CANADIAN LABOUR:

PROTEST CANADA POST CALL CENTRE PRIVATIZATION:

Plans on the part of Canada Post to privatize its customer service call centres have stirred up protests from the workers involved. Here is the basic story from the CBC.

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Planned Canada Post cuts draw union's ire

Plans by Canada Post to privatize its customer service call centres in cities across Canada are drawing fire from one of the country's largest unions.

The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), representing more than 165,000 public-sector workers, has pledged to combat the move, which is expected to result in the loss of 300 jobs across the country.

Call centres in Fredericton, Ottawa, Winnipeg and Edmonton are affected. The centres handle telephone inquiries from the public about postage rates and parcel tracking.

Canada Post's National Philatelic Centre in Antigonish, N.S., will also close, affecting about 70 jobs. The centre sells stamps from several other postal agencies around the world.

The Crown corporation said on Thursday that decreasing mail volumes prompted the cuts, which are slated to take place in 2011 after selected workers' contracts expire.

No full-time workers will be laid off, and the call centres will not be outsourced to overseas locations, a Canada Post spokesperson said.

In Manitoba, as many as 30 temporary employees at Canada Post's Winnipeg-based call depot will not have their contracts renewed. About 70 other permanent staff will move to other jobs with the Crown corporation.

Data for the other centres was not immediately available.

Privacy concerns raised
PSAC spokeswoman Janet May told CBC News that the changes are part of a broader effort by Canada Post management to move the company further toward complete privatization.

"Canada Post is in its 15th year of profit," May said. "So to an average Canadian, does it make sense that part of your postal system is getting privatized?"

The union said it also worries about the loss of people's privacy if they have to offer up personal information to a private company — especially if the call-centre work is outsourced to a U.S. company.

"I'm not sure that Canadians are ready to see their postal service become an information collection agency for the American government," said Robyn Benson, PSAC's executive vice-president for the Prairies.


Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2010/04/01/man-canada-post-cuts-call-centre.html#ixzz0kA223Zrt

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Here's how the situation is viewed by the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) who represent many of the workers employed in the customer service call centres. Here's the press release from their website.

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Canada Post to privatize 300 contact centre jobs across Canada

Ottawa—The Public Service Alliance of Canada, the largest federal public service union in the country, will be taking swift action to prevent Canada Post from privatizing an important part of its operations. Yesterday, the crown corporation announced that it would outsource its contact centres and the National Philatelic Centre, resulting in the elimination of more than 300 jobs across the country.


Affected locations include:

Edmonton
Ottawa
Winnipeg
Antigonish
Fredericton
“This obsession with privatization will badly damage the quality of the Canadian postal service as well as the communities it serves,” said Robyn Benson, the PSAC Regional Executive Vice-President for the Prairies. “Many regions in the country will lose local contact with Canada Post as well as jobs that are important for the local economy,” she added.

For Benson, the privatization of Canada Post’s answering services also raises the question of protection of confidential information provided by Canadians.

“I’m not sure that Canadians are ready to see their postal service become an information collection agency for the American government,’ Benson said. “If an American company answers calls for Canada Post, then the U.S. Patriot Act gives the government access to all information the company collects. Is that what Canadians want?”

Richard Deslauriers, the National President of PSAC component, the Union of Postal and Communications Employees (UPCE) said this type of economic reasoning will bring Canada Post closer to a complete privatization.

“The privatization of Canada Post has always been an objective of the current management and the conservative federal government,” Deslauriers said. “The slippery slope of partial privatization of services will end up with Canada Post in the hands of private companies and Canadians will be deprived of a service they have relied on for decades”.

The PSAC represents more than 166,000 members across the country including 2,000 at Canada Post.

To arrange media interviews:

Alain Cossette, PSAC Communications, 613-293-9210

CANADIAN POLITICS ONTARIO:

PRIVATIZATION IN ONTARIO:

The following opinion piece is from the Ontario Public Service Employees Union. Down Ontario way the provincial government has floated the idea of privatizing various government Crowns, as a means to get quick money to relieve their deficit. Now, Molly is an anarchist, a libertarian socialist, not a leftist. I have no great attachment to government owned business, just as I have little attachment to any massive corporation. Private or public it is all the same to me. Leftists, with rare exceptions, rarely meet a tax they cannot love nor a government monopoly that they wouldn't be willing to sleep with. In contradiction to this I personally have little problem with opening up state monopolies to competition. In the end that will be one of the ways that a real cooperative socialism will be built.

