and no George Bush to blame it on... go figure
Posted on 04/05/2015 4:30:46 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
I was lucky when I emigrated to Canada from Guyana in the 70s. There were lots more quality jobs to go around. I was able to get the training I needed and then almost immediately land a good job as a mechanic. I made $7.35 an hour, which in those days meant I could pay the rent and have a little left over to play with. And because I had job security I felt pretty optimistic about my future.
Today’s workers are living a whole other reality.
I can’t even imagine what it must be like to be one of the 1,500 who just lost their jobs at Future Shop, for example. They are heading out into the job market knowing they’ll be competing against the almost 18,000 others just like them who just lost their jobs at Target, and thousands more who lost jobs at Sony, Mexx, Jacob, Sears, Holt Renfrew, Bombay, Bowring and Benix.
Nor can I imagine what it would be like to be one of the many workers who have to wait until Sunday night to know if they’ll get any hours that week, let alone if they’ll get enough hours to pay the rent. Some need a second job to make ends meet, but making that work is practically impossible because the schedule for their first job is so unpredictable.
I wouldn’t want to be one of the workers who’ve resorted to signing up with temp agencies to find work either, realizing they never have quite enough because the agency skims so much off the top of their already low-wage paycheque.
This is the harsh reality for far too many in Canada these days. Over the past five years, three-quarters of all the new jobs have been part-time, temporary, or fallen into the uncertain realm of self-employment. Young workers, who now face historically high rates of unemployment, are lucky if they can land one of those precarious jobs. Fewer still dare to dream of a long-term, meaningful career.
This is unfair. It’s unacceptable. And it’s unnecessary.
There are ways to create quality jobs – jobs where workers make enough to support their families, get the respect they deserve and have long-term security so they can feel positive about the future.
Cash-starved cities have proposed an obvious idea – they’ve asked for funding to build better public transit. But will the federal government listen?
Cities know that investing in rapid transit for municipalities doesn’t just mean our commute gets easier. It also means creating thousands of good, local jobs in manufacturing and construction. Canadian workers have a long history of manufacturing high quality transit equipment. City buses, for example, are made in Manitoba and Quebec. New Flyer in Winnipeg builds hybrid and electric buses.
Canadian workers also build some of the most technologically advanced intercity trains and export them to be used around the world. How about creating even more of those good jobs by announcing investments in high-speed rail built by Canadians for Canadians?
The jobs in these workplaces are good jobs. Let’s give this industry a reason to expand and create more of them.
We also need a better solution for all those parents out there juggling work schedules and relying too heavily on family members to patch together childcare. Two-thirds of kids under five have parents that work – but there aren't enough childcare spaces for those kids, and the spaces that exist are either unreliable or way too expensive for most families.
In Ontario, families can pay between $40 and $60 a day for care. In big cities, the cost is higher. Tiny tax breaks and income splitting just won’t cut it.
It doesn't have to be this way. We’ve already seen it work in Quebec. Providing subsidized childcare solutions is more efficient, creates good jobs and helps grow the economy.
The government would recover 90% of the cost in higher tax revenues almost immediately. And the economy would grow because more people – especially women – would be able to work. And of course it’s obvious that workers are better able to focus when they know their children are safe and well cared for. That means higher productivity.
The government could also create tens of thousands of quality jobs by investing in, instead of cutting, public health care. Many Canadians don’t even know that the federal government walked away from negotiations with the provinces for a new 10-year health-care plan, and cut $36 billion in health-care funding too.
Every day I hear more news about layoffs of nurses at hospitals, or the desperate shortage of long-term beds and care for our seniors. What is this going to mean in 10 or 15 years when so much more of our population needs that care? How is it possible that we are laying off so many health-care workers while 4 million Canadians still can’t find a family doctor?
I really hope the government is going to reverse that decision to walk away and invest instead in recruiting, training and retaining the doctors and other health care professionals Canadians so desperately need.
