Now is no time for restraint
November 28, 2008
Rumours are flying around Queen’s Park that the McGuinty
government will soon announce a restraint package to curb government
spending.
This is exactly the wrong thing to do. And it’s exactly the
wrong time to do it.
Even Conservative leaders – in other countries, anyway --
realize that what the world needs now is a massive economic stimulus. We
need to create jobs and get things humming again. Stimulus means spending
money, even if we have to borrow to do it.
The McGuinty government needs to get with the program.
“Restraint” means not spending. It means fewer jobs, lower
wages, a slower economy, and a longer recession. It means abdicating
leadership during the biggest economic crisis of our time.
The recession we face today has its roots in the U.S.
mortgage meltdown. That disaster happened because American workers were too
poor to realize their dream of home ownership. While Wall Street traders
were paying more for supper than many workers earned in a year, those same
workers were going belly up.
Any economic “strategy” that cuts wage gains for real people
doing real work is bound to fail. Any strategy that puts money in workers’
pockets is a good one.
For the last 30 years, governments and corporations around
the world have co-operated to boost corporate profits – and cut corporate
taxes – by reducing workers’ wages.
Workers everywhere are more productive than ever (yes, you
do need more skills to do your job today than you did yesterday). Yet wages
have stagnated. According a
study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, “If
Canadian workers had earned real wages that rose in proportion to their
productivity increases between 1991 and 2005, their incomes would have been
$200 higher each week in 2005 (in 2005 dollars). Canadians who work
full-time for a full year could have been receiving at least $10,000 more in
average real pay in 2005."
We need to re-balance the economy. Wages need to go up.
Years from now, how will we look back on this time? As a
long Depression when things just got worse? Or as a Turning Point where they
got better?
If we are smart, the year ahead will be the start of a deep
change in the way Ontario works. We will rebuild all our public
services and make them stronger than ever. We will invest in physical
infrastructure – transit, housing, community centres, pools and rinks – and
we will give our social infrastructure an historic boost. We will ease staff
shortages in home care and long-term care, children’s mental health, early
childhood education, and all the programs that support our most vulnerable
citizens. We will fight poverty and discrimination. We will create green
jobs, and we will create good jobs: not unstable, part-time, low-wage,
throwaway jobs, but jobs that allow all of us to live well, bring our
children up properly, and retire with dignity.
That is what we will do if we are smart. But it will take
all-out, courageous leadership. Premier McGuinty must decide: Will he make
his mark on history, or end up a footnote?
Now is no time for restraint.
In solidarity,
Warren (Smokey) Thomas
President
OPS Bargaining 2008
