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Workers deserve better jobs
Calgary Sun ^ | 04/05/2015 | Hassan Yussuff

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.


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"Deserves got nothin' to do with it, mister." --William Munny
1 posted on 04/05/2015 4:30:46 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
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.

LOL! All of his "ways" are, of course, involve expanding government - looting taxpayers to create sinecures for himself and his ilk.

2 posted on 04/05/2015 4:35:39 PM PDT by Mr. Jeeves (Heteropatriarchal Capitalist)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Good God...he,really thinks this grab bag of Canadian goodies is the path to prosperity...
* government choo-choos
* government training
* more government health care
* government child care

All of this to help “cash starved” cities. Just WHERE would the government Santa Claus get the money to bestow these goodies on the hoi-polli? Certainly not from the poor cash-starved denizens of the cities. Probably from the evil oil and tar sands companies.

Socialists and communists don’t understand anything about the miracles of unfettered markets no matter where in the world they live.


3 posted on 04/05/2015 4:38:30 PM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom (For those who understand, no explanation is needed. For those who do not, no explanation is possible)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Employers Deserve Better Workers!


4 posted on 04/05/2015 4:38:42 PM PDT by TigersEye (STONE COLD ZOMBIE SCOURGE)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

I have not had a job in quite a while and I can only imagine, (well I think I can, maybe not), what it must be like to be out of work and to be looking these days.


5 posted on 04/05/2015 4:44:11 PM PDT by bobby.223 (Retired up in the snowy mountains of the American Redoubt and it's a great life!)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

I deserve a Billion Dollars.

This game is fun.


6 posted on 04/05/2015 4:45:19 PM PDT by Red in Blue PA (war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength, obama loves America)
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To: Red in Blue PA

I want a pony.


7 posted on 04/05/2015 4:47:27 PM PDT by dfwgator
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

Right. Why doesn’t this guy go back to Guyana where his ideas can create many thousands of jobs for Guyanese.?


8 posted on 04/05/2015 4:49:42 PM PDT by Flavious_Maximus
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

move to mexico, they have all the american jobs.


9 posted on 04/05/2015 4:57:13 PM PDT by biggredd1
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

“desperate shortage of long-term beds and care for our seniors”

How’s that wonderful Canadian-style government health care working out?

And if you can’t find a job at $8/hr, then ask for $10/hr.
Labor Union Logic.


10 posted on 04/05/2015 5:01:39 PM PDT by Rainier1789 (My Constitution has a 2nd and 10th Amendment)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
As long as there are people who think pay is a matter of "fairness" and not the need of an employer or an economy, the cancer of socialism and Marxism will live on.

I am always reminded of this Milton Friedman anecdote:

"...At one of our dinners, Milton recalled traveling to an Asian country in the 1960s and visiting a worksite where a new canal was being built. He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government bureaucrat explained: “You don’t understand. This is a jobs program.” To which Milton replied: “Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it’s jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels..."

To the dimwit who wrote this opinion piece, it would make perfect sense to have more workers, using teaspoons to grade terrain for a public transportation project.

To him, money comes from a magical place and just miraculously appears.

11 posted on 04/05/2015 5:01:52 PM PDT by rlmorel ("National success by the Democratic Party equals irretrievable ruin." Ulysses S. Grant)
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To: Flavious_Maximus

No kidding.


12 posted on 04/05/2015 5:02:15 PM PDT by rlmorel ("National success by the Democratic Party equals irretrievable ruin." Ulysses S. Grant)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Hey Canada, why don’t you send your jobless workers down to California to work on our worthless train to nowhere? No wait, make your own stupid train through your wilderness. Gawd knows you have plenty of land to build stuff no one needs or wants. Yeah, that’s the ticket.


13 posted on 04/05/2015 5:02:49 PM PDT by A Navy Vet (An Oath is Forever)
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To: Red in Blue PA
Wow. When I got to the bottom: "...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?"

He doesn't seem to understand that cutting services is part of the way government provides "health care". It is by DESIGN, not a political mistake.

What a clueless POS.

14 posted on 04/05/2015 5:04:50 PM PDT by rlmorel ("National success by the Democratic Party equals irretrievable ruin." Ulysses S. Grant)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

In the ‘70s there were plenty of jobs because the government still left some money in the hands of the people.
Irony is he’s calling for the government to do more of what it did that ruined what he misses.

Idiots, not turtles, all the way down.


15 posted on 04/05/2015 5:05:37 PM PDT by mrsmith (Dumb sluts: Lifeblood of the Media, Backbone of the Democrat/RINO Party!)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

So glad that he assimilated so well /s


16 posted on 04/05/2015 5:08:54 PM PDT by Nifster
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

More government workers means building more government buildings to house those new government workers who will be watching porn 8 hours a day. That means more work for porn stars. Organizing those new government workers into unions will require even more government jobs. Coordinating conferences for these new government workers will require more government workers who will be officed in new government buildings built by government workers. Lather, rinse, repeat ad nauseum. Won’t it be dandy when we all work for the government, make 6 figures and can watch porn all day ?


17 posted on 04/05/2015 5:15:52 PM PDT by jlindseyx42 (Namaste)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

I just found out this week that by choosing to stay home and raise my children, I deprived the government of taxes from two sources.....from my paycheck and that of the woman I would have had to hire to take care of my children.

With so many people needing the government’s help how could I be so selfish?


18 posted on 04/05/2015 5:18:40 PM PDT by Jvette
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19 posted on 04/05/2015 5:23:06 PM PDT by RedMDer (Keep Free Republic Alive with YOUR Donations!)
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To: Jvette

Better be hush .... can see Coyote Blitzer and the CNN Progressive Pimp Patrol on your doorstep castigating you in front of millions!!!


20 posted on 04/05/2015 5:27:39 PM PDT by RetiredTexasVet (The Obama administration is the most corrupt edging out the administrations of FDR and Grant.)
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