CANADIAN POLITICS:

THE RICH GET RICHER:

Oh my, is this "news" ? During good times the rich pull ahead as they manage to grab the fruits of expansion. In bad times guess what ? They keep pulling ahead. Good or bad they will get their paws into the till. Here's an interesting item about the widening of inequality here in Canada.

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Canada’s wage gap at record high: OECD
tavia grant
From Monday's Globe and Mail
Published Monday, Dec. 05, 2011 5:00AM EST
Last updated Monday, Dec. 05, 2011 7:56AM EST
The gap between Canada’s rich and poor is growing amid shifts in the job market and tax cuts for the wealthy, according to a study that shows income inequality at a record high among industrialized nations.

A sweeping OECD analysis to be released Monday shows the income gap in Canada is well above the 34-country average, though still not as extreme as in the United States.

Income inequality is a hot topic these days, as mirrored by the Occupy movement’s concerns over the growing gap between the rich and the rest. Protesters aren’t the only ones preoccupied with the disparity; prominent figures from Warren Buffett to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz have also fretted over the growing gap, exacerbated by the recession and weak recovery.

“Income inequality increased during both recessionary and boom periods, and it has increased despite employment growth,” said Stefano Scarpetto, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s deputy director of employment, labour and social affairs, during a presentation of the report.

A growing wage gap carries significant economic consequences. Countries with greater income inequality tend to see shorter, less sustained periods of economic growth, an IMF paper this fall concluded.

“Greater inequality raises economic, political and ethical challenges as it risks leaving a growing number of people behind in an ever-changing economy,” the OECD paper said.

Its 400-page analysis, entitled Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps Rising, a follow-up study to one released in 2008, delves into reasons behind the growing gap.

Canada in particular has seen a widening chasm since the mid-1990s. OECD research shows the average income of the top 10 per cent of Canadians in 2008 was $103,500 – 10 times than that of the bottom 10 per cent, who had an average income of $10,260, an increase from a ratio of 8 to 1 in the early 1990s.

The richest 1 per cent of Canadians saw their share of total income rise to 13.3 per cent in 2007 from 8.1 per cent in 1980.

Moreover, the richest of the rich – the top 0.1 per cent – saw their share more than double, to 5.3 per cent from 2 per cent. At the same time, the top federal marginal income tax rates tumbled – to 29 per cent in 2010 from 43 per cent in 1981.

Two factors explain Canada’s growing gap: a widening disparity in labour earnings between high- and low-paid workers, and less redistribution.

“Taxes and benefits reduce inequality less in Canada than in most OECD countries,” the study said.

Shifts in the labour market are a key reason why the gap is widening, Mr. Scarpetto said. The prevalence of part-time and temporary contract work is eroding wages. Technological progress has been more beneficial to high-skilled workers, while the gap in men’s earnings in particular is growing ever wider.

The gap in hours worked is growing too, as in other OECD nations. Since the mid-1980s, annual hours of low-wage workers in Canada have fallen to 1,100 hours from 1,300 hours, while those of higher-wage workers fell by less, to 2,100 from 2,200 hours.

Rising self-employment also played a role, as the self-employed typically earn less than other full-time workers. This explains more than one-quarter of the increase, the report said.

Taxation is another factor. Before the mid-1990s, Canada’s tax-benefit system was as effective as those of the Nordic countries in stabilizing equality, offsetting more than 70 per cent of the rise of market-income inequality, the report said. The redistributive effect has declined since then, so that taxes and benefits now offset less than 40 per cent of the rise in inequality.

The OECD report isn’t the only analysis of Canada’s growing income gap. A September study by the Conference Board of Canada found income inequality has been rising more rapidly in Canada than in the U.S. since the mid-1990s. Its analysis of 18 countries found that Canada had the fourth-largest increase in inequality between the mid-1990s and late 2000s.

There are social implications too, with more academic research linking income inequality with poor health outcomes. Last month, a study by Montreal’s public health agency found an 11-year difference in life expectancy between men who live in its poorest neighbourhood and those its richest.

The OECD report makes a slew of suggestions on how to narrow the gap. Taxing the rich more is one, along with closing loopholes and ensuring compliance with tax rules.

More importantly, the report said labour market outcomes could be improved by investing more in people – through education, skills training and job retraining programs. “More and better jobs, enabling people to escape poverty and offering real career prospects, is the most important challenge.”

LOCAL EVENTS WINNIPEG:
FORUM ON ECONOMIC INEQUALITY AND BUSINESS:
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When
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Time
5:00pm until 8:00pm
Where
James W. Burns Executive Education Centre , 177 Lombard Ave (2nd floor), Winnipeg, Manitoba
Description
http://myuminfo.umanitoba.ca/index.asp?sec=712&too=200&eve=8&dat=12%2F8%2F2011&epa=52596
Reception:
Refreshments and hors d'oeuvres will be served.
What Does “Occupy” Mean to Business and How Should Businesses Respond?
The I.H. Asper School of Business is pleased to invite you to two interactive public forums on Economic Inequality and Business. In the backdrop of public debate on economic inequality, these forums will discuss the relationship between Businesses and Societal Inequality.The public forum will feature a panel of experts speaking on the issue, followed by a moderated discussion with the audience.
Panelists