I hope it will also tackle the shortage of 86,000 long-term care beds for seniors we face over the next 10 years. Let’s invest and increase the number of long-term care beds, and start recruiting and training specialized care workers now to ensure seniors will get the hands-on care they need as so much of our population ages.
Creating the good, stable, family-supporting jobs so many Canadians need today is possible. The labour movement isn’t alone in asking the federal government to make the smarter, better choices that would make that happen. Let’s hope the government finally listens, because Canadian workers deserve so much better.
If not, then it’s time for Canadians to make those smarter, better choices for themselves at the ballot box and change the government.
-- Hassan Yussuff is president of the Canadian Labour Congress, which represents 3.3 million workers in Canada.
Lol. Well my kids are grown now but I could see those idiots saying I owe back taxes and confiscating my check to cover them.
Thank you for your service!
I give the credit to my husband who had always placed the welfare of me and our childrenabove his own. He is my hero
I want two ponies.
And why exactly do workers deserve better jobs?
Can they actually successfully perform “better” jobs? Whatever that is supposed to mean?
and no George Bush to blame it on... go figure
God’s truth there was a show on that spilled the beans about a real life truth and I’m not sure they realized how profound it was.
An older guy was talking to a younger protege and was explaining about his dog to her. Nothing special about the dog, but he had taken care of the little guy since a pup, and now he was older. He explained that he learned about what love was from this dog. He - paraphrasing - said that when you take care of something, you eventually come to love it.
And it then struck me about the left’s agenda to take kids away from their parents as soon as possible. Daycare, 3K, 4K, etc. Not just so that they could start reprogramming the kids, but also to stop the development of the love relationship between parents and kids. Because when both work and someone else takes care of them, the whole “growing to love them because you take care of them” is stunted.
True. If children are expendable then so are the parents. They will never admit that the destruction of the family is the goal.....they believe their agenda is noble! That is how badly they are under the spell of the deceiver.
I believe this was in Speer’s INSIDE THE THIRD REICH : That Hitler always fed his dog himself ( by elaborate arrangement I presume! ) because he knew that the dog regarded whoever fed him as his master.
No, it wasn’t. I know exactly where I am taking it from. It’s from The Americans.
Don't doubt me!
THAT IS NOT AT ALL THE POINT OF MY REFERENCE. READ THE DAMN THING.
IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE MASTER/DOG anything. THERE IS JACK CRAP ABOUT LEARNING TO LOVE BY TAKING CARE OF SOMETHING IN THE PIECE YOU POSTED.
GEEZUS. INSERTING CRAP INTO SOMETHING AFTER BEING TOLD THE SOURCE IS NOT EFFING HELPFUL.
Well, that’s a point, but it seems to me that it’s more about the kids than the parents. And the kids are the pet dogs in your analogy. Yes you did say, “Nothing special about the dog.” So this is saying the kids don’t matter. I guess I had trouble absorbing that important point.
When I worked in the hinterlands of China in the late ‘76 to early ‘77 era, I saw a horde of Chinese laborers chipping away at a concrete chimney pedestal that had been poured a couple feet too high (about 15 ft diameter). They were using crude chisels made from soft steel rebar and homemade hammers. The communists were always bragging to me that “We have no unemployment in China!”’
Maybe they should have downgraded to teaspoons.
The owner stated, "I'll pay you what you're worth."
To which the prospect replied, "I can't live on that!"
And therein lies the problem - all these folks want jobs that pay them a lot more than the value they impart upon the business....
And they want free stuff; education, health care, phones, etc. Which of course means that the gub'mint steals more money from those that work or that those that supply those newly minted "free stuffs", must surrender their goods & services for less compensation.
I wonder if the ZeroCare lovers would enjoy being treated by a doctor that can't make ends meet because the gub'mint is determining how much doctors will be paid for the "free care" that they provide?
No kidding!
I must admit, I loved that story about Friedman, because I can just imagine the baffled look on the faces of those he supposedly said it to!
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