At the same time the rush to "privatize" various government businesses is usually ideologically driven, done irrationally and quite often conceals less savoury motives of "consideration" that will be given to politicians when they reenter the private sector. The "deals" that are offered the friends of the government are far too often ones that are far sweeter than would be offered in the sale of a private company. The case of the sale of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario is an obvious instance. the "asking price" is estimated to be $10 billion. This for a company that makes $1.4 billion a year. In other words the "payback" would be in about 7 years, quite a "steal". In return for the ten billion infusion the Ontario government would avoid paying interest on bonds at a minimal rate while giving up $1.4 billion a year in profit. This could only make sense to an ideologically driven government. Here's the story from the OPSEU.

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Time to stop talk about LCBO privatization: OPSEU:
Premier Dalton McGuinty should put an immediate end to speculation about the privatization of the LCBO by saying the Crown corporation is not for sale, says the union that represents more than 6,000 liquor board employees.

“How many more times are we going to go around the block on this issue?” asked Warren (Smokey) Thomas, president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union. “We beat back privatization under Mike Harris and we were pleased when Premier McGuinty rejected the recommendations of the Lacey panel in 2005 that called for parts of the LCBO to be sold off to the private sector.

“It should be a dead issue by now but somehow it keeps creeping back,” said Thomas, responding to media accounts Wednesday that reported the government has retained the services of two banking investment firms to advise it on the possible privatization of several prominent Crown corporations, including the LCBO.

In 2008 the LCBO earned more than $1.4 billion in profit – funds that are used to finance health care, education and other public services. Surveys have repeatedly found that close to 75 per cent of Ontarians want the LCBO to stay in public hands. And without the profit motive at work, the LCBO rigidly enforces a policy of social responsibility by blocking sales to underage teens, intoxicated customers and third-party purchasers.

Thomas also noted that privatization would threaten the wages, benefits and working conditions enjoyed by many full-time LCBO employees.

“In dozens of communities around Ontario the LCBO is a source of employment and a “destination retailer” that attracts other retail businesses. Why tamper with a formula that has worked so well on behalf of all Ontarians?

“Slaughtering the goose that annually lays golden eggs for the public purse is a half-baked strategy that should be put to rest for good.”

LOCAL POLITICS-WINNIPEG:

THE DOOR TO PRIVATIZATION:

The issue discussed below may, to be punish, seem like "water under the bridge" now that Winnipeg City Council has voted to create its "arms length utility" that is predestined to enter into private/public partnerships with corporate interests interested in expanding into the municipal utility field. It is, however, useful to bring it up just for the record, and it may be especially useful should any of the municipal politicians who voted for this measure receive any "favours" from interested parties in the future. Here's Maude barlow and Meera Karunananthan on Winnipeg's "privatization by stealth" from the Public Values website.

LPLPLPLPLPLPLP

Municipal privatization: What Winnipeg can learn from elsewhere:
Corporatizing utilities brings risks to public, but rewards private interests.
by Maude Barlow and Meera Karunananthan, for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives – Manitoba
July 21, 2009 — On July 22, the city of Winnipeg will be voting on a proposal to create an arms-length corporate water utility. (already passed-Molly)As far as Mayor Sam Katz and his allies on city council are concerned, the decision on the new corporate utility was made before the public ever had a chance to weigh in.

The city invested $1.25 Million to explore the idea and put $250,000 toward a public relations campaign to promote the creation of an arms-length corporate water utility.

Supporters on city council had committed to the issue even before hearing the concerns of the general public. Many participants in the so-called public consultation have reported that it was designed to promote the proposal rather than record public input.

Yet experience from around the world shows that the model being rushed through is likely to have detrimental impacts on access to water and public control over water services and resources.

The corporatization of Winnipeg's water and waste utility is the first step toward greater privatization. An arms-length corporation would limit the ability of elected representatives to oversee operations and make decisions in the public interest. Experiences in other cities like Edmonton have shown that corporate utilities whose primary function is to make profits can lead to the sale of public assets, a loss of public control and transparency, rate hikes and lower quality services.

It is time to slow things down and examine the serious threats posed by the proposed model.
Mayor Sam Katz sticks to the soundbite that the utility is 100 percent city-owned while downplaying the fact that the city is seeking partnerships with private corporations for water and waste services.