-Art DeFehr, Founder, Palliser Furniture
- Alan Freeman, Economist
- Michael Benarroch, Dean, Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba
- Hari Bapuji, Associate Professor, Asper School of Business, Uof M
- Reg Litz, Professor, Asper School of Business, Uof M - Moderator
Program:
5:00pm - Doors open and reception begins 5:30pm
- Program Begins 7:00pm
- Program concludes and reception resumes
RSVP to Scott McCulloch at 474-6482 or Scott_McCulloch@umanitoba.ca Space is limited, so please RSVP early.For more information, contact:Judy WilsonDir Marketing & CommI H Asper Sch of Business wilsonj0@cc.umanitoba.ca Phone: (204) 474-8960

ECONOMY:

YOU GO DOWN THEY GO UP:

Here's an interesting item from the American Institute for Policy Studies. It seems that the recession is hitting some (workers) much harder than it is hitting others (corporate management). Here's the story. You can access the full report at the IPS website. Please note that the IPS names names and salaries and that they also want this news spread as far as possible.>>>

CPCPCPCPCP
Executive Excess 2010: CEO Pay and the Great Recession
By Sarah Anderson, Chuck Collins, Sam Pizzigati, Kevin Shih

The 17th annual executive compensation survey looks at how CEOs laid off thousands while raking in millions.
America’s CEOs had a terribly rough 2009. Or so the national and regional executive pay surveys released so far this year would suggest. “CEOs See Pay Fall Again,” blared one headline early this past spring. “CEO pay rankings dominated by large salary cuts,” read another in June. “Silicon Valley bosses,” summed up still another, “get pay cut.” Month after month, the headlines have pounded home a remarkably consistent message: Corporate executives, here in the Great Recession, are suffering, too.

Corporate executives, in reality, are not suffering at all. Their pay, to be sure, dipped on average in 2009 from 2008 levels, just as their pay in 2008, the first Great Recession year, dipped somewhat from 2007. But executive pay overall remains far above inflation adjusted levels of years past. In fact, after adjusting for inflation, CEO pay in 2009 more than doubled the CEO pay average for the decade of the 1990s, more than quadrupled the CEO pay average for the 1980s, and ran approximately eight times the CEO average for all the decades of the mid-20th century.

American workers, by contrast, are taking home less in real weekly wages than they took home in the 1970s. Back in those years, precious few top executives made over 30 times what their workers made. In 2009, we calculate in the 17th annual Executive Excess, CEOs of major U.S. corporations averaged 263 times the average compensation of American workers. CEOs are clearly not hurting.

But they are, as we detail in these pages, causing others to needlessly hurt — by cutting jobs to feather their own already comfortable executive nests. In 2009, the CEOs who slashed their payrolls the deepest took home 42 percent more compensation than the year’s chief executive pay average for S&P 500 companies. Most careful analysts of the high-finance meltdown that ushered in the Great Recession have concluded that excessive executive compensation played a prime causal role. Outrageously high rewards gave executives an incentive to behave outrageously, to take the sorts of reckless risks that would eventually endanger our entire economy. Our nation’s leading political players have sought, sometimes with grand fanfare, to confront this reality. Leading politicos have been railing against excessive executive bonuses and inappropriately high incentives ever since the economy nosedived. Various executive pay reforms and regulations have even found their way into the statute book. The financial industry reform package enacted this July, for instance, codifies into law several long-term goals of the executive pay reform community, most notably a “say on pay” provision that hands shareholders

the right to take nonbinding advisory votes on executive compensation. Will measures like these rein in excessive executive rewards? Will they begin to significantly narrow the corporate pay gap? That appears doubtful. The UK, for instance, has had a “say on pay” provision on the books since 2002, and that provision has not prevented a continuing executive pay spiral. Despite the recession, UK executive compensation sits substantially above pre-“say on pay” levels. To bring executive pay back down to mid-20th century levels, we need reforms that cut to the quick, that recognize the dangers banks and major corporations create when they dangle oversized rewards for executive “performance.” Some reforms that would move us in that direction are now pending in Congress. Others have yet to make their way onto the congressional docket.

We offer, in this Executive Excess edition, our first comprehensive analysis of all these reform proposals, those already passed, those still pending, and those promising initiatives not yet on our U.S. political radar screen. Our goal: to rate the reform steps already taken and highlight the steps we still need to take. Thorough executive pay reform, we remain convinced, holds an important key to our healthy economic future.

CANADIAN POLITICS:

AVOIDING A RECESSION-THE CEO WAY:

If you think you've had it bad the last year-you're probably right, but not if you are a member of Canada's management elite. According to a report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives this country's top ten CEOs had an average income of $7,352,895 in 2008, shortly before the recession began to "bite hard". This was 174 times the average Canadian wage. To put this in further perspective, from 1998 to 2008 the average Canadian wage packet dropped 6% when adjusted for inflation. During the same period the average compensation for top CEOs increased !!! by 70% !!!!. The Globe and Mail weighed in today with an editorial on this report. Not denying the facts of the study, as per usual, because they are pretty rock solid. What the Globe opined is that nobody should pay attention to the difference between the average wage and that of top CEOs, nor to the difference in increase versus decrease. According to the Globe the only matter of concern is that the average wage is declining, and it is all fine and good that corporate executives increase their income.

