Striking holds Canadians for ransom and does no good for anyone
By Lethbridge Herald on November 20, 2024.
Editor:
You do realize that striking for more money only puts all Canadians further back cost wise?
Where do you people get off holding the rest of Canada for ransom ?
Even if you get your raise your asking for after so many days you will not make up for the money that’s lost due to not working.
Canadians are getting tired of every union striking for higher pay. : where the hell do you think the employers are going to get the extra money to pay you. ??
They will just raise the prices on products they ship out and receive which you will have to pay for as well\.
Dale. E. Finley
Lethbridge
9-8
Guess u haven’t heard of a living wage.
Just saw an article yesterday saying the living wage in Alberta is $20/hr. Pretty sure no postal worker striking is only making $20/hr. I’m actually all for them getting a raise though, but major changes need to happen at Canada Post, it’s business model is archaic and the hundreds of millions in losses it puts up must end.
Living wage rates across Alberta vary significantly, reflecting local costs of living. Medicine Hat has the lowest rate at $17.55, while Jasper tops the list at $31.40. lethbridge is 20$. based on a 35 hour week
As a now associate member (retired) of United Nurses of Alberta, I tend to view the employers with a jaundiced eye. In the last number of years UNA took 0% in wages and benefits, in good faith, to ‘help’ the cause. And, for years, many times, the employer did not bargain in good faith.
Perhaps, instead of dissing the unions, more emphasis could be placed on the foibles of the employers.
Who gets to define living wage? Historically public employees have been well paid , well pensioned,and not hard working.
i am sure there are a good many, far too many, that can give you a first hand idea of what is a living wage. you could also do some very basic math to figure out what you would need to survive as a single renter in lethbridge, using a 35 hour week (however, 35 hour weeks are not so easy to come by).
if one earns 20 an hour, and has 35 hours, we are looking at 700 a week before taxes. that is about 3100 a month before tax. geez, if only it were still 2000, and not 2024. i think it fair to say one is spending well over half their after tax income on housing, utilities, internet. with food, one is left with quite a battle to meet transportation costs.
not a decent situation for the very people that make our lives far easier, and no less for the likes of the privileged earning 2+ times more money.
btw – we cannot all be lawyers, doctors, hedge fund investors, business owners, tradespeople, police, teachers, nurses, pro entertainers…as there are obviously limits to the need for those jobs that are the best paying jobs. we also cannot do without the massive numbers of people that serve us via the service sector, where all the lowest paying jobs with the fewest benefits are. there are, of course, many well paying service sector jobs, but that does not help the far too many that provide needed, helpful, honest, hard work that make our lives easier and more functional and save us all time via their work.
why might one feel such people deserve so much less, moreover, that they deserve poverty?
why are so many so vocal opposed to people asking to be compensated such that can live with a fair level of dignity for their service, and yet, so accepting of those that suck the life out of our economy via their greed, self service, and just plain earning far more than the service they provide?
I always found as a Royal Bank Manager that when Union Members were treated properly by their employers they had no need to strike and a perfect example was the Alberta Treasury Branch. Although unionized they have never found a need to strike.
Watching these Reformers treat doctors, nurses, and teachers like third class citizens doesn’t surprise any of us that they are wanting to get even by striking. We would also. They have been shown no respect like they were under Lougheed and Getty. While Jason Kenney’s fool Tyler Shandro accused them of being over paid and tore up their contracts created by former conservative governments they pushed through privatization of healthcare, creating a much more costly effect. After getting the Pharmacies involved in helping out, by paying them ten times more to administer vaccines, they are now attacking them with cuts.The stupidity never ends with these fools, does it?
The idiots who continue to keep them in power, mostly seniors, should be a lot smarter but aren’t. While every man, woman and child in Alaska has received $52,000. each in total annual oil dividend cheques since 1982 and have $80 billion in their Savings Account and Norway has $1.4 trillion in theirs these idiots in Alberta have been willing to accept a pathetic $1,000. each and a Savings Account of $21 billion. With a $260 billion oil well cleanup mess and growing, a $77 billion debt, and their lives being put at risk by a healthcare system in financial ruin and a overcrowded education system and per capita the highest number of people using our food banks in North America that’s how stupid they are.
Now watch these idiots attack me for not being as stupid as them for not allowing it to happen?
You’re of course aware that the situation Alberta sits in is completely different from Alaska and Norway right? How much would Alberta be sitting on if it weren’t for equalization payments? It’s been calculated that Alberta has put over 600 billion dollars more into Canada than it has received back in transfers and that was 5 years ago (the articles I’ve read) so over $700 billion now and those numbers don’t take into account any growth that money could have caused if invested or used to payoff the debt.
The question is why are you so ignorant when most Albertans know this province has never sent any money to Ottawa or any other province in the form of Equalization payments? All Canadians pay federal taxes at the same rate and all Equalization payments come out of our federal taxes and they have nothing to do with what Alberta pays or gets back like the Reformers want you t believe. The truth is because Albertans are richer than other provinces we do pay higher federal taxes. So what?
It was Ralph Klein who created this lie that you are believing, so why are you and why haven’t you been smart enough to check it out?
When a Reporter asked him why Alberta was broke and Alaska and Norway weren’t he stated that it was because we have had to sent Billions of dollars to Ottawa and Quebec in the form of Equalization Payments which those of us from the world of finance weren’t dumb enough to believe and the former conservative MLAs were furious with Klein or stating it.
Why don’t you start by googling this” Debunked Alberta Does Not Send the Most Money to Ottawa”. The internet is full of articles disproving this lie, isn’t it?
I am well aware of how our taxation system and equalization payments work thank you very much. I don’t care where the money comes from that the feds divvy up, whether from the provincial government ( which it doesn’t) or from individual Albertans (which it does). If you were an actual Royal Bank Manager you should have been decently paid and therefore paid a decent amount of Federal Taxes, so why are you not absolutely pissed at how much of your hard earned money was just given to Quebec and other so called have not provinces? I guess in my original post I should have stated Albertans have given over 700 billion dollars more to Canada than they have received back, does that work you? And wtf is a reformer, that party hasn’t existed in a quarter century.
Who do you think you are fooling when you are the one who claimed Alberta was paying into the equalization payments? Those of us who had ties to the oil industry aren’t that stupid. It only became a problem when fools like you began believing the lies these Reformers fed you. So why did you allow these Reformers , starting with Ralph Klein to slash Lougheed’s oil royalties and corporate taxes as the Conservative MLAs that I knew pointed out when Lougheed,s energy minister Bill Dickie was a brother in-law of one of my uncles? Being a true Canadian and willing to share our wealth with the parts of Canada who aren’t as lucky as us makes us feel good. Too bad you don’t care.
Stuck in the past a little are we? That’s fine we all have our defining years lol. Anyway I’d be perfectly fine with a split of Canada, eastern Canada already feels like a different country when I visit there. Although maybe the split has to happen between urban and rural, that’s where the real divide exists.
Apparently you are one of these ignorant seniors we talk about so why are you believing the lies these Reformers feed you without bothering to check them out, especially when the internet is full of articles, disputing the lies they are spreading?
who needs a living wage if one is already at well above as much, right? those pesky, communist, socialist unions pushing for decent living standards are the very ones that make things cost more for good, honest, hard working people already earning living wages and then some. how are good, honest, hard working folk that earn above the living wage supposed to be wealthier than the brunt of those serving them? not everyone can be allowed to work with dignity and a healthy standard? seems the likes of those that oppose living wages are by default favouring a good old fashioned slavery society.
as for what postal employees earn, have a look at jobs indeed when canada post posts employment positions…under 20$/hr.