Alberta's Free Market In Labour

Since 2004 the Alberta Tories, the Party of Calgary has been partying in Calgary while the province booms. Can you say lame duck government, all round, the cabinet, the back benchers. All waiting for the ultimate lame duck; King Ralph to finally step down.

Until he does, and then and only then after the so called coronation errr leadership race of the Tories. So maybe next January or February or heck make it March, they may start paying attention again.

In the case of planning for expectant and predictable labour shortages this government has spent thirty years with its head in the sand.

EXCERPT:

The downside of boom: Alberta's manpower shortage
Andrew Nikiforuk
From the May 22-June 4, 2006 issue of Canadian Business magazine

Alberta's labour crisis, the product of an energy boom and a demonstrable deficit of government leadership, has now reached a tipping point. While many Calgary firms actively talk about importing temporary workers from China and Mexico, Todd Hirsch, chief economist at the Calgary-based Canada West Foundation, calls the situation "almost absurd." Just two years ago, he thought Alberta's labour shortage was confined to skilled professionals. Today, almost every business sector in the Edmonton-Calgary corridor, along with key oil-and-gas towns, including Grand Prairie and Fort McMurray, can't even find people to peel carrots for $14 an hour. The squeeze has not only driven up wages by 6.8% (more than twice the national average); it is also burning out employees, curtailing business expansion, driving up prices and encouraging rampant worker poaching. "Do we really want 8% to 9% GDP growth at the expense of infrastructure and the environment?" asks Hirsch. "We have to get real and say faster growth isn't better.

The oilsands have become a vortex sucking up workers. With nearly 50 megaprojects on the books, worth an estimated $75 billion, the population of Fort McMurray, Canada's fastest-growing frontier city, could swell from 56,000 to 80,000 people in the next five years. Yet the municipality is already struggling with a growing infrastructure deficit of $1.2 billion, overcrowded hospitals and schools, and a housing shortfall of 1,200 units. It also has the highest monthly rents in the nation, averaging $1,478 a month for a two-bedroom apartment. A 2006 consultant's report on 21 key indicators of the region's sustainability gloomily describes the affordability and availability of housing as "worsening."

As a consequence, many oilsands developers have gone to extreme measures to acquire workers. To kick-start its multibillion-dollar Horizon mining project, Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. built its own private airstrip to fly in tradesmen. Given that the average price of a house in Fort McMurray has quadrupled from a modest $105,000 in 1995 to about $415,000 today, Canadian Natural Resources also briefly considered housing staff 1,127 kilometres away in Kimberley, B.C., and flying in workers for four-day shifts. And in a highly controversial move, the company, which might employ 3,000 construction workers for several years, is looking into importing temporary workers from the depleted oilfields of northeastern China. Some Calgary analysts have already suggested that the entire oilsands may be built by Chinese labour. (A spokesperson for CNRL said its executives couldn't "pull away the time to do an interview" for this story.)

The only free market in Alberta is labour. Rather than complaining about the use of temporary workers to bust unions and drive wages down, unions need to unionize the unorganized who now can bargain for higher wages. A generalized wobbly contract for each worker would show the bosses the real meaning of wage negotiations. As travelers and card carrying craft-trades unionists do as they travel across Canada.

A general contract could be created for each worker in Alberta, recongized by the labour movement as the living wage contract, thus assuring every worker in Alberta a share in the wealth they are creating. This would literaly push aside any form of minimum wage the State set. And that would be the ideal free market approach to bargaining with the bosses.

It is perfectly do-able by the labour movement in Alberta. Of course getting it done is another question. And as long as they are distracted by the threat of temporary workers they will not see the bigger opportunity that is before them.

Already young workers are wobblying the job in Calgary merely by the mere fact of a labour shortage their value has increased. But they value work less. Smart kids. They have struck the market at its heart. Not Bay St. but Main St.

Now who will take up the torch to organize this vast army of unorganized workers.

