The low wage conservative

The low wage conservative governments from Ottawa to Edmonton to Regina and Victoria would love this...

Hate to burst your bubble

Hate to burst your bubble Tom but the business community has been trying to break up unions for along time now. Just listen to the drivel that comes out of the mouth of Michael (the money guru) Campbell. A couple of months ago I heard him say that Unions hate business. (I was driving at the time and I had difficulty in putting my foot thru my truck radio) Another topic that he milks as much as he can is about pensions and how business can't afford them for their employees. Why does he never mention his brothers pension?????

Another fella who loves to

Another fella who loves to bash unions is that 'ol Liberal supporter, Phil Hochstein.

No worries

Labour-hater Harper is a long way from a majority and its getting longer.

According to polls the Conservatives are at their lowest point in the campaign.

The Cons, Libs, Bloc and Greens are down. The NDP on the other hand is up in every region of the country.

Frank

Have you got any suggestion as to the best poll(s) to watch during this election? Nanos does his daily thing, but I think it is heavily slanted in favour of land-line users. Also, I wonder about polls that are conducted during daylight hours: so many working people and students are not available at that time whereas retirees often are.

Integration with the US has always held danger for unions

There a lot more about integration with the US in Donald Gutstein's book, Not A Conspiracy Theory. Fraser Institute involvment in that is documented there as well.

"[D]on’t rule out the possibility that much of our adult work force will be forced back into a modern-day version of serfdom. With our labour laws impaired and laxly enforced, with workers’ unions and bargaining rights weakened, with well-paid manufacturing jobs being replaced by low-paid part-time or temporary work, the regression of our labour force into 19th-century-style servitude is far from a dystopian fantasy."
—the CCPA Monitor, “Today’s robber barons seek to emulate 19th-century ones,” Ed Finn, October 2010, p. 5

So, please vote!--@Rolf_Auer

Note

Note that the Supreme Court has said there's a right to good-faith collective bargaining, not a right to get any constructive end from said collective bargaining.

SharingIsGood

In my opinion Leger, Angus-Reid, Ekos, Environics and Harris-Decima are all good.

Nanos has been disappointing this time around with wild unexplained swings that bear no relation to other pollsters. Ipsos should be looked at with a wary eye. And COMPAS should be ignored. Abacus and Forum Research I don't know al ot about but FR is the pollster for the Hill-Times and seems good.

You could just go to threehundredeight.blogspot.com and see their aggregate numbers but they are very slow to respond to changes. And I think their reliance on Nanos and Ipsos and others (like COMPAS) skews their averages.

Angus-Reid was the best pollster in 2008 and they and Leger just released new polls in the last 24 hours showing the Cons down and the NDP up everywhere. That to me is more significant than the latest Nanos but I guess the only way to prove who's the best this time around will be the final result on May 2nd.

Sharing

I should have mentioned that Angus Reid says the national numbers are now

Cons 36 (down 2)
NDP 25 (down 2)
Libs 25 (up 4)
Greens 5 (down 1)

"The NDP, however, is the top choice for voters aged 18 to 34 (30%), and is now second to the Tories among voters aged 35-to-54 (26%). The Conservatives maintain their dominance among Canadians over the age of 55 (43%)."

"The performance of NDP leader Jack Layton in the televised debates has led to the highest approval rating recorded by any Canadian federal politician in an Angus Reid Public Opinion poll over the past three years. Half of Canadians (50%) approve of the way Layton is doing his job.

One third of respondents approve of Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper (33%), while one-in-four feel the same way about both Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff (24%) and Green Party leader Elizabeth May (also 24%)."

oops

That should be

Cons 36 (down 2)
NDP 25 (up 4)
Libs 25 (down 2)
Greens 5 (down 1)

How does the blue ruling class view self-employed poor?

I have no quarrel with labor unions per se. Most of us grew up reading Steinbeck and listening to Woody Guthrie, whose son, Arlo, is now a card-carrying Republican, according to an interview in the NYT weekend magazine recently, btw.

But I am deeply, deeply concerned at increasingly aggressive efforts by a labor force that has lost touch with reality and somehow mistaken itself for rock stars or Wall Street bankers.

What's most galling is how utterly self-interested unions are and how myopic. They seem to have no interest in or feeling for those of us who were downsized and who are now self-employed and struggling like hell to start a modest business with NO extended benefits or collective agreements. They seem to have no sense that public resources are to be shared, that they, too, are vulnerable if they continue to pay little or no attention to our brave new world in the wake of a financial crisis that may be just beginning.