The corporatization of electric and water utilities in Edmonton have proven to pave the way for the sale and privatization of vital services.

There was a blurring of lines when councillors acted as shareholders rather than as protectors of the public interest by hatching a deal to sell off $5 billion of publicly-owned assets behind closed doors. Rather than maintaining the public interest, the mandate of Epcor, the arms-length corporate utility is to increase profits. This has had impacts on communities outside Edmonton as the corporation makes its profits through the privatization of utilities in communities throughout the continent.

Similarly, in Europe, "Municipal Corporate Utilities " were first sold as a compromise between fully public and fully private control of water systems. Big water companies used their public utility assets to raise money to move into poor countries in the global South where they operate on a for-profit basis, charging high rates and denying service to those who cannot pay. Human rights and social justice organizations in the global South argue that some of the worst private water companies operating in their communities are tied to so-called public utilities in Europe and use this status to gain access to water contracts in the South.

The City is also seeking partnerships with corporations for waste-water plant upgrade.

Experience in other parts of Canada and the rest of the world show that these arrangements mean that the public takes all the risk while the private corporations use their contracts to leverage capital accumulation for private investment and expansion.

It is important to note that many of the companies bidding for the Winnipeg contract are big transnationals whose sole motive is profit and growth.

One company, American Water, is the largest investor-owned US water and wastewater utility. The corporation has a history of imposing exorbitant rate hikes on communities where they operate. In Hingham and Hull Massachusetts, the corporation doubled rates over a five-year period claiming the funds were needed to build a new treatment facility. Evidence has shown that the costs of the facility were inflated by American Water to increase profits.

Another company, Black &Veatch, is an American engineering giant which claims to be in the "Top 500 Largest Private Companies in the US.." They have a huge water division and claim that "20 percent of the world's population served by community systems drinks potable water through systems designed, constructed or supported by Black & Veatch".

If the City of Winnipeg chooses an American company, that company will have rights under NAFTA to sue for compensation if a future city council decides to return to a public system or bring about legislation that would restrict its profits.

Also on the list is Veolia Environment - the "environment" arm of the French giant Veolia - which has 272,000 employees, 70,000 of whom work only in water and has annual revenues of US$34 billion, and with Suez, controls almost two-thirds of the global private water services sector. Veolia is very controversial in the global South, where, along with Suez, it has jacked up water rates, broken contracts and cut off water to people who cannot pay.

These big corporations are for-profit, private companies required to find profits for their shareholders and will be forced to raise water rates for this purpose.

Councillor Harry Lazarenko's motion to ensure that privatization is not sought without a referendum does not allay concerns about the loss of public control over water services, hikes in water rates and the global impacts of creating a for-profit utility. The potential harm should be carefully weighed and publicly debated - not rushed through without full public consultation.
Ed. note: on July 22, Winnipeg City Council voted in favour of forming an arm's length corporate utility. See links below for more information.

Maude Barlow is the national chairperson of the Council of Canadians, Senior advisor on water to the President of the UN General Assembly and the author of 16 books including Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water.
Meera Karunananthan is the national water campaigner at the Council of Canadians
Links and sources

Winnipeg city council votes 10-6 for water utility, by the Council of Canadians, July 23 2009 City council approves new utility, by Bartley Kives, Winnipeg Free Press, July 22 2009 Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

Council of Canadians - Water

CANADIAN POLITICS/CANADIAN LABOUR:

ANOTHER 'PRIVATIZATION BY STEALTH' ?:

Molly has recently received the following item from the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE). I have never actually considered the hows, whys and wherefores of the allocation of takeoff and landing rights (known as 'slots') before this, but I can easily see how they may be one of the more valuable assets that an airline can possess. An airport, after all, cannot operate on a 'first come, first served' basis. There has to be an orderly allocation of who goes up and who goes down and at what time. I can also see very plainly how such a resource has to be regulated by someone outside of the airline industry, both for the good of individual countries and because of the fact that it would be hard to find another industry where so-called "free competition" would so rapidly result in monopoly.

