It's odd how the strike by 24,000 Toronto civic workers has turned the attitudes of the upper middle classes, business executives, small business lobbyists and conservative politicians upside down.
These are the sorts of people who pay civic workers little heed when the garbage is being collected and the daycare centres are operating. They take garbage collection for granted, rarely wondering what sort of pay and benefits the workers take home. They're a lot more worried about whether the TSX is going to have a good third quarter. They resent every single cent in taxes that they pay and reward their accountants handsomely to keep their tax outlays to a minimum. The idea that the City of Toronto might have to increase taxes to meet the costs of the vast range of services it provides, including social services downloaded from the Ontario Government, leaves them foam-flecked and apoplectic.
Then, the Civic Workers go on strike because they don't want the burdens of the recession to be laid-off on them---heaven knows the upper middle classes haven't stepped up to carry a heavier load---and the well-to-do and their political spokespersons suddenly become frantic about garbage collection. Long before most Torontonians were due for their first garbage pick-up after the strike started, the well-heeled crowd was screaming about the imminent demise of civilization. In truth, a Hollywood film director working here would still be highly likely to want to dirty up the streets so Toronto could impersonate a U.S. city.
In Canada, the upper middle classes assume that the state at all levels is there to provide them with roads, airports, security, universities, hospitals and to shelter their incomes from tax and give them a hand with home renovation. But they hate to pay for any of this themselves and celebrate what right-wing think tanks call “tax freedom day”, the day when in theory they've paid for their share of what the state provides for them. Living on the salary of a daycare worker (typically a little over $15 an hour in Toronto) is not something they have to contemplate.
The truth is that this country's Victorian age governmental arrangements---despite the gloss put on them by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982---won't work in the 21st century. Toronto cannot survive on property taxes with periodic handouts from Queen's Park and slaps across the face from Ottawa. A look at the city's crumbling infrastructure and a ride across its potholes are evidence of that.
Canada's cities need to come out from under the shadow of the so-called senior levels of government. They require their own place in the constitution, which would endow them with the authority to raise taxes in all the ways the provinces do. In a time when the global economy is being transformed as the American Empire drowns in a sea of indebtedness, Canadians will have to display considerably more imagination about economic renewal than they are at present if they are to avoid being drowned along with their neighbours to the south.
A key to renewal will be to rebuild our cities to make them energy efficient, to equip them to replace the automobile with trams and other forms of rail and to increase urban population density to cope with the hangover of the receding age of cheap oil. The cities that make these changes effectively will be the centres of learning, culture, and come to think of it, of thriving businesses, in coming decades.
It's too bad our upper middle classes and businesspeople, the ones who would make the big money out of this, are too dumb to figure any of this out. Do I expect them to learn that the taxes they pay include crucial investment capital for the future and that they benefit hugely from the presence of well paid public employees? Not really.
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16 comments:
Excellent post, James. The situation is the same in Alberta, with the provincial government starving the cities and allowing their infrastructure to crumble, leaving the civic governments no choice but to raise property taxes. We have the added twist that the property taxes for education are collected by the cities on behalf of the province, leaving the cities to appear to be to blame.
You're right that in order for cities like Toronto to thrive in the future issues like; energy efficiency, more efficient/wide-spread public transit and increased urban density have to be addressed. However, the workers in Toronto are asking for 18 days a year in which they can stay at home and still get paid. If I am a hard working upper-middle class Torontonian, you're damned right I'd be furious about this. I see no such benefits given in the private sector of the economy. Canadian Union workers need to stop complaining about the all-ready too good situations they have, and get to work like everyone else. The important issues that you touched on (energy efficieny, public transit, etc.) are solved by having intelligent and creative people in decision-making positions. If the people of Toronto really want to see their city prosper in the future, we need competent leadership (ie. somebody other than Miller)
Dr Laxer, you are addressing at least two different issues in one post. I am prepared to believe that Toronto and some other places are sufficiently different that they should be set free of the provinces. Let me therefore leave that aside.
When it comes to so-called 'public' employees, however, I take strong exception. Even the people in your trade, with some notable exceptions, produce very little of value to the public yet receive a disproportionate share of the country's wealth. We constantly see fingers pointed against the inordinately wealthy of Canada (and amen to that). But rather than wailing about the pitiful lot of masses of chubby, unproductive government employees I do think we need to make ourselves a lot more mindful of the genuine plight of those of us trying to make ends meet on less than ten bucks an hour.
Overall, as always, government pumps money out of the hands of those that lack power into the hands of groups that have it. Government employees, and the rich, are two of those groups.
All this attention to payment for sick days not taken really gets me. It's a common feature of quite a few contracts. Employers like it because it decreases the number of sick days taken. In reality, it's simply another form of remuneration. If people want to wrap themselves in knots about it, they should advocate that it be dropped and replaced by an increase in pay costing the same amount. Are you really trying to tell me that day care workers are overpaid?
I don't mind attacks on my profession, but I do hate being called "chubby." Anyone who wants to chat about this with me is welcome to join me on a ten K run where we can hash this out.
I always find it amusing how folks complain about union wages and don't seem to be bothered about the inflated wages of corporate managers and executives. Nor are they upset at the throng of people who make their living buying and selling the work of other people on the stock market. These are the true causes of disproportionate compensation--not unions.
You don't like your wage in the private sector? Maybe you should start a union.
Bill Bell says:
"Overall, as always, government pumps money out of the hands of those that lack power into the hands of groups that have it. Government employees, and the rich, are two of those groups."
