ThePovertyLineIsNot
OneDimensionalVille
Apropos of yesterday, Travis Lupick has a good comparator up of the various BC political party's plans for the minimum wage up in the GStraight.
The NDP have called for raising it to $15 per hour by 2021, the end of their first mandate, which is the same schedule as Seattle.
As per their usual modus operandi (government by press release not policy) the Clarklandians are pretending to be progressive on this issue but the miniscule increase announced for later this month will put us on a path to $15 by 2034.
Gosh.
Aren't we supposed to have a trillion dollar LNG windfall by then (as opposed to a $15 billion dollar Site C debt)?
Interestingly, this is what he who is the progressive vote splitter that the Clarklandians are counting on had to say about the $15 dollar minimum wage issue:
...The B.C. Greens don’t yet have an official position on the minimum wage. In a telephone interview, Green leader and Oak Bay–Gordon Head MLA Andrew Weaver dismissed the Liberals’ minimum wage as “unacceptable”, and he also criticized the NDP for its position.
“How do you know that $15 is the right minimum wage?” he asked. “It’s just a number that’s round.”...
Not to folks that are living below the poverty line it isn't.
______
Of course, if the proMedia press herd turns on them (which it likely won't), the Clarklandian wizards and their Klout Klub sycophants are sure to set the surrogates screaming about how Horgan's plan will destroy the economy...Which is why Seattle's being a wee bit out front is helpful in the extreme for those that care about actual reality (not that the herd will pay much attention to that, either).
.
Music Notes
1 hour ago
5 comments:
That's a strange comment from Andrew Weaver. There isn't no one "right" minimum wage. What does he even mean by that? How do you define the "right" minimum wage?
How "Green" can Weaver be when he supports IPP's. What B.S.!
In my opinion Weaver opened his mouth before engaging his brain. What did he mean, how do we know $15 is the right amount? Well Weaver it goes like this. At $15 an hr a single person can rent a place to live and eat at the same time. Now Weaver, you with your MLA salary, perks, and $12K a year housing allowance may not be that in touch with real life, so here is a tip: At the current min. wage of B.C. a worker, working 40 hrs a week still does not make the amount necessary to cross the poverty line. $15 an hour does.
Perhaps Weaver could take a drive up or catch a jet with Christy and go to the Wal-Mart parking lots. Some of the people living in their vehicles are working people. They just don't have enough money to pay for a place to live.
Now at the current min. wage add a kid to your costs and you are way under the poverty line. that is why B.C. has had the highest rate of child poverty in Canada for 14 of the past 15 years. One in Five children live below the poverty line. Its not because they deserve to but because their parents can't make enough money. Case in point. On Vancouver Island over the past 5 to 8 years seniors' care homes have been bought and sold and the new owners lay every one off and then re hire them at lower salaries.
In Nanaimo Wexford House was recently sold. the workers laid off. If they can be re hired you know its for far less then they currently make. they are represented by a union, and given The B.C. Lieberals never have seen fit to allow union contracts and workers to go to the new company, companies just buy and sell to get rid of living wages.
So Weaver if you don't get it now, please write RossK who I'm sure will put you in touch with me and I'll explain it slowly to you and show you some e.g.s. Come to think about it the Comox Valley Record has some letters to the editor on the subject.
In many Vancouver island care homes salaries went up to $18 a hr. The next thing workers knew, the new owners, contracted the work out. People were free to apply for their jobs at new salaries, approx. $11 an hr. The new owners continued to be paid by the B.C. Lieberals at their previous contract levels. That is how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer or how the working class becomes the poverty class.
A few years ago Vancouver Island had lost approx. 200 jobs this way. Now the fun begins again. Then when its time to go back to school all sorts of community groups are trying to help parents get school supplies and cloths for their kids. Come Christmas we will have the same drives to help "those less fortunate". they were doing fine until el gordo and Christy clark and the various health authorities decided things were better if seniors' care was privitized. Hasn't worked out well for the seniors or the workers, but I can bet you next month's pension cheque some of those corporations are contributing nicely to Christy's cash calls.
In '81 we IWA went out for 18% over 2---settled for 15% over 3---and about 4000 workers promptly got a sandwich wrapped in a road map. Three years after this punitive lay-off/termination, the Port Alburnout Fire Chief ordered empty retail buildings in the downtown demolished. Up until the strike, "Port" had the highest per-capita income in Canada for a number of years running. Five years later, the empty lots in the downtown looked like teeth knocked out. Eighteen per-cent too uppity, perhaps...?
Three decades of Reaganomics and Thatcherism (the beginning of neo-rightism) were a reactionary dark age for labour unions; zero, zero and zero over three years became common; eighteen per-cent now seems almost unimaginable! Nowadays, contract negotiations are about job security, pensions, attrition packages and maybe, maybe some working conditions. And if the question of wages ever comes up, the answer is most likely to be, as my old man used to say, "in the negative." What used to be the critical issue has almost become a non-sequitur. Taboo amongst polite guilds, the topic of wages is now only spoken of on behalf of the lowest-paid, non-unionized, part-time working poor in terms of the minimum---and even in this wasted moribundity, talk of the slightest raise---so plainly needed---only raises the preposterous spectre of a whole "economy destroyed." In the old days, that kind of hyperbole would simply be the employer's initial position in bargaining with workers collectively; today it's presented as conventional wisdom, a frightful bogeyman leering over a caricature of "the economy," a giant wet blanket cast by powerful cronies over the unorganized and powerless. Even the qualifier "minimum" can't seem to sooth the hives raised by the word "wage." Wages have been wrestled to the ground just like dismal scientists supposedly wrestle with inflation or pay down public debt. For all the subtractions, diminishments and derisiveness tarring this economic fundament, it's hardly surprising the very idea of wages has become couched in negativity.
Once the basis of prosperity, "wage" now appears an emaciated panhandler with a sign stuck on his back that says "kick me."
Symptoms of chronic wage starvation abound and illustrate that the affliction affects everyone, not just the lowest-wage group: a nearly serf-like class of worker has developed, barely able to afford food and shelter---it cannot save and fears old age; the middle-class withers, the most deluded class for ignoring its indebtedness and entertaining notions of a comfortable retirement while their pensions and savings won't bear the math---it can't save enough but realizes it too late; and a profit-taking class that churlishly misconceives disparity as accomplishment---sensitive to resentment over its disproportionate pile of "savings," it must now wall up the Temple of Individualism it had already converted to a private treasury. Peasant, burger and aristocrat: the leper-ization of wages appears to have been retrograde and devolutionary.
Seems like a no-win proposition to me..If Horgan endorses a $15 min wage he loses the business vote(votes he doesn't have and not likely to get)..He gains the student and young vote, except they don't vote, and yes there are many adults making less than $15...
perhaps a slightly smaller min wage, free bus pass, no MSP and a few other guv perks as an election platform..
Said it before, get in power then make the big changes, too many parties with vested interests start the pre-election whine..Fraser institute..food industry, ...and
Speaking of sparkle ponies..
http://powellriverpersuader.blogspot.ca/2016/09/justin-trudeau-christy-clark-we-are.html
Cheers
Post a Comment