Prosperity's hidden toll

Two years ago, the labour crunch mainly involved skilled workers. Nurses, doctors, senior managers and welders were among the highly sought professionals who required some degree of training and education to warrant their demand.

Not anymore.

Today, the need for workers transcends all sectors, from the top to the bottom of the pay scale. It's causing no end of consternation for employers, as much for large companies as for small retailers and independents who can't afford to pay enough to keep sales clerks, dishwashers or cashiers on staff.

Help Wanted signs dot every corner of Calgary. Sure, it's a problem most cities would love to have, but one we can't afford to underestimate.

The Jobs Everywhere phenomenon is creating a curious scenario, especially in the McJob sector. The work ethic in this sector appears to be collapsing, particularly among 16- to 20-year-olds, says Todd Hirsch, a labour market-shortage expert for the Canada West Foundation.

"They don't think it's necessary to show up on time, or at all," says Hirsch. "They know they can walk across the mall and get another job, and maybe be paid more." Anecdotes abound as to how younger, part-time employees understand they're holding all the cards.

Recently, a local Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant was closed indefinitely because it couldn't find enough staff to operate, posting a sign on its door saying: "Due to unavailable staff, we are unable to open doors at this time."

With four or five job offers available to young people, the feeling is: "I don't really need to work that hard," says Hirsch.

He points to the catering industry, which experiences a slow season from January to March, when most low-skilled workers are usually laid off. Instead, they are being paid $10 to $12 an hour to do pretty much nothing but be around for the start of the high season in May.

If it sounds desperate, that's because it is.

Also See:

Labour Shortage



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Saddam

I didn't know that the penalty for meglomania, stupidity and self delusion was death.

Iraqi prosecutors ask death sentence for Saddam

Must be the American influence in Iraq.

Of course whats good for Saddam should be good for the White House gang for their illegal war. The White House War Criminals


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Whose Priority?

Firearm Centre Abatement Minister Vic Towes was on QP today.

Tories confident that gun registry bill will pass

"The long-gun registry is by far and away the biggest issue in many ridings in Western Canada," Toews said.

Uh huh, oh really...could have fooled me. I thought the environment and health care were the top priorities. Vic Toews is lying again.


Of course the P3 failure which is the Federal Canadian Fire Arms Registry is an issue for Vic and the folks he talks to, cause thats all they talk about. He goes to carefully staged rallies, ala George W., with the political faithful. He admit that on QP this morning. Went to some rural BBQ's (can you say fundraiser?) and he was approached by folks whose main concern was the Long Gun Registry.

"We know that it is important to a lot of our constituents. What our constituents want us to do is make an honest attempt to repeal that legislation."

Really because polls show just the opposite:

Nearly half, or 49 per cent, of those surveyed said they want the government to maintain the hand gun and long-gun registries and put more money toward hiring police, while 45 per cent said they want the long-gun registry dismantled and greater funds put toward hiring more police officers.

Oh yeah and he is lying when he says this;

"I think people understand it has been an incredible waste of money, that it hasn't helped police forces"

Really someone should tell the police associations that. The Tories have selective hearing, sort of like Saddam Hussien, when it comes to the Firearms Registry. And crime in general. It's the contradicition of being the party of law and order. Civil libertarian issues are squashed unless they are embraced by the social conservatives like the issue of firearms. Of course as the party of law and order they can't take libertarian positions on marijuana, sex, same sex marriage, etc.

And of course arms sales by Canada makes it the fourth largest arms dealer in the world. Now that wouldn't happen to have anything to do with this would it?
Gun lobby trading favours with the feds?

Diemaco - Canada

Para-Ordnance Manufacturing Inc - Canada

Lessons From The North: Canada's Privatization Of Military Ammunition Production

And besides gunrunners who don't have to register themselves, well there is always those other rednecks who lobby against the Firearms Registry but put out bucks for hunting licenses.