Air Canada, of course, has staggered from one financial crisis to another in the past few years. Its main competition, Westjet, as an "imperfect producers' coop" runs circles around AC in almost all aspects. There is little doubt as well that its very existence, like that of the CBC, is anathema to those in the ruling Conservative Party who actually care more about economics than social conservative optics. Like the CBC those around Harper would gladly see Air Canada euthanized, and it seems they may have actually come up with a plan to accomplish this goal- without raising a political stink by doing it honestly. Selling off landing slots as collateral to private lenders is actually the best way imaginable to accomplish this goal. Sorta like the perfect murder. Here's what CUPE has to say about the matter..

CPCPCPCPCPCPCP

Don't pledge Air Canada's landing slots:
CUPE is asking Finance Minister Jim Flaherty to stop Air Canada from pledging its landing slots to a group of private lenders.
Email Finance Minister Flaherty

The landing slots - including some at Heathrow Airport in London - are the airline's crown jewels, says CUPE Air Canada Component president Katherine Thompson. "Once they're sold, they can't be bought back."

Reuters reports that Air Canada is seeking a $600 million loan from a group of private financiers and the federal government. To back that loan, the company wants to use the landing slots as part of the collateral.

But Thompson said the government should provide the entire loan instead. That way Canada would still control the landing slots if the airline failed or filed for bankruptcy protection.

The union also proposed guaranteeing only the government's portion of the loan with the landing slots.

"Without these slots, Canada would no longer be capable of supporting an international carrier," Thompson said.

CPCPCPCPCPCPCP

THE LETTER:

Go to the link above to send the following letter to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty.

CPCPCPCPCPCPCP

Air Canada flight attendants have made considerable sacrifices to keep Air Canada alive. For its part, Air Canada has agreed to extend its contract with CUPE.
As part of this deal, the company committed to protecting the landing slots it owns at airports around the world, especially London's Heathrow airport.
Without these landing slots Air Canada cannot function as an international carrier.
CUPE agreed to a pension moratorium in part because Air Canada committed to make its best effort to protect these slots and offer them as collateral only to a government lender.
Now I learn that the company has asked you to let them pledge these landing slots as collateral to a consortium of mostly corporate lenders.
That wasn't the deal.
For Air Canada, it's the equivalent of mortgaging the family farm.
Please ensure that Air Canada’s landing and takeoff slots are only pledged to a government lender, capable of keeping the public interest in mind.
Please also give serious consideration to providing of a fully collateralized loan to Air Canada, in a way that avoids the private loan and the risks it poses to both the company’s future and the interests of the nation.
I look forward to a personal response to this message.

CANADIAN POLITICS:

SELLING THE GRAVY,KEEPING THE BONES:

Molly has blogged about the underlying issue here before, the possible sale of portions of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited to the private sector. The following article from the Public Values website points out exactly what this will mean in the current situation in Ottawa. Yes, as expected those parts that stand a chance of making a profit will be portioned out, very likely to entities that have some shady connections to the Conservative Party. After all, if it could never make a profit why buy it, unless, of course Ottawa decides to subsidize the profit by becoming the main customer. One wonders how this could be mistaken for saving taxpayers' money. Same expenses as before, except that now an additional layer of profit has to be tacked on.

As I have averred here before AECL would actually be a great candidate for privatization...providing, of course, that everything was on the table. Not just the potentially profitable sections of AECL but also its liabilities. Following the Conservative plan the liabilities will still be held by the Canadian public while the potentially offsetting revenue from profitable portions of the enterprise will be replaced by additional expenditures. I have no great and overbearing attachment to state ownership in itself, but neither do I have a touching faith in so-called "private enterprise" (which is a joke if the only customers are public institutions). Anyways, here's a thorough discussion of what the Harper plan for AECL actually means.

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AECL's viable assets to be sold:
Taxpayers will be on hook for liabilities and toxic assets.
by Ish Theilheimer
OTTAWA, June 1, 2009, PublicValues.ca, with YouTube videos(Please go to the Public Values website to see the videos-Molly) — The Harper government has announced its intention to sell of the most profitable and successful parts of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) at "fire sale" prices while retaining control of the Crown corporation's toxic assets and liabilities.

The government plans to divide the company in two. Chalk River Nuclear Laboratory, which currently employs 2,900 people, will be managed privately with no requirement that it continue manufacturing medical isotopes at the site. Currently, isotope production has stopped due to repeated problems at the plant.

