LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: 10/23/06

Monday, October 23, 2006

China Needs Free Unions

I was taken to task for being quick to denounce the new China Labour Law. Apparently I was another one of those cheerleaders on the left who apparently did not give the American Chamber of Commerce their due, according to China Law Blog. China's Proposed Labor Law:Going After Capitalists Like China, 1967

Dan Harris the blogger does praise one union blogger saying;

"I did come across a single blog post, however, that actually engaged in some thought and analysis on these issues. In a post, entitled, "Unions in China," on the decidedly pro-union Peter Levine blog, Mr. Levine actually seeks to discern what is going on with China's labor laws and with the American Chamber's (AmCham) opposition to them.

Levine then goes on to say in an addendum that he is "beginning to think" that the New York Times article was misleading because the proposed law would not in "any way increase the independence of unions in the PRC. It would impose some new labor laws, but they might not be enforced fairly. Workers would have no voice in their enforcement. There would be no increase of pluralism or democracy."

Bravo, Mr. Levine for starting an important discussion that just about everyone else in the blogosphere seems to want to avoid.

Well gee Dan, I said that too. "The restructuring of China from a State Captitalist economy to a mixed economy forces it to liberalize its labour laws. This does not yet mean that there will be independent worker controled unions, but it is a step forward.What China needs, is a new workers movement and free unions not State unions."

Dan's concern and that of the American Chamber of Commerce is that China labour laws will not allow employers to fire shiftless, lazy workers. This is a surprising admission from a lawyer who should know better. The fact is that union grievance procedures also mean that employers cannot just fire workers without 'just cause". It's the trade off for management rights in a contract. And it is to the benefit of employers, because otherwise they would be sued under common law. Which is far more costly.

See:

China

State Capitalism

Unions

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
China, unions, labour, WalMart, Nike, corporations, labour-law, labor, labor=laws, unions, workers, worker-rights,

Lyle Oberg Is Scary

Lyle Oberg is scary. As the guy who is running second for the PC leadership, we should all be worried. While the self identified social conservatives in the Tory leadership race such as Ted Morton and Victor Doerksen are seen as such, Oberg is just the same.

When he was Minister of Social Services he wanted to kick the disabled off AISH. He denounced the report critical of the Governments failure to provide safe long term care for seniors.

What makes him scary is that he has downplayed his social conservatism by focusing on infrastructure, taxes and other 'safe' populist issues, rather than moral issues. That makes him more dangerous than either Morton or Doerksen.

See:

Alberta

Ted Morton

Lyle Oberg

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Alberta, Oberg, Doerksen, Morton, leadership, politics, PC, Tory, leadership-race, Ralph, Klein, Dinning,

Cardston Home of Bigots

Cardston Crazies Still At It They want to ban same sex marriage in their town.

Cardston was the first Mormon settlement in Alberta. The irony being that while Cardston today opposes Same Sex Marriage, it's original settlers were polygamists.

While no longer polygamist, Mormon Cardston continues it's white only seperatist culture.

The Mormon Way
By Bruce Serafin
How wonderful it must be, I thought, to grow up Mormon and blonde in Cardston! A similar idea came to me the next day when I went to eat my lunch in Cardston's municipal park. Four Mormon families (each of the young women in long skirts, tight around their hips and rear ends) were sitting at the park's tables; a Native family sat far from them at at the edge of the park. People go where they’re comfortable; and in Cardston, Mormons and Natives didn't mix.

The Alberta Temple, located in Cardston, in southern Alberta, and dedicated in 1923, was the first LDS temple built outside the United States and its territories. Constructed of handhewn white marble from British Columbia, it won architectural acclaim.

Mormonism is a political as well as relgious movement, as a political movement it is Republican and socially conservative.

LDS lobbying efforts in several states against the ERA in the 1970s threatened to reawaken major apprehensions of priesthood influence on LDS voters.

In Canada that means it is the base for the Reform/Alliance/Conservative party federally and the Tories provincially.

Cardston is represented by the Alberta Alliance, a right wing rump party that was created by Randy Thorsteinson .

Former Social Credit Party of Alberta leader Randy Thorsteinson was selected as the first leader of the party. Thorsteinson, a devout Latter-day Saint, had quit the Social Credit Party in April 1999 in protest of an internal party proposal to limit the involvement of Mormons.

Th AA Party Leader and MLA for Cardston, Paul Hinman supports Republican Ted Morton for leader of the P.C.'s. Morton is famous for his bill C-208 which would have done what Cardston wants but for the whole of the province. Morton is also notoriously anti-native. He would feel right at home in Cardston.

A tip o' the blog to A Slap Upside The Head for this.