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By Greg Fingas, on May 16, 2013, at 10:58 am This and that for your Thursday reading.
- Duncan Cameron is the latest to weigh in on the Cons’ distorted sense of priorities in directing public research money toward private profits: Publicly available research is important. Since no one knows where discoveries or advances in knowledge will lead, the entire scientific community needs access to new research. There is no other way to maximize potential societal benefits. Learning is cumulative, innovative thinking flows from research building on public research.
Now with the privatization of research findings, discoveries and knowledge become industrial secrets, unavailable to Canadians who have paid for it, (Read more…)
By Greg Fingas, on May 15, 2013, at 10:10 am Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.
- Michael Babad takes a look at Bureau of Labor Statistics data on wages and employment levels – reaching the conclusion that the corporatist effort to drive wages down does nothing to improve employment prospects. But the absence of any remotely plausible policy justification hasn’t stopped the Sask Party from “modernizing” the province’s rules governing work by setting them back upwards of half a century.
- Meanwhile, Pat Atkinson rightly notes that the most important problem with the Cons’ push for temporary foreign workers is the “temporary” part. And Nicholas Keung and Dana Flavelle (Read more…)
By Greg Fingas, on May 12, 2013, at 11:52 am Miscellaneous material for your Sunday reading.
- Daniel Boffey catches one of David Cameron’s top aides saying what most Cons leave as an unstated assumption: that recession and depressed wages are good for business (as long as “business” is defined only to mean short-term profits based on exploitation): The prime minister’s adviser on enterprise has told the cabinet that the economic downturn is an excellent time for new businesses to boost profits and grow because labour is cheap, the Observer can reveal.
Lord Young, a cabinet minister under the late Baroness Thatcher, who is the only aide with his (Read more…)
By Guest Blog, on May 11, 2013, at 5:54 pm By: Andrew Stevens | First published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives on May 3, 2013: Sweeping changes to Saskatchewan’s labour relations and employment standards legislation are on the verge of being passed. Bill 85, the Saskatchewan Employment Act, will dramatically transform the laws governing trade unions and industrial relations in the province. The [...]
The post Saskatchewan: A beachhead of labour law reform? appeared first on The Canadian Progressive.
By Guest Blog, on May 11, 2013, at 5:54 pm By: Andrew Stevens | First published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives on May 3, 2013: Sweeping changes to Saskatchewan’s labour relations and employment standards legislation are on the verge of being passed. Bill 85, the Saskatchewan Employment Act, will dramatically transform the laws governing trade unions and industrial relations in the province. The [...]
The post Saskatchewan: A beachhead of labour law reform? appeared first on The Canadian Progressive.
By Greg Fingas, on May 11, 2013, at 12:35 pm Assorted content for your weekend reading.
- Armine Yalnizyan makes the case as to why wealth equates to far too much power in Canada: The problem is not that the wealthy are too powerful. The problem is that, with rare exception, as their power has increased, it has not been matched by an increase in their sense of responsibility. On the contrary, the wealthy have been using their power for decades to reduce their responsibilities to anyone but themselves.
The litany, en bref: Taxes are too high. Governments are too big. There are too many rules. Workers feel way too (Read more…)
By Greg Fingas, on May 10, 2013, at 9:32 am Assorted content to end your week.
- Yes, it’s for the best that some of Canada’s pre-eminent scientists are offering to walk Joe Oliver through the realities of climate change. But Nik Beeson’s offer of political detoxification looks like the more important step for those of us who aren’t in denial about the science: When pushing an oil addiction to a planet in the midst of catastrophic climate change is called ‘ethical,’ we have indeed entered a very Orwellian world, where words come to mean their opposites. Calling Canada’s oil more ‘ethical’ is precisely as logical as saying my crack (Read more…)
By Greg Fingas, on May 8, 2013, at 9:41 am Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.
- Linda McQuaig discusses Stephen Harper’s class war: Canadians don’t like Harper’s anti-worker agenda — when they notice it. That’s why there’s been such a public outcry since the temporary foreign worker program was exposed as a mechanism by which the Harper government has flooded the country with hundreds of thousands of cheap foreign workers, thereby suppressing Canadian wages in the interests of helping corporations.
