Archive for the ‘Employment Policy Context’ Category
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Ottawa outsources the attack on the middle class
Jan.6, 2012
… it is time for an end to the scattershot, no-strings-attached tax breaks being tossed from Stephen Harper’s government to large multinationals that are using it to drive down the standard of living in this country. Friday’s closing of the Electro-Motive Diesel plant is simply the most egregious example of taxpayers’ funds being used to try to bust unions or ship jobs out of the country… Under the Investment Canada Act, such takeovers are supposed to demonstrate a “net benefit” to Canada, but, in fact, are acting as an anvil on wages, living standards and the prosperity of communities in central Canada.
Tags: economy, ideology, standard of living
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Caterpillar closing part of a coordinated attack on unions
Feb 03 2012
Since it locked out 460 Canadian workers in January, the giant U.S. firm had made little secret of its intent to move their jobs to Muncie, Indiana. All it was waiting for, apparently, was a signal that the state government there was serious about crippling trade unions. The London plant closing is not an isolated event. It is part of a coordinated attack across North America on unions and wages… But the attack on wages is also being aided and abetted by governments. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government is blatantly anti-union. Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty’s government is simply useless.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, standard of living
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Made in the World
Jan. 28, 2012
‘Let’s send some software generation overseas.’ This is not the outsourcing we’re doing today… 96 percent of our potential new customers today live outside of America.” That’s the rest of the world. And if companies like Dell want to sell to them… it needs to design and manufacture some parts of its products in their countries… But America can thrive in this world… either imagining products, designing products, marketing products, orchestrating the supply chain for products, manufacturing high-end products and retailing products. If we get our share, we’ll do fine.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, standard of living
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‘China Syndrome’ rears head in coming U.S. election
Feb. 02, 2012
The truth is we are no longer living in “one nation under God” – we are living in one world under God. Globalization is working – the world over all is getting richer. But a lot of the costs of that transition are being borne by specific groups of workers in the developed West… The irony today is that the real internationalists are no longer the bleeding-heart liberals, they are the cutthroat titans of capital… Smart policy, however, can make a big difference… Americans might want to study how Germany has turned the China Syndrome to the benefit of both its chief executives and its blue-collar workers.
Tags: economy, globalization, standard of living
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Statscan numbers highlight concerns about aging and the work force
Feb. 03, 2012
“Since 2006 the share of the working-age population has decreased in most eastern provinces; it has remained the same or increased in Ontario and western provinces,” the Statscan document says… Canada will soon reach, or has already reached, the point where the number of younger people of age to enter the labour force equals the number of Canadians old enough to leave it. Immigration and delayed retirement, however, could ease this looming pressure on the work force.
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Can Ottawa spark innovation? It hasn’t yet
Feb. 01, 2012
the federal government has… more than 100 programs, institutes and regional development agencies to support business. That figure doesn’t include an array of tax incentives, the largest of which is the Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) tax credit. All together, these business programs cost $6.44-billion in the fiscal year 2010-2011… Whether government programs are at the heart of the problem is doubtful, given that the R&D tax credits have been among the most generous in the world… Canada has industries that just don’t do much research and development…
Tags: economy, standard of living, tax
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Canada chops employment insurance staff, leaving jobless in the lurch
Jan 29 2012
An applicant who provides all the information required by Service Canada is supposed to get his or her first benefit payment within 28 days. But thousands of laid-off workers say they’ve been waiting months. It’s impossible to get though to Service Canada; the phone lines are jammed. It takes hours to get an appointment with a claims officer when they go to the office in person. And when their turn finally comes, they’re often told their claim is “spooling” or “churning” in the computer and won’t be retrievable for three weeks… Why is the federal agency failing to keep its part of the bargain?
Tags: economy, ideology, rights, standard of living
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Policy, not technology is killing Canadian manufacturing
Jan. 24, 2012
… technology can explain some of the job loss, but not most of it. It certainly cannot explain the disproportionate carnage in Canadian manufacturing… The loss of 500,000 manufacturing jobs in Canada over the last decade was far more dramatic than most jurisdictions. Many factors contributed to this miserable record… [but] Caterpillar’s demand to cut Canadian wages in half has nothing to do with technology. It reflects power: a global company’s ability to isolate and threaten workers, one factory at a time. And it reflects policy: an active decision by governments (like Canada’s) to let them do it.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, rights, standard of living
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Ottawa favours foreign businesses over Canadian employees
Jan 16 2012
Ironically, the Harper government has complained forcefully about “foreign” interference from outside environmentalists protesting a proposed pipeline across the Rockies. But when it comes to foreign companies stripping Canadian workers of half their wages and then moving operations out of the country, the government hasn’t a negative word to say. Harper is of course staunchly pro-capitalist, and has aggressively lowered corporate tax rates, while refusing to link lower taxes to investment or job creation.
Tags: economy, ideology, participation, standard of living
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Keynes Was Right
Dec. 29, 2011
… the real test of Keynesian economics hasn’t come from the half-hearted efforts of the U.S. federal government to boost the economy, which were largely offset by cuts at the state and local levels. It has, instead, come from European nations like Greece and Ireland that had to impose savage fiscal austerity as a condition for receiving emergency loans — and have suffered Depression-level economic slumps… 2011 was a year in which our political elite obsessed over short-term deficits that aren’t actually a problem and, in the process, made the real problem — a depressed economy and mass unemployment — worse.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, ideology, standard of living, tax
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