Well finagled I must say. A few little problems are, however, contained in this little excuse. one is that there just might be a connection between the two arms of this lever. It is entirely possible that corporate executive plunder is inversely correlated with employee compensation, and not just because this sort of thing is a zero sum game where money given to one class is unavailable to another. It is also more than likely that one of the things that corporate executives are rewarded for is their ability to "reduce labour costs and increase productivity". In plain language this means quite deliberately reducing the income of their employees. Quite deliberately. It is also a certain fact that this excessive executive compensation is in another zero sum game where the upper levels of management (and lower ones too to a lesser degree) bleed corporate entities at the expense of the stockholders. In a managerial society such as ours the term "stockholders" means, more often than not pension and other mutual funds held in dispersed ownership by the same employees whose wages are being reduced.

Then there is, of course, simple justice. Nobody in his right mind would try and claim that corporate executives work 174 times as long as the average Canadian does. Neither can one claim that their jobs are 174 times as disagreeable as the average job. Then we come to value. No doubt the value produced by a corporate executive may sometimes be high. Can it be, however, 174 times as valuable as that of the work of people such as nurses, firefighters, ambulance drivers, farmers, miners and to put it bluntly pretty well everyone else ? Think about it for awhile.



The following article from the National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) gives a general summary of the report in question.
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Canadian corporate CEOs average $7,352,895 each:
New CCPA study says top 100 Canadian CEOs pocketed 174 times each what average Canadian workers earn all year.





Ottawa (5 Jan. 2010) - Canada's highest-paid CEOs raked in an average of $7,352,895 in 2008, the latest year for which statistics are available. That's 174 times more than the average wage of the typical Canadian worker.





"To put that in perspective, Canadians will work full-time throughout the year to earn the national average of $42,305," says Hugh Mackenzie of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), which has just released a new report on the subject.





Yet as of 1:01 p.m. on their first working day of this year (Jan. 4) the top 100 CEOs in the country had already pocketed as much as the average Canadian worker will in all of 2010.
The CCPA study says average compensation for the top CEOs has outpaced inflation by 70% between 1998 and 2008. During the same period, Canadians earning the average income lost 6% to inflation.
Here are the top 10 hogs at the corporate trough:
Thomas Glocer, Thomson Reuters Corp. - $36,595,233.
Ted Rogers, Rogers Communications Inc. - $21,484,708.
J. M. Lipton, Nova Chemicals Corp. - $19,753,245.
George Cope, BCE Inc. - $19,551,345.
Robert Brown, CAE Inc. FY end March 08 - $17,293,144.
William Doyle, Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan - $17,026,317.
Hunter Harrison, Canadian National Railway Co. - $13,350,048.
Dominic D’Alessandro, Manulife Financial Corp. - $13,251,274.
Stephen Wetmore, Bell Aliant Regional Com. Income Fund - $11,563,250.
For the entire 100 names please go to the link below and read as much as you can stand. Caution: Not for those with weak stomachs.
NUPGE
The National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) is one of Canada's largest labour organizations with over 340,000 members. Our mission is to improve the lives of working families and to build a stronger Canada by ensuring our common wealth is used for the common good. NUPGE
More information:Full Report: A Soft Landing - Recession and Canada's 100 Highest Paid CEOs
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A MOLLY PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT:
I've tried the link to the publication by the CCPA in the report above, and it doesn't seem to work. Here is A LINK that does work, at least for Molly. The report is actually a great report, and it deserves far more publicity than it has been given in the mainstream press. As to the "why" of the astronomical executive compensation, much of the standard justification has been dealt with in my introduction to this post. The real "why" is a totally different matter.




Where I have to part company with the CCPA is not in what they have reported. It's obviously true. Neither, unlike the Globe and Mail, do I disagree with them that this sort of inequality is a "bad thing" and totally unjustified. I do, however, have to disagree about the realism of the remedy that they, as good left wing social democrats, have proposed. The simplistic way of summed up their solution (see the report) is "tax the bastards heavily". I wish them well in this enterprise, though it makes me a bit queasy knowing that social democrats rarely find a tax that they cannot love. The CCPA is under the impression that they can find a realistic way to tax such things as "stock options" (whereby management steals from the shareholders- as I said above usually ordinary citizens with dispersed portfolios). Maybe yes. Maybe no. What they will be unable to do , however, is find some magical formula in the byzantine tax regulations that will prevent upper management from switching their compensation to non-taxable benefits. That's the way that tax law has operated in the past, and that probably the way that it will operate in the future despite the best laid schemes of social democrats.




For what it is worth Molly has her own proposals that can be summed up in the brief bon mot of "abolish management". No doubt there will be tax law changes in such a process-mostly involving exceptions for ordinary people rather than attempts to penalize the ruling class. The main steps, however, depend more upon the easing of the legal burden of the state that prevents actual democratization of the workplace. It does not depend upon the failed illusion (demonstrated by the failure of over a century of attempts to build a more egalitarian society by taxation policy that the ruling class evades) of government largess rather than citizen action. That's why I am an anarchist, what I consider a "realistic socialist" and not a left social democrat.




Just in closing, here is the press release of the CCPA about their report, something that will probably never be quoted in anything but brief excerpts in the mainstream press.
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Soft landing for Canada’s CEOs:
January 4, 2010
TORONTO—Canadians may have been hit hard by a worldwide economic recession, but it appears Canada’s 100 highest paid CEOs are enjoying a soft landing.