Apart from this clumsy fiasco, the Harperites have been adroit at keeping their anti-worker bias under the radar. Instead, they’ve directed their attacks against unions, portraying them as undemocratic (Read more…)
By Obert Madondo, on May 7, 2013, at 4:45 pm By: Obert Madondo | The Canadian Progressive: A report tabled in the House of Commons last Friday reveals that the Harper Conservatives nuked more than 15,000 public service jobs last year, 8,000 of them fulltime positions. Strangely, the cuts seem to be waging a war against Canadian women and the future. 7,000 of the gutted positions benefited [...]
The post Harper Conservatives Nuked More Than 15,000 Public Service Jobs in 2012 appeared first on The Canadian Progressive.
By Greg Fingas, on May 7, 2013, at 9:41 am This and that for your Tuesday reading…
- Joseph Stiglitz discusses the abuse of intellectual property law to turn publicly-funded research into privately-held profit centres (no matter how many people die as a result): (A) Utah-based company, Myriad Genetics, claims more than that. It claims to own the rights to any test for the presence of the two critical genes associated with breast cancer – and has ruthlessly enforced that right, though their test is inferior to one that Yale University was willing to provide at much lower cost. The consequences have been tragic: Thorough, affordable testing that identifies high-risk (Read more…)
By Greg Fingas, on May 6, 2013, at 9:51 am Miscellaneous material to start your week.
- As would-be frackers show us exactly why it’s dangerous to give the corporate sector a veto over government action, Steven Shrybman suggests that corporations are mostly doing only what we’d expect in exploiting agreements designed to prioritize profits over people: Canadian businesses are simply playing by the rules of free trade which encourages the outsourcing of everthing that isn’t glued to the local Tim Hortons or the tar sands (to cite two prominent examples): that means value-added processing (where the jobs are) of natural resources that are simply ripped and shipped to the (Read more…)
By Greg Fingas, on May 5, 2013, at 11:41 am Assorted content for your Sunday reading.
- Aviva Shen looks at Monsanto’s history of regulatory capture – with the recent “Monsanto Protection Act” serving as just a minor example in a long list of control over U.S. law: Monsanto insists that its revolving door is in overdrive because Monsanto employees are simply the best qualified for positions in these agencies, who certainly don’t hold onto their loyalty to the company in their new roles.
Yet it’s hard to ignore how Monsanto has benefited from these connections. The USDA has never denied a single application for Monsanto’s genetically engineered crops. (Read more…)
By Greg Fingas, on May 4, 2013, at 12:34 pm This and that for your weekend reading.
- Helene Leblanc argues that we should make sure the Internet is treated as a commons accessible to all, rather than a privilege denied to many (particularly in rural areas): Many Canadians living outside urban centres do not have access to high speed broadband Internet and a significant number connect at speeds of 1.5 megabits per second — only marginally faster than dial-up.
In the year 2000 Estonia declared Internet access a fundamental human right, something essential for life in the 21st century, and launched a program to expand rural access. Finland (Read more…)
By Obert Madondo, on May 2, 2013, at 12:22 pm By: Obert Madondo | The Canadian Progressive: The right-wing’s regressive anti-union rhetoric and U.S.-styled attacks on the labour movement threatens Canada’s prosperity, says a report recently released by the progressive Canadian think tank Broadbent Institute. The report expresses grave concern about the Conservative government’s current political agenda and “highly-organized right-wing campaign to import American-style [...]
The post Conservatives attack on unions a threat to shared prosperity in Canada, says Broadbent Institute appeared first on The Canadian Progressive.
By Guest Blog, on May 1, 2013, at 4:35 pm By: Union of Canadian Transportation Employees | Press Release: OTTAWA, May 1, 2013 – The Union that represents Search and Rescue specialists with the Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) is not surprised at the…
The post Search and Rescue personnel deserve applause, says Union appeared first on The Canadian Progressive.
By Ingo Schmidt, on May 1, 2013, at 12:18 pm Stock markets around the world have made up the losses they incurred during the 2008–09 financial crisis and the workers of the world are paying the price for this recovery. Fiscal stimulus packages and bank bailouts that helped to contain the crisis left governments with deficits that are now being used as a pretext for spending cuts and layoffs in the public sector. At the same time, rising unemployment has had a dampening effect on wages. Losing a decently paid job to join the ranks of the working poor is very common these days. The pervasive feelings of social insecurity (Read more…)
By Greg Fingas, on May 1, 2013, at 9:43 am Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.