Robert Pye, communications co-ordinator with the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters, said Wednesday’s announcement was a huge step for law-abiding gun owners. Prime Minister Stephen Harper had previously promised the federation he would repeal the registry. “They’re setting the table for legislations that going forward will ultimately kill the gun registry,” Pye said.

In the Orwellian speak of the Conservatives the Long Gun Registry is apparently not to be confused with the Federal Firearms Registry. Some how through the use of legislation the Tories will make a precision surgical removal of the long gun/shot gun portion of the registry while keeping all the rest and transfering it lock stock and barrel to the RCMP. Whose sense of sharing knowledge with other police departments is only out down by CSIS.

Along with lying Vic likes to besmirch Vancouver and B.C. as the criminal Sodom and Gommorah of Canada. Nothing better when you are making up facts then to point the finger somewhere else. And social conservatives know that Vancouver is a virtual Dante's Inferno of sinners and leftists.

The Fire Arms Registry legislation as well as legislation overturning Same Sex Marriage will be put forward in the fall. Only to go down in flames. Leaving political pundits to speculate on a snap fall election.

Oh joy not only do we suffer the stupidity of a Minority Government determined to follow through on its political PR; their five priorities (The Contract On Canada) including those which they know will fail. But they insist on acting like they are the majority in the House, arrogance shared by the previous government.





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Bllderberg Redux

GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES
Greens Issue Wrap-up On Bilderberg Conference
"Any meeting in which U.S. government leaders are gathering with other nation's leaders, corporate honchos, political thinkers, and other powerful world leaders needs to be reported in the media," said Bob Levis, Green candidate for Congress in Wisconsin (5th District) >. "If the major media refuse to report on Bilderberg because they're part of the same cabal, then something truly ominous is taking place. This isn't conspiracy theory. It's conspiracy."

It appears that as I predicted when you fail to report on secret meetings of secret societies then the American tendency is to cry 'conspiracy'.It's in their blood, they have seen conspiracies since the founding of the Republic. In fact as a conspiratorial political culture they can't help themselves. They know the conspiracy exists because they used it to overthrow the British. After that each fundametalist Protestant religious revival in America created its own conspiracy of Anti-Masonic, Know Nothing, Nativists. A phenomena that gives rise to fascism. Pearsall's Books: Religious Revivalism and Lower-Middle Class Man


See:

Secret Society Not So Secret

Bilderburger

Conspiracy Theory or Ruling Class Studies

Conspiracy Theories




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Caspian Oil

A Polish Green blogger linked to one of my stories. As I cruised through his site, which yes is in Polish though most of his stories link to English language sites, I came across this;

Read between the news: Manufactured Supply and Demand

---

Chevron opens Caucasian pipeline
Oil Prices Jump Amid Instability in Iraq



This is the real reason for the invasion of Afghanistan. To secure the region with its Northern neighbours for the sake of the Baku pipeline. It really had nothing to do with 9/11. It all began with the American expansion into the Balkans under Clinton with their 'humanitarian war' in Kosovo. It also is no coincidence that the pipeline also runs through Chechnya.

The West's, including Russia,historic war on Islam is neither religious nor a clash of cultures it is simply a war for oil. Always has been since the begining of the 20th Century and the carving up of the Middle East by the Imperialist nations.

It will only worsen as we come closer to global Peak Oil.

And as Technocracy warned back in the 1940's ( The Sell Out of the Ages 1941 [op] by Howard Scott) these oil wars will lead to increased tendencies to fascism at home and abroad. As we have seen with the hysterical phoney "war on terror" which is simply an excuse for the creation of the post-9/11 Security State.

