Unfortunately, in many countries, the labour union movements have been turned by corporate and government propaganda into the whipping boys of the masses. If social security ain't working, blame the unions, if medicare is too expensive, blame the unions. If government and corporations had their way, there would be no 35 hour work week in France, (40 hours in Canada). The work week would be more like 50 hours, for next to no pay. There would be NO statutory holidays, nor a 5 day work week, in many countries. It would be a 6 or 7 day work week, like it is in Malaysia. No thanks. I much prefer to have the unions with all their warts.For disclosure purposes, I am a member in a national union, CUPE (Canadian Union of Public Employees), and we have fought ever since the inception of the union for better and safer working conditions, for the ordinary worker in the front lines of health care, and in my case in the front lines of working with people with disabilities, in their homes.
Without a union, a worker in my field would be getting about $7.25 hr. at that job,(the wage that I got when starting out, when it wasn't a union "shop"), a job which has slowly been killing me over the last 20 years because of the stress of dealing with the clients, who can be violent, without warning, and of dealing with management, who can be extremely petty, vicious, and dictatorial with little warning and no forethought. And of course we musn't forget the government funding bodies, which have been squeezing the frontline workers ever since we unionised, demanding unreasonably increased levels of education in areas which have no application to our actual work, but make the funders feel better that they have forced us to get more paperwork done and to get more "qualified".
The higher the wages have risen the stiffer the qualifications have gotten, and the stiffer the qualifications of the Non profit we work for have gotten. The actual work has remained more or less the same, despite the unnecessarily exalted qualifications that we have wasted untold hours obtaining. In some ways the work has gotten more difficult with the aging of our clients, but the basics remain. We are basically day care providers, as well as nannies, cooks, housekeepers and so on. We don't really need to know half of the stuff we were required to learn for qualification purposes, but it keeps the government happier, between spells of threatening to close us down and go private care. Of course to provide private, unlicensed, non-unionised, CHEAP care, with no vacations, health care, or pensions the applicant doesn't have to provide any qualifications whatever, only the willingness to take on the slave labour job of having a person with disabilities live with you 24/7 with no relief to you, and no time off.
If this sounds like a good job, I invite you to apply in person to the local government social services agency, and you'll be welcome to it. You have no idea what it is like to be threatened, year after year with privatisation. It is very bad for morale, which translates into increased and unbearable stress over years of these kinds of attacks. Really I suspect that the government is using these threats to keep the union pliable, and agreeable to the kinds of conditions and wages that the government is willing to pay. This kind of maneuvering has severely disagreeable long term consequences in terms of employee health. Stress is after all one of the main ingredients of many life-threatening chronic diseases, such as heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.
Without our union, there would be no paid vacations, and my health care would be my own responsibility, on $7.25/hr. Yeah, you guessed it, I'd be dead by now, because I simply couldn't AFFORD to keep myself as healthy as I am, which is not so healthy. In fact I am now on medical leave (without pay) for the last year or so, but because although too stressed and ill to work (my doctor agrees), I am not obviously sick enough with something like cancer, or whatever, that i can't claim extended disability insurance . However, at least I can still pay for my own health care insurance through my work place, and that reduces the cost at least to only about $400/month. Otherwise we'd be not so good, and I would have to continue working at that killer of a job, such that i may not even make the age of 65 to retire gracefully.
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labour union on strike leaving a colliery in the UK
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In my view unions are NOT to blame for the governmental mismanagement of funds over the last 50 years. The problem is not so much that there is not enough money as that it is being spent by governments on their pet pork barrels, and NOT on the citizens. Money that was contributed by workers and employers, to Employment insurance here in Canada, which has added up to huge surpluses over the years (as they charged excessive rates), was shamelessly rerouted to "general revenue", when it was actually meant to be OUR money (the workers) to be used in the case of unemployment.. There was plenty of money to fund GENEROUS unemployment benefits for Canadians, but the feds stole it all, and now they blame us, and claim there isn't enough, and are extremely close with whatever money there is being contributed. And STILL they put it into general revenue and then blame US. What a ripoff!