- Thomas Walkom writes that yesterday’s minor tinkering aside, the goal of the Cons’ temporary foreign worker program is still to drive down Canadian wages. And Miles Corak argues that the resulting distortion of employment markets shouldn’t be any more acceptable to a libertarian than a progressive: Flooding the market with workers from elsewhere, year in and year out – even during a major recession – is not about an acute labour shortage. It is nothing more than a wage subsidy to low-paying firms, a subsidy that stunts the reallocation of goods, capital, and (Read more…)
By Obert Madondo, on April 30, 2013, at 2:09 pm By: Obert Madondo | The Canadian Progressive: In the House of Commons Monday, Jason Kenney denied that the Harper Conservatives implemented the 15% wage rule, the cornerstone of the scandal-ridden federal Temporary Foreign Work…
The post Temporary Foreign Worker Program: Jason Kenney’s 15% Rule Selective Amnesia appeared first on The Canadian Progressive.
By Greg Fingas, on April 30, 2013, at 9:49 am This and that for your Tuesday reading.
- We shouldn’t be surprised that the corporate sector is reacting with contrived outrage to the Cons’ tinkering with a severely flawed temporary foreign worker program. But Jim Stanford points out what it would take to actually move labour standards upward rather than including Canadian workers in a race to the bottom: (T)he Harper government is now moving to avert a political disaster in the making. Advance coverage in the Globe and Mail indicates its proposed changes will include a new fee for temporary foreign worker permits, and requirements that employers promise to (Read more…)
By Obert Madondo, on April 29, 2013, at 1:06 pm By: Obert Madondo | The Canadian Progressive: The Canadian Auto Workers Union (CAW) says it’s concerned about school bus provider Stock Transportation’s plan to push down wages and other working conditions. In a press release issued last week, CAW said the plan would result in worsening conditions for Toronto elementary and secondary school bus drivers. “There is [...]
The post CAW concerned about worsening conditions for school bus drivers appeared first on The Canadian Progressive.
By Greg Fingas, on April 29, 2013, at 9:45 am Assorted content to start your week.
- Lynn Stuart Parramore discusses the epidemic of wage theft by U.S. employers: Americans like to think that a fair day’s work brings a fair day’s pay. Cheating workers of their wages may seem like a problem of 19th-century sweatshops. But it’s back and taking a terrible toll. We’re talking billions of dollars in wages; millions of workers affected each year. A gigantic heist is being perpetrated against working people: they’re getting screwed on overtime, denied their tips, shortchanged on benefits, defrauded on payroll, and handed paychecks that bounce like rubber balls. A (Read more…)
By Greg Fingas, on April 28, 2013, at 11:18 am Miscellaneous material for your Sunday reading.
- Daniel Kaufman notes that the EU is on the verge of implementing new standards for transparency in oil extraction – while recognizing that big oil has fought the effort every step of the way in an effort to keep its activities secret. And Shaun Thomas discusses the no-knowledge zone set up around the Northern Gateway pipeline, as Nathan Cullen’s questions within the review process revealed that the federal government hadn’t so much as talked to First Nations or affected industries about the possible impact of an oil spill.
- But then, the Cons (Read more…)
By Greg Fingas, on April 28, 2013, at 11:18 am Miscellaneous material for your Sunday reading.
- Daniel Kaufman notes that the EU is on the verge of implementing new standards for transparency in oil extraction – while recognizing that big oil has fought the effort every step of the way in an effort to keep its activities secret. And Shaun Thomas discusses the no-knowledge zone set up around the Northern Gateway pipeline, as Nathan Cullen’s questions within the review process revealed that the federal government hadn’t so much as talked to First Nations or affected industries about the possible impact of an oil spill.
- But then, the Cons (Read more…)
By laura k, on April 28, 2013, at 8:00 am As I write this, the death toll in the recent Bangladesh factory fire nears 350. That number is expected to grow, as scores of people are still trapped under giant blocks of concrete, and not expected to survive. Six people have been arrested in connection with the conditions in the factory.
This fire is only the latest (and worst) in a long series of factory fires in Bangladesh’s booming garment industry. After a fire killed 112 garment workers at Tazreen Fashions in November, clothing brands and retailers rejected a union-sponsored proposal to improve safety throughout Bangladesh’s $20 billion garment industry. (Read more…)
By Admin CP, on April 27, 2013, at 5:20 pm By: Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE): April 28 is the International Day of Mourning for workers killed or injured on the job. CUPE will honour these workers who have lost their lives or been injured at work, in special ceremonies across the country. WHO: Paul Moist, national president of the Canadian Union [...]
The post CUPE Day of Mourning reminder of fight for safer work places appeared first on The Canadian Progressive.
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