“A criminal is a person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation.” Howard Scott

Free Trade: Primitive Accumulation of Capital

You will see that the Russian pipeline runs through Dagestan and Chechnya – the regions which the West has been trying to destabilize, so as to squeeze Russia from its soft southern underbelly using the Islamic "freedom fighters" a.k.a. terrorists as their whips. As they did in Bosnia and Kosovo, they used the mostly Islamic Albanian KLA "freedom fighters," a.k.a. drug trafficking terrorists, to cause trouble in Serbia.The Bulgaria-Macedonia-Albania route has already won support in Moscow and from the Chevron-led Caspian Pipeline Consortium that is developing the Caspian-Kazakhstan oil deposits. Turkish authorities have now conceded privately that Ankara had underestimated Russia's capacity to extend its influence in the southern Caucasus states of Armenia and Georgia, thereby dictating a high-risk security environment to the building and maintenance of the Baku-Ceyhan line.BLOOD FOR OIL, DRUGS FOR ARMS

	International News	Electronic Telegraph
	Friday 25 July 1997	Issue 791

Oil boom slips from Russia's grip By Alan Philps in Baku

Politics of International Oil

---

Vertical integration is the process whereby different aspects of a business, "upstream" and "downstream" -- ranging from sourcing raw materials and production to marketing -- are brought together. In the oil business a company whichis primarily engaged in the production of crude petroleum may decide to engage in vertical integration by acquiring downstream refineries and distribution networks. Similarly, a company strong in its downstream operations may try to engage in vertical integration by investing more in exploration and development and acquiring a greater stake in the production process. Vertical integration may also occur when complementary companies make long term contracts with one another or joint ventures, or if they decide to merge.

Vertical integration should not be confused with horizontal integration, or movements toward greater oligopoly or monopoly within an industry. However, vertical integration may encourage tendencies toward oligopoly by offering the integrated companies a competitive edge against their less integrated rivals.

Oil companies in developing countries
Oil is the most powerful industry in the world. It fuels manufacturing, agriculture and transportation. Petrodollar flows shape the global financial system.

Many wars have been waged out and are still being fought all over the world to ensure corporate control over oil. Oil is power and power needs to control oil. Behind the names of presidents and dictators are the names of much more powerful actors: Exxon/Mobil, Chevron/Texaco, Shell, British Petroleum, Elf.

A government is toppled by armed opposition in a country in the South and coverage of the story only reports on the local hatred between factions and almost never the corporations and foreign governments backing each of the sides. In many cases, the actors behind the scenes are oil companies. In Venezuela, an elected president has had to face a coup and a general strike because he is sitting on top of a sea of oil and is not perceived as being sufficiently friendly to the US oil establishment.

But oil is not only behind civil wars, coups d'etat and presidential campaigns. Oil is also responsible for countless "low-intensity" wars, that destroy entire communities throughout the world and particularly in the tropics. Many indigenous and other local communities have been wiped off the map or have had to face enormous hardship due to the environmental destruction resulting from oil exploration and exploitation in their territories, as well as from the widespread violation of their human rights. From Ecuador to Nigeria and from Indonesia to Chad, "black gold" has been a curse to local peoples and their environments.

Governments of the world have made some attempts at addressing this issue. They signed and ratified the Convention on Climate Change and its related Kyoto Protocol. Similarly to what happened recently in the United Nations Security Council in relation to Irak, one government -representing the interests of oil corporations-decided not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol because it would affect its interests. This one country -the United States- happens to be the world's number one culprit in CO2 emissions and home to the most powerful oil corporations in the world. It is thus responsible for most of the past and present oil wars.
Big Oil also dominates the Bush administration. President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, national security advisor Condoleezza Rice and many other top-ranking officials in the administration have been top corporate oil executives or have longstanding ties to the industry.

Also See:
Oil

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The Traffic In Women

Canada's Complicity in Human Trafficking
If there's one labour shortage that the Canadian government won't tolerate, it's not having enough strippers.

OTTAWA - The number of foreign exotic dancers flocking to Canada has dropped dramatically since the federal government scrapped a controversial visa program intended to fill a national "labour shortage.''

Citizenship and Immigration Canada documents obtained by CanWest News Service show fewer than 10 new temporary work permits were issued for strippers in 2005, down 82 per cent from the 57 handed out the year before.

