Saturday, March 29, 2014

Thank God For Mississip...errrr...Snookland.

AllYourAntiLabourLaws
'RUsVille


The latest bit of legislation from the deep south state that does its darndest to stay at the bottom of the wage inequality heap:

...(Mississipi State) Senate Bill 2473 would make it illegal to coerce a business into staying neutral in a union drive or to allow workers to choose union representation by signing cards instead of by secret ballot. It’s not clear what would constitute coercion, but businesses could sue anyone they believed engaged in it. [...]

Senate Bill 2653 tries to restrict mass picketing of a residence or place of business. It says pickets would be legal as long as they weren’t violent and didn’t block entrances. But it also makes getting a court stop order against picketing easier.

Senate Bill 2797 says the Legislature would have to pass a law to allow any state or local government to make an agreement to use unionized workers on a project. Such a project labor agreement was used to build the Toyota Motor Corp. plant in Blue Springs...



Which, of course, is awful because, as Kossack Laura Clawson, notes it is essentially a hydra-headed passel of bills that are telling unions to get GTFOutta Mississippi.

Which is the kind of things that lots of USAmericans who live outside the state, but often right next door, use to console themselves:

"Thank God for Mississippi" is a common adage in the United States, particularly in the South, that is generally used when discussing rankings of U.S. states. Since the state of Mississippi generally ranks near or (stereotypically) at the bottom of such rankings, residents of other states ranking near the bottom frequently proclaim, "Thank God for Mississippi", since the presence of that state in 50th place spares them of the shame of finishing in last place....


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So.

Can somebody tell me...

When, exactly, did Lotusland move in next door to Biloxi?

It’s what health care workers and staff at New Horizons (care home in Campbell River) expected from the new contractor: A chance to reapply for their current jobs only at lower wages and fewer benefits.

“No surprise here,” said Mike Old of the Health Employees Union. “The whole point of this exercise was to cut costs by cutting wages and benefits.”

This week, the 120 employees – who will all be laid off from the care home effective April 30 – received the compensation package from the new care provider, Kamloops-based Carecorp Senior Services...

{snippety doo-dah}

...Current employees are being offered their old jobs back, but they had to reapply for those positions and not all are coming back. One worker said that just 32 out of 60 registered care aids had signed up for job interviews which took place yesterday and today.

Old expects there will be a lot of job turnover and that will affect the residents who are mostly seniors, “This disrupts their continuity of care.”

New Horizons is owned by Park Place Seniors Living of Vancouver. According to the agreement it has with the province, the owners can contract out care, cleaning and cooking services once current contracts expire...



Gosh.

Come to think of it.

Maybe we are Biloxi and Biloxi is us.

After all, they already have Casino-Industrial-Complexes on pretty much every street corner.

If you get my drift.


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7 comments:

Anonymous said...

SH:

My last hospital stay is something I never want to repeat:
lingering in Emergency overflow concrete bunker for days because there were no beds...

I felt like I was in a mash unit: bodies on stretchers and gurneys hither and thither.

The refreshments between the 3 salty/sweet "meals" were comprised of the detritus left behind by patients. The enterprising nurses, in the interests of the hungry patients who came in after meal service, gleaned: juice boxes, fruit, cookies, packaged cheese, crackers and the like.

Sounds like a good idea anywhere else non? But in the age of superbugs, C dif, etc it is probably false economy. But, I'll leave the sciency, vectory stuff to you RossK.

The emotional temperature of the place was cranked to manic much of the time...

Adding insult to injury, most of the cotton hospital gowns have gone the way of the 8 track...the static loving acrylic sweat shrouds need to be changed much more frequently for obvious reasons.

When my youngest came to visit I told him about my gown hate, and he laughed--I shot back: remember the rainy Halloweens when I used to cut holes in a black garbage bag to cover your costume? ...well, just you wait: by the time you need a hospital, they'll have garbage bag dispenser things where you can buy a "gown" you can customize...
and...doesn't hospital have something to do with "hospitality"?

Anonymous said...

SH:

My senior parent is in supported living, the nutritional value of the food is generally substandard: Costco style Danish pastries, and other such glutenny glop are offered as a snack for seniors who struggle with blood-sugar issues, crudités for the toothless, and dentally challenged, macaroni salad up the ying-yang...it goes on and on...

Not everyone has family to provide some home-cooked meals, a few who are mobile fend for themselves and "dine" at Denny's, McDonalds or their ever popular den of iniquity: A&W.

For those for who personal care is a challenge, well you better stock up on Zincofax, and bed pads...cause that lonely care-aid won't be coming anytime soon...

RossK said...

SH and Anon--

Isn't this one small snapshot of M. Brown's grand vision of the Golden Era, personified?


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Anonymous said...

SH:

Re-newed sensitive and Miata- sexified magic Mikey played the G&M to get a gratis vanity piece in aid of lubing the greasy wheels of his ascendancy...a la...hmmm... let's say William jumping the queue over Charles to get Mummy's throne...

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/entitlements-are-a-minefield-for-elected-officials/article17728429/

Anonymous said...

SH:

Yup, the grifters have come home to roost.

But as one very wise grandmother warned/comforted: "they always get too greedy, and that is their fatal flaw".

Anonymous said...

Read about it in the Campbell River paper. These types of actions are not new. We can expect to see more of them in the future as more acute care hospitals become "3P partnerships". The state of senior care is a great business to get into. You have a captive audience and the government doesn't care about them. This started when el gordo stopped providing funds for community run seniors residences and giving money to the new private for profit corporations. They are in the business to make money and they will do it by driving salaries down and cheaping out on the food they feed seniors. Its interesting how these viruses just sweep through these private seniors' residences. They don't keep them clean, there is a high staff turn over rate and don't get paid to care. when seniors residences where community owned/controlled/non profit, they were much better than what we have today.



What is happening in Campbell River is simply another way to bust unions and to drive down the wages of working women and men in this province. In another couple of years that care home will be bringing in foreign workers because they can't find anyone locally.

West End Bob said...

"drf" grew up in Alabama very close to the Mississippi state line. You can bet there were a lot of "Thank god for Mississippi!" exclamations in his background.

Thanx for the memories . . . .