:29 AM PT Last Updated: Feb 02, 2015 7:29 AM PT Yes, let’s crowd those poor
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Robots, migration and the future of work (Briarpatch Magazine)
I have a longer read in the newest issue of Briarpatch Magazine, which is dedicated to the world of work. If you don’t know Briarpatch, be sure to check out the other articles in this issue and consider subscribing; this is one of Canada’s oldest independent left publications and definitely
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Political Eh-conomy Radio: Focus on China
https://politicalehconomy.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/podcast-141102-china.mp3 The focus of today’s podcast is China: its development over the past several years, the situation of workers and unions as well as future directions. To get some perspective second largest economy in the world and one still expanding at breakneck, albeit slower, pace, I spoke with two guests:
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: On the hunt for good jobs
There’s lots of talk about “good jobs” these days. At the same time, the expectations for what makes work not only “good” but even a “job” keep falling. It’s hard to fight for better (and less) work in light of decades of defeat for workers as an organized force, years
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Someone is making slightly more than you and this report says it’s time for it to stop!
Here’s a familiar refrain: “Someone’s wages rose faster than someone else’s: report”. This depersonalized version sounds about as cynical as it should especially since the first someone is usually not a CEO whose wages are actually rising faster than everyone else’s – it’s that fat cat across the street, like
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Industrious immigrant vs idle Indigenous meets reality
Here’s a familiar trope: immigrants are industrious and hard-working. Here’s another, opposite trope: First Nations are idle and lazy. And here’s a graph that beautifully calls into question this neat pair of stereotypes. Source: Angella McEwen, Progressive Economics Forum. It turns out that off-reserve First Nations workers and recent immigrants
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: The pension fight: on the picket line or in regulations?
It’s relatively common knowledge that employer-run pensions have been scaled back over the past few decades. I’ve decided to dig some data on pensions for this post to see just how this has taken place in Canada, motivated by a just-released analysis of US pension reform that finds contradictions in
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Supermanagers and the social psychology of wealth
By now, Thomas Piketty’s U-shaped graphs of wealth and income concentration are well known. What has received less attention are the differences between the last, early-20th-century inequality peak and today. One important difference is that the composition of wealth and income has changed: more of the income of the wealthy
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: On talking about priorities: Oil spills and teachers strikes
On the same day one week ago, teachers in British Columbia began a full strike and the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline was approved by the Canadian government. With such telling coincidences, it is hard not to juxtapose the two broad social conflicts in which BC has become a flashpoint: that
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Pension trade-offs and democratic deficits
Forget houses as a source of secondary income – that’s so 2007. After the latest recession, Americans are increasingly dipping into their retirement savings to fund on-going consumer expenses. Many private 401(k) plans have rules that allow workers to withdraw some amount of saved funds before retirement and such early
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Hudak’s plans to cut teachers in statistics and politics
It’s election time in Ontario and that means graphs and statistics, facts and factoids, some stale, some new come out of the woodwork. Take the tweet below as an example, one that riffs on the old theme of an exploding public sector encapsulated in Tim Hudak’s promise to cut 100,000
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Political Eh-conomy Radio: CLC Convention 2014
This week’s convention of the Canadian Labour Congress was more eventful than it has been in some time. There was a change of leadership and an energy palpable even from afar via social media. Of course, four days of convention does not a labour movement make and so today I’ve gathered
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: May (we struggle to work less during the) Day
The struggle for fewer working hours during the day, and by extension the week and the year, was long a cornerstone of organized workers. Both the struggle and the actual number of hours worked has stalled of late. Annual hours worked in Canada, the US and UK have all followed a similar pattern,
Continue readingParliamANT Hill: PM warns employers who prefer foreigAnt workers over CanadiAnts
Inspired by this headline: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/stephen-harper-warns-employers-who-prefer-foreign-workers-over-canadians-1.2625964
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Victim or menace: Notes on the TFWP and political agency
The louder the debate about temporary foreign workers grows, the more it seems temporary foreign workers, especially those from the global South performing low-wage labour, are left in the din on the sidelines. While there have been stories about exploitation on the job and beyond, much of the focus is
Continue readingApril 28—National Day of Mourning
In 1984, the Canadian Labour Congress declared April 28th a National Day of Mourning for workers who have been killed, or suffer disease or injury as a result of work. It is now recognized in over a 100 countries around the world. Every year, unions, labour councils, families and community
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Political Eh-conomy Radio: Temporary Foreign Workers
The Temporary Foreign Workers Program has been increasingly in the spotlight the last few weeks. Many allegations have surfaced about the appalling living and working conditions faced by migrant workers. While much of the media coverage has ignored what is most important, my two guests on this week’s podcast are ready to offer some
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: The Temporary Foreign Worker Program and labour solidarity
Yesterday, I took a look at the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) and how it helps enforce labour discipline on all workers, and low-wage workers in particular. Today, I want to explore the migration side of the migrant worker equation. The context of migration not only makes it easier for
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: The Temporary Foreign Workers Program and labour market discipline
While it is a truism that migrant labour built Canada, this same migrant labour has long been used to discipline domestic workers. Both facts are imprinted into the history of Canada. Today is no different and the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) is at the centre of debates about migrant
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