Reporters and critics questioned the timing of the announcement, amidst alarm over the sudden cut-off of isotope production. In December, 2007, when the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission ordered the Chalk River reactor that produces the isotopes be shut down for repairs, the government recalled Parliament, citing the life-and-death nature of the situation. Stephen Harper even fried the Commission's chair, Linda Keen, over this.

On Thursday, at the privatization announcement, NDP natural resources critic Nathan Cullen pointed to the government's efforts to pass legislation shielding the nuclear industry from liability in case of accidents as proof of its intention to sell off the industry. He said it is poor management to sell off the company's best assets and proprietary research in a poor market while keeping the most risky assets in the public domain.

"They've just had a budget where we've seen a bunch of sales of Crown assets they weren't going to name. Now we're seeing what's going to be sold off. And to sell it off when prices are incredibly low is not sound fiscal management. Mr Flaherty's credibility with Canadians for managing the economy through this recession is out the window, and the growing concern is 'What next? What else is up for sale?'"

He said Canadian taxpayers will be "on the hook for the majority of costs in the event of a nuclear accident," because of proposed legislation "to limit liability in Canada in the event of a nuclear accident." In the US, he said, nuclear companies have to pay into a $10 billion pool for liabilities.

Natural resources minister Lisa Raitt said the newly-privatized company would be regulated by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, "which does have an independent view of the entire nuclear industry in Canada and will be managing it regardless of the restructuring here."

When asked by Straight Goods News "Can you call it independent when you're able to politically fire and hire chairs of the Commission, as happened in the case of Linda Keen?," Raitt said, "The CNSC absolutely has its own mandate and it continues to regulate the industry for its health, safety and security of Canadians."

The political meddling that kept the old reactor going, and periodically leaking heavy water, since the crisis, concerned reporters and critics. "Sixteen months ago, your government took pretty extraordinary steps, fired the nuclear safety regulator and ordered the startup of the NRU because, in the words of your government, 'people will die'," said Greg Weston of Sun Media. "Now we have a situation where the NRU is going to be shut down for months. Some are saying it will never come back online and we can't even find your Health Minister. What has changed? And was the government exaggerating the last time or does it just not care this time?"

Raitt downplayed the danger of the current isotope shortage. She was repeatedly grilled over apparent lack of government action to secure isotope supply in the 18 months since the 2007 crisis.

"What have they been doing, what have they been thinking?" asked Liberal natural resources critic David McGuinty. "There have been three unscheduled shutdowns. There have been four heavy water leaks, contained or otherwise, and we have no final knowledge of what the status of those containments are. We don't know if there are other leaks."

Raitt dodged repeated questions about whether lives are in danger now, saying repeatedly the government plans to hire outside experts to help find answers both to the isotope and privatization questions, but not naming any of the experts she plans to hire.

Ish Theilheimer has been Publisher of the leading, and oldest, independent Canadian online newsmagazine, StraightGoods.ca, since founding it in September 1999. He is also Managing Editor of PublicValues.ca.
Posted: May 31, 2009
Public Values (PublicValues.ca) is a project of the Golden Lake Institute and the online publication StraightGoods.ca

CANADIAN LABOUR:

WHEN CONTRACTING OUT CAN KILL:

Cost cutting is a never ending mantra for business today, and that includes the so-called "business" of public services. Some things, however, are not meant to be run with excessive attention to the bottom line. Health care is one of these things. Here's an article from the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) about the deadly effects that contracting out of cleaning services in hospitals can have.

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Contracting out, hand washing won't break deadly chain of infection:
March 3, 2009 08:38 AM
Ottawa, ON – While hand washing is a positive measure in fighting healthcare associated infections (HAIs), a new research paper from the Canadian Union of Public Employees says that governments and employers must invest in cleaning and keep services public in order to stop unnecessary suffering and deaths.

“We can demand and audit hand washing all we want, but without a clean environment, hands will quickly become re-contaminated,” says CUPE National President Paul Moist. “The best defence against HAIs is strong cleaning and support services. Yet across Canada, these very services have been cut, and in many provinces, privatized.”

The CUPE backgrounder is the first in the country to document the correlation between HAIs (such as MRSA, VRE and C. difficile) and cleaning and support services, over crowding, and outsourcing.

The research draws from evidence in Canada and abroad, and provides proven solutions for fighting HAIs. Key recommendations include: investment in more cleaning and support staff, training and workforce stability; lower occupancy rates; mandatory cleaning standards, monitoring and public reporting of HAIs; and ending contracting out.