A report on executive compensation by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), a progressive think tank, reveals Canada’s 100 highest paid CEOs pocketed an average $7.3 million in 2008, the year recession broadsided the nation.





“Canada’s top 100 CEOs earned 174 times more than the average Canadian wage,” says economist Hugh Mackenzie, CCPA Research Associate.





“To put that in perspective, Canadians will work full-time throughout the year to earn the national average of $42,305. The top 100 CEOs pocket that amount by 1:01 p.m. on January 4 – the first working day of the year.”





Soft Landing: Recession and Canada’s 100 Highest Paid CEOs shows executive compensation remains as resilient to worldwide economic forces as ever.





“Between 1998 and 2008, Canada’s top 100 CEOs’ average compensation outpaced inflation by 70 per cent,” says Mackenzie. “In contrast, Canadians earning the average income lost six per cent to inflation over that period.”
–30–
Soft Landing: Recession and Canada’s 100 Highest Paid CEOs is available at www.policyalternatives.ca
For more information please contact: Kerri-Anne Finn, CCPA Senior Communications Officer, at 613-563-1341 x306.
Related Reports & Studies
A Soft Landing
Recession and Canada’s 100 Highest Paid CEOs
Canadians may have been hit hard by a worldwide economic recession, but it appears Canada’s 100 highest paid CEOs are enjoying a soft landing. The total average compensation for Canada's 100 highest paid CEOs was $7,352,895 in 2008—a stark contrast from the total average Canadian income of $42,305. They pocketed what takes Canadians earning an average income an entire year to make by 1:01 pm January 4—the first working day of the year. During the worst of economic years, the...January 4, 2010 National Office
Read the full Report

AMERICAN POLITICS/ECONOMICS:

THE MANAGERS GAIN;THE WORKERS PAY:

America is a land of myth, and one of its most enduring myths is that of equal opportunity, of rags to riches. Even in the distant past this was true only in an infinitesimal number of cases, as America had no less a class system than other countries. Today it is even less true as the vast majority of the GDP of the US is channeled through either government or corporations with dispersed stock ownership. Ah, but there are other ways to class power other than the antique image of the top hatted capitalist. The 'way of the manager' has come to replace that of the private owner throughout most of the world, and the USA is no exception. As the following item from the AFL-CIO Blog shows the managers have been quite successful during the past decade in advancing their position- at the expense of ordinary workers.

APAPAPAPAPAPAP

CEOs Get One-Third of All Pay;

Bank of America Uses Taxpayer $$ for Lobbying

Two news items out today highlight how far the nation needs to go in re-balancing the economy toward working people.

First, Think Progress points to a Wall Street Journal analysis that shows more than one-third of all pay in the U.S. now goes to executives and other highly-paid employees.

Highly paid employees received nearly $2.1 trillion of the $6.4 trillion in total U.S. pay in 2007, the latest figures available. The compensation numbers don’t include incentive stock options, unexercised stock options, unvested restricted stock units and certain benefits(which would show even more dramatic inequality-Molly).

The Wall Street Journal based its analysis on Social Security Administration data, which doesn’t count billions of dollars more in pay that remain off federal radar screens that measure wages and salaries.

Next, it turns out that Bank of America, which received $45 billion in taxpayer-funded bailout support, has spent more than $1.5 million lobbying on Capitol Hill.

The Charlotte, N.C., company wants flexibility on spending the bailout funds and also wants to fend off restrictions on executive compensation, home mortgage lending and credit card fees. The bank also is lobbying on a consumer rights bill, on student lending issues, on a bill that would’ve allowed bankruptcy judges to alter mortgages and on a proposed federal regulatory oversight agency.

And none of its positions on any of these bills would help working families.

As we noted in April when we released the AFL-CIO Executive PayWatch data, the Bank of America lost nearly $2.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008 due to deeper than expected trading and loan losses. Even after receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer money, the bank plans to eliminate up to 35,000 jobs over the next three years—but CEO Kenneth Lewis collected nearly $10 million in 2008, more than 400 times the average amount a bank teller is paid each year. Since becoming CEO in April 2001, Lewis received $134 million in pay, bonuses, stock awards and pension accruals.

As Think Progress notes, between 1979 and 2006, the inflation-adjusted after-tax income of the richest 1 percent of households increased by 256 percent, compared with 21 percent for families in the middle income quintile.

While U.S. worker productivity has skyrocketed over the past 30 years, wages have not kept pace.

America’s working middle class made it clear last November that they wanted change—and reshaping the nation’s economic framework to strengthen the middle class and close the wage disparity between the very top and the rest of us, is fundamental to that change.

INTERNATIONAL LABOUR/SWINE FLU:
SWINE FLU AND LABOUR:

As best as I can read the results of what is happening worldwide (which I admit is something like predicting the future from the entrails of sacrificial animals-in this case pigs) the global panic over "swine flu" (or whatever it may be renamed because of political pressure) is overblown. The over 100 deaths in Mexico probably represent the mortality tip of a very large morbidity iceberg, one of a new flu strain that has probably been spreading for some time and whose general symptoms, if there are any, are hardly severe enough to convince people in a poor country such as Mexico- without universal health care- to even see a doctor, let alone go to a hospital.