The same goes for the pension plans paid into by the baby boomers.There should have been PLENTY of money to go around from the amounts that were contributed to the Canada Pension Plan, and to the workplace pension plans, but government,. as usual, WASTED the money on their pet pork barrels to keep their corporate friends happy. As for the private pension plans, don't blame us, the unionised workers for those pension funds falling flat. Blame the real culprits, the government's lax rules, which allowed the other culprits, the banks and brokerages...the Lehmann brothers, the Sachs and Goldman pirates, and all those guys to take our money, and blow it all, on their bonuses and bad investments, from which they PERSONALLY benefited, but into which the workers savings in pension plans mysteriously disappeared into that maw of greed, known as Wall Street. The same happened here in Canada, where such immoral companies as Nortel, happily took all those pensions deductions and put the money to "better use" keeping their corporate ponzi schemes afloat until there was NOTHING in the larder, and now they don't want to pay the pensions that these workers EARNED from YEARS of work and contributions.
Don't blame the workers. Don't blame the unions. Blame the governments and corporations who still CONTINUE to daily rip us off, while blaming the baby boomers for everything. It's a red herring to divert your attention from the real issues which involve corporate and governmental PIRACY. They have stolen us BLIND, and then BLAME us for not having MORE to steal.
Yes, it.sounds like a good propaganda story. Only the trouble is, if the lie is repeated often enough, and is big enough, the gullible and ignorant masses BELIEVE IT, and turn their wrath and ire on the union folks, who really are responsible for whatever good conditions and shorter working hours, and decent wages, including the minimum wage that we have today.
Unfortunately governments and corporations have been steadily working towards the goal of NO union representation, NO power to the people, and a mass of working people who are no better than slaves to the rich.
This is the eventual aim of the big money guys, who pull the puppet strings of the various government leaders.
It is wrong, it is unethical, it is cruel and inhumane; but hey that's the way they do business these days in the renewed Neo Victorian capitalist model of how things should be: no workers rights, low salaries, no pensions, no vacations, no health care and so on. This is what we are looking forward to if we let the unions disappear. They are not perfect, and often there are quite a few crooks to be found in the wood work. But then it's no worse than in industry and government. So SUPPORT your local unions rather than attempting to discredit them.
I'm not really attempting to address the
issues which are to be found in France....but i do sympathise with the unions to a great extent. They have fought for the last century or so to provide a decent living for their workers, including a decent retirement age, such that folks can actually ENJOY retirement for a few years.The goals and rights that the unions have been fighting for so long have been enjoyed as well by the many non unionised workers in many countries. The benefits have spilled over to the general population through the influence of the labour movement. Without the labour movement's political arm, there would be NO statutory holidays, nor would there be any national health care insurance, which was fought for tooth and nail by Tommy Douglas and the CCF (forerunners to the NDP) for years, and which were only obtained when the electorate had returned a minority government, such that the minority Liberals had to listen to and placate the horrid socialists (the NDP forerunners) with a few social justice programs, like national health care insurance to continue to stay in power. This is why I am such a great supporter of minority governments. Minority governments are GOOD for the masses, rather than the elites, because now the elites have to LISTEN to the low-life workers, and throw them a few crumbs from the table.
When we come to the idea of pensions, the actuarial tables which were used to decide when to pension people off were callously, and cynically calculated to implement pensions just at the point when folks were to die off, at least MOST of them. So in that case they wouldn't have to pay pensions for long, because people would be dead soon. That way they would look good, for providing the pensions, but wouldn't actually have to pay out much. Unfortunately this model doesn't work so well any more, because of the increasing longevity of people these days.
However just because people are living LONGER, doesn't mean that they are able to WORK longer. As we hit the later 50's and 60's we really start to notice that we are slowing down, and getting increasingly ill, with less stamina and strength. How in hell are we supposed to work until 68 or 70 when our health is so compromised?
SO my dear friends, and not so friends, before we blame the unions and the baby boomers for all the financial mess that we find ourselves in, and instead of forcing people to work until they die, just to save government a few bucks, please SUPPORT the labour movement, support the Union movement, and please allow the baby boomers to retire gracefully with a decent pension, BEFORE they die. Let them enjoy a few years FREE of the eons of slavery which has been visited upon labour since the beginning of time
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