“Scotland and Wales have actually contracted in hospital cleaning in order to reduce spiking infection rates. They’ve learned that contracting out leads to cuts in staff, high turnover, less training and less communication between clinical and support staff,” says Moist.

The report also finds that where governments in Canada and Europe have increased investment in cleaning and infection control, infection rates have gone down.

Health care associated infections are the fourth leading cause of death in Canada. One in every nine hospital patients contracts an HAI, and 8,500 to 12,000 Canadians die of HAIs every year.

- 30 -

The complete backgrounder is available at:

http://cupe.ca/health-care/health-care-associated-infections

For further information:

CUPE Media Relations – 613-794-7867

LOCAL POLITICS:

WINNIPEG'S WATER SUPPLY:

In the past few weeks there has been debate about a new contracting out scheme for Winnipeg's water supply. Molly, anti-statist that she is- has her own opinion on this, and that opinion is not in favour of such a thing. The present city administration's plans are hardly designed to reduce the role of government in the lives of citizens. What they are designed to do is offer an opportunity for "friends of friends" to profit by a presently public utility. This is typical of conservative ideologues the world over. The math goes basically like this:

*Government operations are "inefficient" (true).
*So, lets hire/contract with somebody from the private sector (rather than
considering the coop model).
* Such private contractors "will" be more efficient and therefore reduce
the cost of the service (Sometimes true).
*Such savings will compensate for the fact that the profit of the private contractor will now be paid out of the public pocket.

Well...it is not a foregone conclusion that all private
business is automatically more efficient than a public entity. Even so,
the cost of providing profit to the friends of the politicians can, and usually does, outweigh the so-called savings from privatization. The record of such things across the world hardly inspires confidence in the ideological
pronouncements of the proponents of such things. Then there is the "multiplier effect". If, by some turn of good fortune, the private contractors do indeed provide a service at a cost lower than that of the fees they extract from the public purse it is hardly ever (perhaps never)
due to some magical "efficiency" that they possess. It is pretty well always due to their paying their workers less. When you calculate the multiplier effect of this loss in terms of local resources (the old "one dollar spent equals three dollars generated") then the loss to a community would be pretty well guaranteed to be greater than the gain in most
situations. But at least some people benefit by such deals ie the friends (traceable and otherwise) of the politicians who set up such things.

Such is the situation with Winnipeg's water supply.
Here's an article from the Canadian Union of Public
Employees (CUPE) about what is happening here and the opposition to it.

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Is Winnipeg’s Water being
Privatized?:
Over 150 people attended a presentation on Friday night, to learn more about recent City Council decisions that could lead to privatization of city water treatment.

In November, the Mayor and eight Councilors voted “to explore” setting up “a new arm’s length business model to operate city owned utilities.” They also approved using a business (a public private partnership) method to “design, construct, finance and operate” water and waste control centres.

Tony Clarke of the Polaris Institute and co-author of Blue Gold (with Maude Barlow, Council of Canadians) spoke about situations around the world where water corporations have taken over water treatment and distribution systems, to disastrous effect. “It’s time for citizens to become custodians of their water – if we don’t we are going to be facing a huge water crisis in the future.”

Lynne Fernandez of the Canadian Centre of Policy
Alternatives (Manitoba) provided background on the City Council decisions and what these could mean for Winnipeggers. She noted that though the Council is saying it is only exploring different delivery options, they have already changed to a more business-like approach for dealing with public water needs.

In the audience was a cross section of the public. Questions focused on how P3s could function and what citizens could do to stop the slide towards privatization.

A coalition of community, student, faith, environment and union groups are criticizing the City’s actions. They are calling on City Council to consult the public on such serious issues and to be more transparent with all P3 projects the city is planning for public infrastructure. The event was sponsored by: CUPE Manitoba, Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace, Canadian Labour Congress, Canadian Federation of Students, Manitoba EcoNetwork, Canadian Centre for Policy
Alternatives, Winnipeg Citizens’ Coalition, Council of Canadians, Winnipeg
Labour Council and the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 500.

Note www.cupe500.mb.ca for more
information on the Local’s Positively Public campaign.