Be that as it may, with the probability that this flu will be no more virulent than recurring seasonal flues at this time ,there is no guarantee that we won't see "the big one" this fall when the virus has had enough time to evolve and swap genetic material with other flu viruses across the world. In any serious outbreak there will be certain classes of workers who will have much more potential exposure than others. This includes not just the obvious health care workers but also pretty well anyone in various branches of the transport industry. The following article from the AFL-CIO blog speaks of the inadequacy of the present systems to protect these workers. While not agreeing with the expected tendency of the authors to refuse any criticism whatsoever of the present US Administration I still think this post is valuable for pointing out present problems with American preparedness for any pandemic.
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Health Care Workers at Risk as Swine Flu Spreads:
by Mike Hall, Apr 30, 2009
Yesterday, the World Health Organization (WHO) raised the threat of widespread human infection from the outbreak of swine flu to its second-highest level. The outbreak of swine flu originated in Mexico and is now spreading throughout the United States and around the globe.




But as an April 16 report released by the AFL-CIO and several unions, including the United American Nurses (UAN), warned, the nation’s health care workers—the first line of defense against the diseases—are at risk because many the nation’s health care facilities are not prepared to deal with a pandemic. The report, which surveyed 104 health care facilities in 14 states, found that while health care facilities have made some progress in preparing for an influenza pandemic, much more needs to be done. The survey found:
**More than one-third of the respondents believe their workplace is either not ready or only slightly ready to address the health and safety needs necessary to protect health care workers during a pandemic.
**43 percent of respondents believe that most or some of their fellow workers will stay home.
**One-third of the facilities have yet to develop a written plan for responding to pandemic flu and only 54 percent of the facilities have identified health care workers who will be at some risk of occupational exposure to the pandemic flu virus.
**Fewer than half the facilities surveyed (43 percent) have provided pandemic flu training to their workers, one of the fundamental elements of protecting workers from occupational hazards.





The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC) is urging broader national action to promote containment and prevention of a broader swine flu pandemic.





The nurses union says after years of neglect of the public safety net, the nation’s health care infrastructure is badly eroded. Says CNA/NNOC co-president Deborah Burger, RN:





From SARS to avian flu to the current escalating outbreaks of swine influenza, it has become increasingly clear that we are risking a major catastrophe unless we act to restore the safety net, and devote the resources that are needed to protect the public.





The CNA/NNOC’s pandemic action plan includes:
**Recruit and mobilize teams of scientists to create the appropriate effective vaccine for the virus.
**Cease and desist any reductions in public health programs at federal, state and local levels. Lift any freezes on public health funding currently in place.
**Implement a moratorium on any closures of emergency rooms, layoffs of direct health care personnel and reductions of hospital beds.
**Assure the availability of protective equipment for all health care personnel.
For more information, visit http://www.calnurse.org/.





Meanwhile, the Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA) is asking the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to enact flu safeguards that would include passenger screening tests for the swine flu. The AFA-CWA is also asking the FAA to order airlines to supply attendants with latex gloves and face masks and not to count sick day absences against contractually allotted sick days.





The union also wants the FAA to ensure that aircraft are equipped with proper and sufficient hand-washing materials and to emphasize the importance of regular and thorough hand-washing, and not touching one’s face, to crew and passengers.





In other swine flu developments, this week the Obama administration called on Congress to allocate $1.5 billion for combating the virus. That money to fight the swine flu outbreak would be available now if Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and “Bush’s Brain” Karl Rove” had not led the fight to strip $870 million from the Obama administration’s economic recovery package that was designated for pandemic preparation. Says John Nichols in the Nation’s blog The Beat:





The attack on pandemic preparation became so central to the GOP strategies [to attack the recovery package] that [the Associated Press] AP reported in February: “Republicans, meanwhile, plan to push for broader and deeper tax cuts, to trim major spending provisions that support Democrats’ longer-term policy goals, and to try to knock out what they consider questionable spending items, such as $870 million to combat the flu.





Sunday, Collins attempted to defend herself, dispatching a spokesman to declare that, “There is no evidence that federal efforts to address the swine flu outbreak have been hampered by a lack of funds.” But, as The Washington Post notes: “Collins and the others who led the fight to axe the flu money three months ago can only hope that doesn’t change.”





One the key recommendation to prevent the spread of swine is to stay home from work if you become infected with the virus. But as we reported in September, nearly 50 percent of private-sector workers have no paid sick days. For low-income workers, the number jumps to 76 percent. Says Pat Garofalo at the Think Progress Wonk Room.





Unfortunately, staying home due to illness is simply not possible for a large number of Americans….These workers have to decide between the health of themselves and their co-workers, and the wages that they lose by staying home.





This could be remedied by the Healthy Families Act, which Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) plan to reintroduce in Congress next month. The bill would “guarantee workers up to seven paid sick days a year to recover from an illness or care for a sick family member.” And if it helps prevent the spread of illnesses like swine flu, even better.





For more information, visit the CDC online at http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/ and WHO at http://www.who.int/en/, and check out the AFL-CIO resources on pandemic influenza.


