Sept/Oct 2006: Kill Phil

By Chris Arsenault
Briarpatch Magazine
September/October 2006

Ducking behind walls to avoid a suspicious hotel manager’s roving eye; flipping burgers and washing dishes in university cafeterias; sharing cigarettes with co-workers and trying to gauge when to drop the U-word; holding impromptu organizing meetings behind the dumpster out back—I did all of these things while working as an organizer, and none of it got me any closer to that promised land of twenty-first century union organizing: the service sector. Simply put, the service sector is where the labour movement needs to be if it’s going to hold its ground in the face of corporate and government rollbacks. And we’re not making much headway.

The service sector—baristas, walmart cashiers, call center representatives, and grocery baggers (as well as some high-wage consultants and computer programmers)—now accounts for seventy percent of the Canadian workforce. Meanwhile, union density in Canada dipped below thirty percent of the paid labour force in 1999, for the first time in five decades. There is a correlation here.

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By Michael Skinner
Briarpatch Magazine
September/October 2006

In 1997, the World Bank loaned thirteen million dollars (US) to the government of Guatemala to finance the privatization of the country’s seaport, electrical grid, and telephone and postal services. A Canada Post subsidiary and its offshore partner International Postal Services (IPS) received the lucrative concession to manage the privatization of the Guatemalan postal service.

Canada Post International Limited (CPIL), which at the time was known as Canada Post Systems Management Limited, is a subsidiary company of Canada Post, a crown corporation wholly-owned by the government of Canada.

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By J. F. Conway
Briarpatch Magazine
September/October 2006

The NDP is on the cusp of forgetting—not for the first time—how crucial the support of the province’s labour movement and the working-class vote are to maintaining its hold on power.

The Saskatchewan NDP is nearing the end of its fifteenth year of continuous power, and faces an election in 2007 or 2008. Premier Lorne Calvert has begun to equivocate in his support for labour, most recently bowing to the right-wing Saskatchewan Party and an aroused business lobby to repeal labour legislation of benefit to part-time workers. Further, Calvert, like his predecessor Roy Romanow, has dragged his feet on responding to the labour movement�s demands for more progressive, pro-worker labour laws. Accordingly, disillusionment has grown within the labour movement towards the NDP government. In the June 19 Weyburn-Big Muddy by-election, the NDP was defeated by a two-to-one margin by the Sasatchewan Party, placing third behind the Liberals. There�s a growing mood of defeatism in the NDP, and among its electoral supporters. Unless the government makes some dramatic moves, it seems likely that Calvert will lose the next election. It appears the NDP is on the cusp of forgetting—not for the first time—how crucial the support of the labour movement and the working-class vote are to maintaining its hold on power.

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By Chris Kincaid
Briarpatch Magazine
September/October 2006

PENSION: I’m not dead!
UNION: He says he’s not dead!
COMPANY: Yes, he is.
PENSION: I’m not!
UNION: He isn’t.
COMPANY: Well, he will be soon; he’s very ill.
PENSION: I’m getting better!
COMPANY: No, you’re not—you’ll be stone dead in a moment.
(With apologies to Monty Python)

What can people do to ensure a decent retirement? A good workplace pension is a smart place to start. But the common line employers are giving these days is that what’s good for the company is good for the workforce—even if that includes cutting employees’ pensions. But workers shouldn’t take these arguments lying down.

When the Canadian media bothers to talk about pensions, plans are described as “deteriorating,” “underfunded,” “in the red,” “failing,” and other terrible things. We are told that pensions are on their deathbeds. A recent article in the Edmonton Journal, for example, stated that underfunding of pensions is “creating a crisis today that threatens the existence of defined-benefit plans.”

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