WINNIPEG NEWS:

WILL WINNIPEG'S WATER GO PRIVATE ?:

There's been a controversy here in the Peg in the last little while about whether to change Winnipeg's water utility to a stand alone corporation that would be open to private participation. Sort of a privatization by stealth. Needless to say this has evoked opposition. Here, from the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) is one view.

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Winnipeg opens door to privatized water:
Winnipeg city council is on the road to privatizing the operation and management of its drinking water and sewage treatment.

Council has decided to explore setting up a Municipal Corporate Utility (city-owned but arms length corporation) to operate water, sewage and possibly energy services. City council also voted to use a “strategic partner” (otherwise known as privatization through a P3) to finance, design, build and operate two water and wastewater plants.

CUPE 500 and a broad coalition of community, environmental, student and church groups opposed the move and called on the city to build on existing public capacity.

CUPE 500 president Mike Davidson spoke on behalf of the city’s municipal workers at the Nov. 19 council meeting, detailing the dangers of privatization and showing why public works best for the city’s water services.

The radical shift in how water services are governed and delivered is based on a flimsy “proof of concept” report from pro-privatization consultants Deloitte & Touche that doesn’t stack public against private and objectively compare them.

Earlier this year, Deloitte also advised that the city’s Disraeli bridge should be upgraded as a P3. The consulting firm is a sponsor of the country’s main privatization lobby group.

Winnipeg city councilor Jenny Gerbasi opposed the plans, calling them a “drastic move away from public control of core city services” that “is on the fast track”. She and three other pro-public councilors raised questions of accountability and direct control.

Gerbasi moved a motion for public hearings – which have been non-existent – as well as a full and open comparison of public and private plans.

But council voted to barrel ahead instead of listening to the arguments for staying public, including University of Winnipeg professor Christopher Leo’s warnings about what happened to a similar scheme in Utica, NY.

The corporate proposal for Winnipeg includes selling water services to neighbouring communities. Leo points to the results of Detroit’s attempts to market its water regionally. Winnipeg’s water marketing plan ignores regional resource-sharing and support that could happen publicly.

The coalition opposing water privatization isn’t going away. CUPE will keep working with the broad cross-section of citizens and groups that want to keep the city’s water public, challenging the city’s blinkered plans at every step.

INTERNATIONAL LABOUR-EGYPT:

EGYPTIAN WOMEN WORKERS PROTEST PRIVATIZATION:

The following article is from the British LibCom site.

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Ghazl el-Mahalla workers protest privatisation:
Workers from the Ghazl El-Mahalla spinning factory held a demonstration Thursday against alleged plans to sell off the Ghazl El-Mahalla company to private investors.
At 3pm some 40 women workers had congregated outside the gate of the factory, located in the Delta town of Mahalla El-Kobra. At 2:45 pm hundreds of workers were filing out of the factory, ahead of the scheduled time for the end of the morning shift at 3 pm.

According to factory workers the morning shift was ended early — pursuant to orders given by security bodies — in an attempt to minimize the scale of the protest. The group of women workers entered the factory and, after a short altercation with factory security, were allowed into the factory’s central courtyard area, where workers were assembling.

Around 800 workers participated in the protest, chanting “The factory belongs to workers” and calling for the removal of the factory’s manager.

During the past two years the Ghazl El-Mahalla factory’s more than 20,000 workers have frequently staged strikes and demonstrations protesting pay and conditions. A successful six-day strike in the factory in December 2006 is credited with instigating the nearly 600 incidents of industrial action Egypt witnessed in 2007.

On April 6 a planned strike in the factory was aborted following intimidation by security bodies and workers divisions. A general strike against increasing food prices was called for by activists on the same day as the planned strike. Mahalla witnessed violent clashes between the police and crowds of demonstrators on April 6 and 7 and security bodies were heavily criticized for the way in which force was used against unarmed, peaceful demonstrators, and for the arbitrary detention of hundreds of Mahalla residents.

A group of 49 people from the town are currently on trial for acts of theft and criminal damage they are alleged to have committed during the course of the two days. Rights groups have criticized what they say are trumped-up charges against the group.