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This story has a local connection here in Manitoba where seasonal agricultural workers are brought in each year, mostly from Mexico. The local papers have been abuzz with claims and counterclaims about how these workers are covered, or not, by our medicare system. The provincial government claims that they are covered, but the experience of the past says that they are not. Many are covered only by "dollar store" private health plans that don't pay for many expenses that are covered under public plans such as Medicare. This has importance as many workers are quite fearful of running up medical bills that they have no ability to pay. The following is an article from one of our local papers, the Winnipeg Free Press, about the situation. the person interviewed, Gustavo Mejicanos, works for the Portage la Prairie branch of the Agriculture Workers' Alliance. The worker centres affiliated with this organization have been organized by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) which is trying to do here in Canada what has been done in the USA by the United Farm Workers. So far the results have been small, but the UFCW has at least managed to establish some unionization on farms here in Manitoba. The "big fish" of Ontario and BC, however, are still a work in progress, as previous articles on this blog have mentioned. It is important in the face of any pandemic, however severe or not, to make reporting to the health care system as easy as possible. Refusing to cover medical expenses goes in precisely the opposite direction. However much a mean spirited conservative attitude might like to punish such workers by denying them benefits, this sort of childish fit of pique shouldn't be allowed to get in the way of rational public health policy.

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Migrant workers without health coverage a swine flu risk: union rep:
By Gabrielle Giroday, Winnipeg Free PressApril 28, 2009
WINNIPEG — Mexican migrant workers could put Manitobans and themselves at risk of swine flu because of their inadequate health insurance and fear of seeking medical help.





The warning came Tuesday from a Spanish-speaking union worker who said the migrants need better government-funded health coverage while in Canada.





“We are in a situation where we can’t take chances. . . . This is very dangerous to the system,” said Gustavo Mejicanos, who comes into contact with about 400 seasonal workers each year as co-ordinator of the Agriculture Workers Alliance Centre in Portage la Prairie, Man., about 100 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg.





He said the migrant workers come to Manitoba each year on temporary visas to make money for their families. Many are afraid to access health care because of costs not covered by the private insurance they are required to get.





Manitoba chief medical officer Dr. Joel Kettner said he doesn’t think the province is doing anything to address the issue of Mexican seasonal workers, but plans to look into it further.





“It’s an excellent question and I don’t know the answer. But it’s important to get an answer,” he said.





Private health coverage for migrant workers is often organized by the farm’s owner, Mejicanos said.





In Saskatchewan, a provincial spokeswoman said seasonal workers under the same federal program are covered by provincial health care.





Mejicanos estimated there are 60 Mexican seasonal workers already in Manitoba, men ages 20 to 45. He said 15 to 20 of those workers have arrived during the last month.





He said many seasonal workers work 12 to 16 hours a day on Manitoba farms and some suffer injuries. Many do not want to call attention to themselves for fear of losing their contracts, Mejicanos said.





“They’re afraid of losing their job and being sent back to Mexico,” he said.
gabrielle.giroday@freepress.mb.ca
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Finally here is something that I really, really, really, really agree with. Seasonal workers arriving in Canada are now to undergo a much more extensive health screening than previously. That's all fine and good, as the following press statement from the UFCW points out- ie they have no qualms about this either. What is important, however, is that such screening be applied to all without discrimination on the basis of social class. Personally I'd like to see it done to Canadians returning from Mexican vacations, especially those who have gone there since the public furor about the flu. As I said, I don't think this unavoidable pandemic is "the big one", but such a situation is plain and simply inevitable. Best to get a few things straight before the worst happens.
Presently it seems that both Canadians travelling to Mexico on business and wealthy Mexicans arriving here for similar purposes are exempt from the screening that the poorer Mexican seasonal workers will have to undergo. This actually is something very close to the definition of "irrational". Airborne infections such as influenza just don't discriminate on the basis of the fatness of one's wallet. A rich Mexican has just as much chance of harbouring the virus as a poor one. Airborne infection, I said. NOT something from bad water or bad food. This can't be argued against. The following press release presents this demand for a rational fairness in perhaps less emphatic tones than Molly does, but what they say is obvious.
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Statement by National President Wayne Hanley on new screening protocols for seasonal Mexican agriculture workers arriving in Canada:

April 27, 2009 — "Over the past decade, UFCW Canada has supplied information and services to tens of thousands of seasonal agriculture workers who are fundamental to the Canadian agriculture sector. The majority of those workers come from Mexico under a long-established federal program that has always required health testing of workers before they arrive in Canada.



On Monday, the federal government announced additional health screening protocols for these workers. To date, no Mexican worker in Canada has been diagnosed with the flu strain in question, and thousands of these workers have been here for months. That said, we support these protocols because safety is the top priority.




If these screening measures are considered appropriate for agriculture workers, logically they should also be used to screen all travellers from Mexico, including tourists and business travellers as well. The additional screening measures announced by the government should be applied to all those arriving from regions impacted by this new strain of flu.




As for workers already here from Mexico, our nine agriculture support centers continue to translate and distribute to them up-to-date information from the public health authorities. We are also there for any worker who is concerned about a health issue, or needs someone to act as an interpreter at a health clinic or hospital.




This is certainly a distressing time for all concerned. We share that concern and are prepared to work with all the stakeholders - here in Canada, and in Mexico, to ensure that safety remains the top priority for Canadians, for the workers, and for our communities."

ECONOMIC CRISIS:

BLAME THE MANAGERS:

Here's a choice one from the AFL-CIO Blog, one to remember the next time you read some screed that tries to blame "overpaid workers" for the decline of certain sectors of the economy. This, of course, is in reference to the problems of the US economy, but one of the points made-overpayment of managers- has reference to many other countries as well.

