Workers bear burden of provincial ‘restraint’
Toronto Star:
Published on November 19, 2010
A $35,000-a-year caregiver
in a nursing home doesn’t usually get much
news coverage.
She feeds our parents and
grandparents. She helps them use the
bathroom. She tries to enrich their final
years. Sometimes she holds their hands as
they die.
None of this makes the news.
It’s behind the scenes, where most working
people spend their days.
But these days, if an
arbitrator says a caregiver’s wages should
keep up with inflation, suddenly she’s on
the front page.
Under Dalton McGuinty’s
wage-freeze plan, our caregiver is supposed
to take a two-year pay cut equal to the rate
of inflation. At the normal rate, that adds
up to 4 per cent, or about $1,400 a year.
(This year, the cut is even bigger because
of HST inflation.)
The premier says he “just
can’t believe” a lab technologist who is
trained to diagnose 45 types of cancer
doesn’t want to take a pay cut.
Maybe he needs to look
through the microscope and see what his wage
“freeze” is really all about.
McGuinty says cuts in real
wages will protect services, save jobs and
pay down the deficit. Sounds good — too bad
it’s not true.
The fact is, none of the
money workers lose will go to any of these
things. All of it is going somewhere else.
When fully phased in, the
savings from the wage freeze could reach
$1.8 billion a year.
Where is it really going?
It’s going to fund the
premier’s $2.4 billion-a-year cut to the
corporate income tax rate.
Every single dollar workers
lose through the wage freeze will go to the
profits of companies like the Royal Bank of
Canada, Rogers and Imperial Oil. That’s what
my members can’t stand.
The premier says Ontario
needs corporate tax cuts. He says they will
create jobs.
This mantra from the Mike
Harris days has only one purpose: to conceal
a massive transfer of wealth from the
pockets of working people to the bonuses of
CEOs.
The facts about corporate
tax cuts don’t fit Dalton’s version.
In its 2010
Competitive Alternatives study, KPMG
said Canada’s “total tax index” was the
second-lowest among 10 competitor countries.
Toronto had lower taxes for business than
all U.S. and European cities studied.
Between Parliament Hill and
Queen’s Park, we’ve had 10 years of
corporate income tax cuts in Ontario. In
theory, this should have boosted investment.
In fact, the rate of investment has actually
gone down.
In its 2010 budget, the
federal government ranked cuts to corporate
income taxes as the worst way to stimulate
job creation.
Federal economists said
every dollar spent on these
no-strings-attached corporate income tax
cuts creates just 30 cents’ worth of
economic activity.
In contrast, “measures to
help low-income people and the unemployed”
boost the economy by $1.70 — more than five
times as much. Spending on infrastructure
and public services ranked nearly as high.
The best path to a strong
Ontario is to put money into the pockets of
working people. It is to put money into
child care and transit and post-secondary
education. It is to feed and house people
who can’t find work.
It is not to impose a wage
freeze.
Arbitrators make the
decisions they do because they know
governments make choices.
We are not in an “era of
fiscal restraint,” as the premier claims.
Instead, we are in an era of
restraint for working people and lavish
gifts for corporations.
In 2009, the Big Six banks
paid out $8 billion in bonuses and $14
billion in profits.
Can you blame a cleaner in a
hospital for being angry when his family is
being told to tighten their belts while
bankers party?
The problem in Ontario today
is not that some arbitrators are ignoring
Dalton McGuinty’s wage freeze. The problem
is that the wage freeze itself is arbitrary,
unfair and a step backward for local
economies.
As working people, my
members are always ready to talk about ways
to protect public services and save jobs.
But our families can’t afford to donate
their wages to fund corporate profits.
In solidarity, Warren
(Smokey) Thomas, President
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