Workers today would be well advised to consider two key questions at contract time:

1. What actual value do I as a worker bring to my employer, especially if my employer is taxpayers at large?

2. How soon could my services be automated when my greed suggests doing so would be cost-effective?

From Leger

Canada
Cons 38 Up 1%
Libs 26 no change
NDP 22 Up 4%
Grn 5% down 3%

Quebec
Bloc 34 Down 5%
NDP 24 Up 6%
Cons 20
Libs 20

BC
Cons 37%
NDP 28% (2nd place)

Frank-polls

Thanks, Frank.
I consider the election day poll as the the one to be interested in and most years i tell everyone to vote his or her conscience. With Layton ahead in the polls, I hope that people's conscience tells them to strategically vote for him the way so many NDPers have voted for the Liberals in years past. It was always a hold your nose and vote thing, because the Refrom/Alliance/Conservatives have always been the greater of the two evils. I say it is time to give the NDP a chance. They are in it for the average Canadian - not the big corporations. I watched Mansbridge interview him on the National tonight, and Mansbridge didn't lob any softballs. Layton landed some solid singles and doubles on some pretty difficult pitches. He scored a homer when he showed how he was different, that he'd be able to work with others. Yep, if it were baseball, he would have won the game. I think that most people are finally starting to see that big business (low corporate tax Harper and his free trade deals) does not have Canada's best interest at heart.

On a parallel note, many Germans, Norwegians and Finns are getting tired of the EU. After-all, why should the coldest nations have to support the warmer ones. Their energy and transportation costs are always higher. Granted, Norway has some oil, but Germany merged just a quarter century ago, and they have still managed to pay as they go. With Harper selling us out to the US, all of the resources we have hardly helped us when in fact mineral and energy prices are enabling huge profits for the multinationals. NAU is no better than the EU for the environment and local economies.

Unions are good!!

When someone complains about unions, saying that all unions are @%!*! etc, I like to remind them that country they live in is a union. Canada, USA etc..(unions) Also, families are unions. A union is any group of people who stick together, agreeing to certain standards and certain results for their common good. It was unions that fought hard for the labour-standards laws that protect all working people, union and non union alike. Also, good trade-unions have the best quality workers with the best skills available.
To quote Bruce Springsteen: "Whatever their faults, unions have been the only powerful and effective voice working people have ever had in the history of this country."

Wisconsin

Anyone know how the recall efforts against the Republicans are going?

Unions?

While Unions do have their positives the majority of what I see working in a union is not at all positive. Unions protect the workers rights, the worker becomes comfortable, lazy, and unproductive. Forget about firing the worst offenders, it just isn't going to happen.

Most people start off in the union as a productive worker but there are so many lifers that have had their spirits crushed long ago. You begin to realize you're the only one working hard. You might as well forget breaking a sweat because you will NOT be rewarded for it. More likely you will run into disappointment at every turn as your great ideas end up in the hands of someone else who either just doesn't care or knows no one else does. So much money is wasted. Often the laziest, cheapest options are chosen when purchasing from external vendors
that whatever was purchased either breaks or worse doesn't get used at all.

Right now I'm pretty much at the top of the pay scale so I can't expect to move up (without moving out) though I will get the odd raise for getting more grey hair (assuming the government ever increases funding again).

JebbyDeringer

JebbyDeringer

Your comments are nonsense. The main problem with firing an incompetent or dishonest employee is that most managers are TOO LAZY to do the job right.

1st you have to define the job (accurately).
2nd you have to evaluate the employees performance (accurately).

3rdly You have to let the employee know how they are doing and suggest improvements.

5thly You have to redo the process regularly.

6thly The manager must be doing hisher job (so often NOT the case).

JebbyDeringer

You are in the wrong union i suppose! My job is union, we hustle, we work hard and try and out do each other sometimes just for fun! Look, just cause your 'family' is dysfunctional doesn't mean all 'families' are. Sure, we don't want lazy, petty, individuals and groups who become jaded, unhappy sponges at the expense of taxpayers. And the other side of the coin, we don't want to all end up working for the likes of Walmart! What we want is fair, balanced treatment of workers and employers who are happy and successful with the good people they have.