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Managers, Not Workers, Overpaid in Manufacturing Jobs:
by James Parks, Feb 17, 2009



Some pundits and lawmakers—Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) comes to mind—falsely claim that union workers are overpaid and are to blame for the decline of U.S. manufacturing. But a new report, released last week by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), busts that myth and shows the convenient conventional wisdom to be wrong.

EPI economist Josh Bivens lays out the facts in Squandering the Blue-Collar Advantage, which show that U.S. manufacturing’s blue-collar workforce, far from destroying U.S. competitiveness, is actually one of the key elements making a positive contribution to competitiveness—a contribution being undermined by a variety of other factors. Click here to read the entire report.

Says Bivens:

If the story of U.S. manufacturing began and ended with its blue-collar
workers, the outcome would be far different from what we’re seeing today. In
hourly pay and productivity, U.S. manufacturing workers give their companies a
significant competitive edge—one that is being drained away by other negative
forces.

Bivens identifies three key factors undermining U.S. competitiveness:

*The overvalued U.S. dollar, which artificially drives up the price of U.S.
goods abroad and drives down the cost of foreign-produced goods here. Over the
past 10 years, this imbalance alone has created a 10 percent to 16 percent cost
disadvantage for U.S. goods, compared with the previous decade.
*The
high cost of U.S. health care is another significant factor. Reducing these
costs to the same level as our comparable trading partners could create a 4.6
percent cost advantage.
*U.S. managers—not workers—are overpaid. Bringing
white-collar wages in line with those in comparable countries could result in a
6.4 percent cost advantage for U.S. manufacturers.

Bivens adds:

If we want to restore the strength of U.S. manufacturing in our economy and in
the world, we have to address the real anti-competitive factors that are
dragging it down. In this effort, the wages and productivity of the unionized
blue-collar workforce are an important asset.

ECONOMIC CRISIS:

VALUE FOR YOUR MONEY ?:

The following article by Linda McQuaig is taken from the online progressive news site Straight Goods. It originally appeared in the Toronto Star. Think about the following the next time you hear about the "incentives" that management claims it needs.

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About those bank CEO salaries...:
There is no evidence that phenomenal pay packages inspire higher performance levels.
by Linda McQuaig
It's probably a while still before we see bank CEOs on street corners selling the homeless news.

But reports last week of bank presidents cutting their own pay were somewhat eye-catching. (For a little perspective: Rick Waugh of Bank of Nova Scotia will take home $7.5 million this year — after his cut.)

Starting in the 1980s, a sea change swept away concerns about inequality and unleashed an era of greed and skyrocketing incomes at the top.

Still, the pay cuts suggest that even inside the most well-fortified Bay Street towers there are jitters that the people down below may start questioning how the economic pie is divided and why they are getting such a small — and shrinking — slice.

Certainly revelations of Wall Street hijinks have raised questions about the skewed nature of financial rewards and, more generally, about how far North American culture has drifted from what used to be known as the "work ethic".

We're waking up to the fact that, starting in the 1980s, a sea change swept away concerns about inequality and unleashed an era of greed and skyrocketing incomes at the top.

We're told that exorbitant pay is necessary to motivate great performance.

But that canard was surely put to rest last month by John Thain, former CEO of Merrill Lynch. Thain explained that it had been necessary to pay $4 billion in executive bonuses to keep the "best people", after those people had just steered the company to a net loss of $27 billion and helped trigger a global recession. (What might some less capable people have done? — started a nuclear war?)

Even when there is great performance, does the wild inflation in top incomes make sense?

Take baseball. In the early 1970s, Hank Aaron was the top-paid player at $200,000 a year. Last year, Alex Rodriguez, with similarly dazzling statistics, earned $27.7 million. Adjusting for inflation (but not for drugs), that makes Rodriguez's pay more than 25 times greater than Aaron's. Is Rodriguez's performance more than 25 times better?

There's no evidence that today's phenomenal pay packages — in sports, entertainment or business — are motivating today's players, performers or executives to any higher performance levels than more modest packages did a few decades ago.

Indeed, there's little logic to our approach to financial rewards. People want to be compensated for work — particularly when it involves drudgery or unpleasantness. But those at the top typically love their jobs, and are motivated by the desire to excel and win recognition. Money is one form of recognition, but there's no evidence that financial rewards have to be gigantic, or that much larger financial rewards produce any greater results.

Vincent van Gogh was motivated to produce hundreds of works of great art, even though he only managed to sell one of them, for a pittance, just before he died. Shakespeare produced the world's greatest dramas without even the prospect they'd become Hollywood blockbusters.

The pay for those at the top has gotten ridiculously out of whack in recent years. Among other things, this underlines the need for a more progressive tax system.

It's also been noted that if we cut the pay of those running our financial institutions, they might seek more useful employment as teachers or health-care workers. But a letter to The New York Times last week made a compelling case for maintaining Wall Street bonuses: "Without them, Wall Streeters will all look for other jobs. Do we really want these greedy, incompetent clowns building our houses, teaching our children or driving our cabs?"

Journalist and best-selling author Linda McQuaig has developed a reputation for challenging the establishment. As a reporter for The Globe and Mail, she won a National Newspaper Award in 1989 for writing a series of articles, which sparked a public inquiry into the activities of Ontario political lobbyist Patti Starr, and eventually led to Starr's imprisonment. In 1991, she was awarded an Atkinson Fellowship for Journalism in Public Policy to study the social welfare systems in Europe and North America.

