Showing posts with label thomas walkon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thomas walkon. Show all posts

Thursday, June 6, 2013

More Cracks in the Conservative Monolith



Hannah Thibedeau's report gladdened my heart this morning as she detailed the events behind federal Conservative M.P. Brent Rathgeber's decision to leave the Harper caucus over changes to his private member's bill that would have required the public disclosure of all the expenses and salaries of highly paid public service workers. This, coupled with recent Conservative backbencher discontent over their muzzling, gives at least some faint hope for a brighter future on the Canadian political landscape.




This comes on the heels of a damning indictment from the right-wing Canadian Taxpayers Federation prompted by Harper's failure to meet its expectations of fiscal ruthlessness, as reported in today's Star by Thomas Walkon.

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Thomas Walkom Today

The union movement is one of the last remnants of the great postwar pact between labour, capital and government.

That pact provided Canadians with things they still value, from medicare to public pension plans. Good wages in union shops kept pay high, even in workplaces that weren’t organized. Unions agitated for and won better health and safety laws that covered all.

True, union rules made it more difficult for employers to axe slackers. But they also ensured that when someone lost his job, it was for real cause — not because he or she had refused to sleep with the boss.

This brief excerpt from Thomas Walkom's column in today's Star serves as a timely reminder about both the historical and contemporary importance of the union movement. Entitled The teachers’ dispute and the war on wages, the piece posits that the Ontario McGuinty government's theft of collective bargaining rights under Bill 115 is really part of a much larger and endemic assault on good-paying jobs as governments and the corporate sector work together in advancing the latter's agenda.

One may rightly ask how an attack on public-sector workers advances that agenda. According to Walkom, well-paid teachers and other public-sector workers are a reminder of what is possible. As the writer asks, "How can employees be encouraged to accept the discipline of this new world when they see some, such as teachers and other public sector workers, still making good wages?"

Both federal and provincial governments, of course, are counting on the rabid resentment and antipathy against the public sector that is vigorously and consistently fanned by the business community.

And yet, there is evidence that the current Ontario teacher battle with the government, and the federations' argument that theirs is everyone's fight, is achieving some public resonance. A story by Robert Benzie and Kristin Rushowy reports that 49 per cent of Ontarians support the teachers.

If that is true, perhaps the collusive strategy between government and business needs revisiting.