Not quite sure what you are talking about here - I am a government employee and, by the government's own study, I get paid 15% less than my trade does in private industry.
This is not particularly a Harper things as we went 10 years without a wage increase during the 'sponsorship' years.
Naturally all this time Martin/Harper found new and creative ways to reduce the taxes on corporations and the rich.
We ARE unionized ... but are legislated back to work as an essential service in case of industrial action.
Not sure what land you live in but in this one the government is not the bag of gold at the end of the rainbow - closer to the bag of shit.
great post, Jim.
Toronto is like a small country in economic terms and in the number of people whose lives are entwined with it's successful functioning. Yet Toronto has to beg for hand-outs from the "country cousins" in Ottawa and Queen's Park.
WHy should workers trust anything anyone says about the need to belt-tighten when believing such promises has left workers in other industries (auto etc) stranded?
The moneyed people, industry owners etc, took back pension moneys from workers when times were good, and now want to take more when times are bad. Sounds lop-sided, doesn't it?
Chicken Little's sky is falling once more!
This applies to the minimum wage as well. For decades people have held a blind eye and deaf ear to the plight of all the people serving them on a daily basis.
Where I live the well to do do retired spend teir funds redecorating,taking trips and eating out and ofcourse driving expensive cars.
it is interesting how quickly lack of services to the "upper classes" becomes noticed! ususally the first cuts are to services for the poor; welfar, school feeding programs, immigrant services. California is imploding right now and nearly all the cuts are going to hit those at the bottom first. Its good that the "rich" suffer first!! Probably will end with a more rapid settlement and it wqould be nice too if they could look into their hearts to really ask if they pay enouigh for what they get!!
While there is no question that brokers and bankers in finance are oft over-paid, they work much harder than City of Toronto employees. Here are three examples; 1) the average number of paid sick days at most banks is less than five, considerably less than the 18 that city of Toronto workers are demanding. 2)Many of these bank employees are forced to work weekends and extended hours, not the case with CUPE workers. 3) While I'm not going to look up statistics, it's fair to say that people in the the financial industry have a much higher level of education than city of Toronto workers. Given that all you really need to be one of the currently striking workers is a high school diploma (if that), it's nonsense that these workers receive an average salary of $25.00
There is no doubt that the financial industry, less so in Canada and moreso in the US, has to be more tightly regulated in order keep bank salaries and bonuses honest. However, this doesn't change the fact that unskilled unions workers, both in Toronto as well as Oshawa, Oakville, Detroit etc., are grossly overpaid and benefited.
croghan27 said in part:
Bill Bell says: "Overall, as always, government pumps money ..."
"I am a government employee ... I get paid 15% less than my trade does in private industry."
This is not really what I was getting at but consider the fact that you are immune from the consequences of the business cycle and that it matters little whether the organisation of which you are a part is efficient or effective, or not. Think of university lecture halls today that would not appear strange to those who were denizens of similar institutions in Europe in the 16th century. Same old same old. No pressure to come up to date.
"Not sure what land you live in but in this one the government is not the bag of gold at the end of the rainbow ..."
I live in Canada. Look at your level of income, and the levels of income enjoyed by people across the 'public' sector, or in the ranks of the stinking rich, from the point of view of people living on very little and see if you don't appear extremely powerful. (Just not as powerful as you might like.)
AFAICT governments, far from acting as effective instruments for distributing income equitably, act to look after the needs of the wealthy and of the enormous numbers of people in 'public' service. Of course they also act in favour of other large groups with power such as big, if moribund, auto companies and their unions, and so on.
None of this is about fairness.
Professor James:
The mainstream media has done a marvelous job of detouring public anger away from the banks and other financial institutions that have caused this recession with their passion for snake oil investments like derivatives, credit swaps and subprime mortgages and, of course, the trillion dollar bailouts. First the auto workers were singled out and now the civic workers. They're easy targets. When they're on strike, the garbage doesn't go away and the kids can't go to daycare. Never mind that Mayor Miller raised police and fire fighter salaries -- he wouldn't fight them. So he demanded takebacks from the civic workers. That's a strike guaranteed.
And so here we are: the recession is dragging along and the public hates the workers despite the fact that government jobs are the jobs that we can hold onto in a downturn. The private sector lays off with impunity. Public sector employment helps steady the economy. But the media ignores that.
Ah capitalism! A hardy weed.
Prof. James:
At one time, Toronto was home to a group of Victorians who saw the relationship between public splendor and taxation and favoured both. Not, socialists, we would have called them Red Tories. Their monuments? The public schools and libraries that dot the city, the TTC, Allen Gardens and more. Their descendants could care less. They hatch privatization schemes and lobby relentlessly for tax cuts. Characters like John Tory. They lack class. They lack vision. All they can see is Haliburton or the Kawarthas on the weekend. They are locusts.
Jon, as always you're a good read in hard times.
I couldn't agree more with Mr. Laxer. The Canadian establishment has persisted for decades to brainwash the citizenry. The latest round of insanity started in the mid-70's with the development of the micro-chip. Instead of employing the new technology for the betterment of the whole of society, the establishment has set up a droning billboard of classist hogwash perpetuating the myths of capitalism and producing an unprecedented divide between the rich and the poor. The slick, glossy deal-making on Blackberries has led to this divide and to the melt-down of the North American economy. Jobs have been sold to Asia and speculalators have driven housing prices through the roof. There's no work so the speculators legitimize their obsolescence by jacking up house prices. It all fits nicely within the classist goal framework of the banks. When are we going to see affordable housing become a priority?
So much lost.
Hopefully, people will wake up and take some control back soon.
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