A Windsor, Ontario radio station is conducting a new poll:
Wisconsin is moving to strip the state’s public employees of collective bargaining rights. Do you support the move?
Feel free to cast your vote here. Then click on “News Poll” on the left, near the middle.
I made up a quick funny video to show off the fail of the poll!
http://dailyhuff.blogspot.com/2011/02/canadian-poll-doesn-support-wisconsin.html
As of Saturday morning.. Yes = 76 per cent, No = 24 per cent.
Bill wanted proof that the left organized around selecting Commie Douglas as the greatest Canadian. I look in my archived emails at the union office as I remember getting updates twice a day on the list serve. How to vote how many times to vote it went on the whole time with a triumphal “We won” blurb out after all was said and done.
Bill wanted proof that the left organized around selecting Commie Douglas as the greatest Canadian. I look in my archived emails at the union office as I remember getting updates twice a day on the list serve. How to vote how many times to vote it went on the whole time with a triumphal “We won” blurb out after all was said and done.
ok you freeping freepers, I was just having some fun but I do have a couple of more serious responses.
@eastern paul: there can hardly be a debate about my initial intervention. Freeping while it may be fun, and a good lemming strategy invalidates any objective claims that may be gleaned through sampling.
@osumachi: “The idea of “collective bargaining agreements” at this point isn’t so much absurd as it is immoral.”
It should be noted the the right of collective bargaining is indeed a constitutionally protected right in many jurisdictions. In some cases the right to collective labour negotiations is explicitly protected. Article 28 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, entitled ‘Right of collective bargaining and action’, stipulates:
“Workers and employers, or their respective organisations, have, in accordance with Union law and national laws and practices, the right to negotiate and conclude collective agreements at the appropriate levels and, in cases of conflicts of interests, to take collective action to defend their interests, including strike action.”
In some cases, like Canada collective bargaining is a procedural right stemming from the freedom of association protected in our Charter.
In a landmark decision, Health Services and Support – Facilities Subsector Bargaining Assn. v. British Columbia (2007), the Supreme Court ruled that freedom of association guaranteed by s.2(d) includes a procedural right to collective bargaining.
The Court ruled in this case that legislation that “substantially interferes” with the process of collective bargaining is a s.2(d) infringement. The test for “substantial interference” is twofold: (1) the importance of the matter affected to the process of collective bargaining, and more specifically, the capacity of union members to come together and pursue collective goals in concert; and (2) the manner in which the measure impacts on the collective right to good faith negotiation and consultation.The decision in the Health Services case overturns jurisprudence arising from the so-called “labour trilogy” cases of 1987 that found that s.2(d) did not include a right to collective bargaining.
Don’t get me started on Milton Friedman, suffice to say Adam Smith is much more “compelling” than Friedman on the “virtues” of the free market. Which is really just to say that even Smith was better at being wrong than Friedman.
Lastly, there is one issue with which I agree with you. Our children are not being sufficiently well educated. As someone who sees them at the other end of the educational spectrum far too man children lack basic literacy and communication skills, critical thinking skills, numeracy, media literacy, and a sense of history. Where we’d likely disagree is on the solution. To attack our teachers is to simplify grossly an enormously complex issue.
I know many teachers and they earn every cent they make. They are overworked, spend most of their time dealing with behavioural management, administer highly politicized curricula meant to make politicians look good (e.g. goal oriented education aimed at passing standardized tests so our politicians, like Dalton McGuinty, can take credit for increased test scores).
I believe this is a complex social crisis created by economic, social, institutional, and political factors and it will take a reconsideration of all of these factors to ameliorate the situation.
@Harry: OK, no need to shout Harry. I heard you the first time. I hereby condemn the CBC “Greatest Canadian Poll” as a freeping orgy of biased sampling -an attitude I generally take toward all online sampling. However, I will claim anecdotally (which has about the same validity as online sampling) that any intelligent Canadian considers Tommy Douglas as one of the greatest Canadians ever, and a source of Canadian pride around the world.
p.s. the eugenics smear is a great big stinking pile of red herring. Everybody knows Douglas’ MA Thesis dealt with eugenics. In the 20’s and 30’s such views were commonplace. Regretably they still seem to form part of conservative ideology. I mean, is it the Left or the Right that’s currently raising the spectre of forced sterilization for the “unfit”.
Alberta taxpayers spent 2 billion to shore up the underfunded pensions of the teacher unions, and now the contract is coming up again they want more money and less class time. I don’t think my kid has spent a full week in school since the start of Christmas break. Now they want us to cover their teacher supplies, you know the stuff not covered when we spend $400 at the beginning of year for supplies. Maybe they should use their union dues on teacher supplies and pension funds and stop asking us to pay for it.
Bill Stewart, I believe you missed my point. My argument was a moral one. How dare these teachers demand benefits when it is clear they have not done their jobs. They have no qualms taking from the tax-payer after betraying the trust put in them. They are, in fact, moochers.
And no, I don’t believe in collective bargaining points. Give teachers an iron-clad contract and let their performance as educators determine their benefits. Higher test scores, nice benefits.
One more comment about teachers, if they are in it because they like kids, and enjoy teaching, the ones I’ve talk to say it is a sweet job, if they are in it for the pay cheque, then it sucks, the kids and the parents hate you, the only place you can hid is admin, which is why the management of the system is so bad, it is full of bad teachers. The health system suffers the same fate, nurses who hate the job end up in admin.