Three things to take note from the protests:

1) The protest was spearheaded, yet again, by the female garment workers…

2) No matter how big or small the protest was, it marks a huge step forward in breaking the barrier of fear in the factory, following the April police crackdown. As I posted before, political propaganda and agitation on the factory floor have been resumed following the severe setbacks due to the crushing of the April Intifada…

3) The major news wires AP, AFP, and Reuters, continue to be absent from the labor scene and social protests, ignoring the elephant in the room, focusing their reports as always on car crashes, Islamists, Gaza tunnels, and Mubarak’s efforts in brokering peace with the Israelis, bla bla bla…

CANADIAN POLITICS:

CHALK RIVER REACTOR "CRISIS", A PRELIMINARY TO PRIVATIZATION:

The Chalk River nuclear isotope production plant is back in production now, and the sound and fury of the Conservatives and Liberals denouncing each other over whose political appointees are to blame is gradually dieing down. The watch dog on all things Harper, the Harper Index, has an interesting recent article opining that the "crisis" was largely manufactured by the Harper government in response to pressure from MDS Nordion, the contracted distributor of the isotopes produced at Chalk River (see http://www.harperindex.ca/View/Article.cfm?Ref=00126 ). Seems that the uncertainty produced by the shutdown reduced MDS' profits for the 4th quarter by two thirds. The article says that the isotope shortages were isolated and manageable, something that may or may not be true, but it also states that AECL and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission were well on their way to settling their dispute and that Harper's grandstanding by presenting a start-up order for parliamentary consent was unnecessary. That part is very likely.

The Harper Index article goes on to expose one of the hidden underbellies of the whole matter. While AECL is in the dirty and unprofitable business of actually producing the materials MDS handles the clean and profitable gravy train of sales and distribution, with a cheap product heavily subsidized by the Canadian taxpayer. Once more this is an example of how government owned business is often set up for the convenience of private firms, rather than for the benefit of the general population. In the area of regulation this service-providing aspect of the supposed watchdog function of government is often even more glaring.

The Harper Index article goes on to speculate that Harper's move was a preliminary to plans to privatize AECL. Here Molly has to call a time-out and refer to sources beyond the article in question. An article from the CBC News gives a backgrounder on Glenna Carr, Harper's new appointee as Chairwoman of AECL. After a career as an Ontario bureaucrat for governments of all political stripes she left the public employ to set up a consulting firm specializing the issues of corporate governance and private-public partnerships. Nobody more suitable to oversee the sell off of AECL could be chosen, and if her function is to be one of dismantling then the actions of the Harper government towards their last political appointee, Michael Burns, as Chair of AECL. Harper appears eager to make Burns a scapegoat, and Burns, in turn, has accused Harper of "political opportunism" for delaying news of his resignation until the Chalk River "crisis" blew up in public. If Carr's position will be more of a term one then she might ignore the obvious treachery of her employer towards his underlings.

Not that privatizing AECL would be such a bad idea. Most lefties reaction with horror to the idea that the government should get out of anything, and often they are right. AECL will be offered on a silver platter to whomever wishes to take it over. Profits will be made. Friendships that will result in lucrative positions at the least (or maybe huge sums of undeclared cash handed over in restaurants ????) will be forged. Whoever buys AECL will benefit from decades of public subsidy, but that may be irrelevant. AECL is the classic money sucker. An editorial in last Saturday's Globe and Mail ('AECL served a purpose, now it's time to sell it' by Derek Decloet) makes the case for privatization very well. Yes, many people in both government and business will benefit undeservedly from the sale of AECL, but the corporation has been a boondoggle from day one. Since the 1950s the Canadian taxpayer has funnelled $21 billion into the AECL maw, adding $71 billion to the National Debt. This money-pit will never close up. It will continue to provide cheap product for the likes of MDS Nordion, as well as innumerable contractors for its other enterprises. Whether it serves an essential public service role is doubtful in the extreme. It may be time for the Canadian taxpayers to cut their losses and run.

Many privatization schemes of the government result in a lower level of public service, but it's doubtful that the privatization of AECL would do this. As an anarchist Molly often opposes such schemes because of this, while saying that a different form of "privatization", the turning over of such enterprises as say Canada Post to producers; cooperatives run by the workers in them would be the optimal solution. From government enterprise to cooperative enterprise- not to the corporations. The structure of Canada's nuclear industry, however, makes this sort of solution almost impossible. It was set up as a subsidy to business, and would remain so under whatever self-management scheme might be proposed. In other words it would forever be financially dependent upon the government and therefore never truly independent. All this is not even entering into the question of whether nuclear energy is a good idea in the first place. Sell the bugger off. At least then it would become somebody else's problem.