She is author of seven books on politics and economics – all national bestsellers – including Shooting the Hippo (short-listed for the Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction), The Cult of Impotence, All You Can Eat and It's the Crude, Dude: War, Big Oil and the Fight for the Planet. Her most recent book is Holding the Bully's Coat: Canada and the US Empire.

Since 2002, McQuaig has written an op-ed column for the Toronto Star. This article, which appears here with permission, previously appeared in The Star.
Email: lmcquaig@sympatico.ca. Website: http://www.lindamcquaig.com.

AMERICAN POLITICS:

MORE US CHILDREN FACE LIFE OF POVERTY:

The 'American Dream' of unlimited opportunity has always been something of a myth. The USA has always been a class society, and its inequality is passed from generation to generation. With the gradual weakening of the economic basis of the American Empire this disparity is becoming more and more apparent. Here's a little item that I recently read on the AFL-CIO Blog about just how bad the situation is and how it seems to be worsening, particularly for the children.

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More U.S. Children Face Poverty:
by Mike Hall, Jan 8, 2009
Last year, the number of poor children in the United States increased by nearly half a million, to 13.3 million—and 5.8 million of those are living in extreme poverty. Nearly 9 million children have no health insurance. Those numbers are sure to rise as the nation plunges further into recession, says the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) in its recently released report, The State of America’s Children 2008.

According to the CDF report, children in the United States lag behind those in almost all industrialized nations on key indicators. Our nation has the unwanted distinction of being the worst among industrialized countries in relative child poverty, the gap between rich and poor, teen birth rates and child gun violence. In addition, the United States is first in the number of incarcerated persons.

Says CDF President Marian Wright Edelman:

"It is a national disgrace that the richest nation on earth lets every sixth
child live in poverty. Our poor children exceed the population of all ages in
the state of Illinois. The number of uninsured children exceeds the population
of the country of Switzerland. We continue this neglectful waste of our precious
human capital at our collective peril. We can and must do better."

The report compiles the most recent and reliable national and state-by-state data on poverty, health, child welfare, youth at risk, early childhood development, education, nutrition and housing.

Here are some lowlights of the CDF report:
***Every 33 seconds, a baby is born into poverty. One in six children in America is poor. Black and Latino children are about three times as likely to be poor as white children.
***Nearly one in 13 children in the United States—5.8 million—live in extreme poverty. Young children are more likely than school-age children to live in extreme poverty—one in 11 young children, compared with one in 14 older children.
***Currently, 8.9 million children are uninsured. One in five Latino children and one in eight black children are uninsured, compared with one in 13 white children.
***In 33 states and the District of Columbia, the annual cost of center-based child care for a preschooler is more than the annual tuition at a four-year public college.
***3,006 children and teens were killed by firearms in 2005, the equivalent of 120 public school classrooms of 25 students each. Another 16,000 children and teens suffered non-fatal firearm injuries.
***More than half the children participating in the School Lunch Program—more than 17 million children—receive free or reduced-price meals. The 8 million children in the School Breakfast Program who received free or reduced-price meals—4 out of 5 participants—are the neediest children.

Says Edelman:

"Investing in our children—the seed corn of our nation’s future—is key to
our nation’s economic recovery and competitiveness in the global economy. And we
do not have a minute to waste….Poverty and continuing racial disparities in all
child-serving systems are sentencing countless children to dead-end lives."

Click here for the full report.

MEDICINE IN CANADA:

THE POOR GET LESS:

There's an interesting new article in the open publishing Canadian medical journal Open Medicine. The gist of the matter is a massive study on use of medicare in the province of British Columbia, and the conclusion is that, aside from visits to GPs, the lower your income the less service you receive from the medical system but the higher the eventual costs due to emergency in-hospital acre. Hardly astounding, but its nice to see it proved.

The following is the abstract of the article. To read the full article GO TO THIS LINK.

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Income-related inequities: Cross-sectional analyses of the use of medicare services in British Columbia in 1992 and 2002:
Kimberlyn M McGrail
ABSTRACT
Background: The primary demonstration of the principle of income-related equity in Canada is the provision of health care services based on need rather than ability to pay. Despite this principle, Canada, along with other OECD countries, exhibits income-related variations in the use of health care services. This paper extends previous analyses to include surgical day care, assesses changes in income-related equity between 1992 and 2002 in British Columbia and tests the feasibility of using administrative data for general equity analyses.
Methods: Data derive from the BC Linked Health Database and from a custom tabulation of income tax filer data provided by Statistics Canada. Cross-sectional analyses measure inequity in the probability and conditional use of services using concentration indices, which summarize health care services use for individuals ranked by income, after standardization for age, sex, region of residence and need for health care services.
Results: Small but systematic relationships were found between income and use of health care services for all types of services, with the exception of visits to general practitioners (GPs). Lower income is associated with greater conditional use of GPs and greater use of acute inpatient care. Higher income is associated with the greater use of specialist and surgical day care services; the latter inequity was found to grow substantially over time.
Conclusions: Deviations from equity deserve further investigation, especially because the use of day care surgery is continually expanding. For example, an understanding of the reasons for differential admission rates to acute and day surgery might provide insight as to whether community-based services could help shift some acute care use among lower income groups to surgical day care. It is possible to use administrative data to monitor income-related equity, and future research should take advantage of this possibility.

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