Permit extensions for dancers already here also plummeted, down 84 per cent to just 60 last year from 366 in 2004.

Until recently, the federal government granted temporary work visas to nude dancers -- mostly from Eastern European countries such as Romania -- based on a lack of Canadians willing to do the job.

Yep and it seems that Russian strippers are the most popular, via Israel. Of course on the other hand if they got a Canada Council Grant they could deem themselves performance artists.

Once again that infamous excuse for illegal immigration is used, no Canadians would take the jobs. In this case its legal immigration, traffic in women, that is being promoted with this same excuse. Well duh yeah when you pay them crap wages. Which is why all sex trade workers need a union. To keep out the pimps and panders, even if they are Cabinet Ministers.



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Toronto Star Discovers Alberta

The Toronto Star discovers Alberta in a major feature article. But it ain't Ralphs Alberta.

"It's a cliché," says University of Calgary political science professor Doreen Barrie, who says that Alberta's public image is being held hostage by Calgary's world-famous stampede, "when the entire city is transformed into a Wild West theme park."Barrie tries to set the record straight in her controversial new book The Other Alberta: Decoding a Political Enigma.

See:
The stereotype that Alberta, as Barrie puts it, is "a parochial province peopled with right-wing rednecks who wear cowboy boots and hold attitudes to match," is crumbling like a Rocky Mountains avalanche.Barrie is convinced that this explains why most Canadians don't understand Alberta, a province that's come to be known as the new Quebec because of threats by some here to separate. What's more, Barrie argues that the bigger-than-life personality associated with the Calgary Stampede is so pervasive that the hootenanny not only dominates the city throughout the year, it actually unfairly colours the whole province.

Barrie blames Alberta's political elite, particularly leaders like Premier Ralph Klein, for nurturing the cliché, arguing they dampen dissenting voices within the province by making Ottawa the official opposition."Ralph Klein has criticized Ottawa's foreign policy stance on Iraq, threatened to violate the Canada Health Act and opposes the Kyoto accord. These are but a few recent examples of a continuing campaign against the federal government," she says. "Albertans do not share the rather mean-spirited sentiments sometimes expressed on their behalf."

See: Alberta


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I Agree With The IMF

No really I do. So do most economists and anyone rational enough to understand that the GST cut was a political ploy. Of course for the Tories rational economics is a contradiction. Since all they care about is power. To bad there isn't a rational economist in the PMO.

The International Monetary Fund has suggested the federal government would be better off cutting personal income taxes and lowering taxes on savings than cutting the GST. In its annual report reviewing the Canadian economy, the IMF said a cut in income taxes instead of consumption taxes would be "more likely to stimulate labour supply, as well as saving and investment, than a lowering the GST rate."


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For Queen and Country

Our black bears die in the service of the Queen and her stupid Royal Guards. Because faux fur hats just lack that glossy look. And who knows how many poached furs are sold to the English Crown while livers and gallbladders are shipped to China. Time to stop ALL BEAR HUNTS.

Hundreds of black bears face slaughter after Army abandons trial of synthetic fur for Guards' ceremonial headgear

As a show of British military finery, the Trooping of the Colour has had no equal for 258 years. Today, the Guards regiments will parade for the monarch and tourists in their spotless regalia, topped with their lustrous bearskins.

But as the Queen takes the salute to mark her 80th birthday celebrations this morning, some 4,000 miles away a group of hunters will be preparing to go into the dense woodlands of Canada and kill an Ursus americanus or Canadian black bear.

Yesterday, the MoD - and by default the guardsmen who will stand to attention on Horse Guards Parade today - were accused by animal welfare campaigners of perpetuating the annual slaughter of 10,000 Canadian black bears, many of whom die in pain from botched kills by fee-paying trophy " sportsmen".

The Army confirmed yesterday it would continue to buy between 50 and 100 bearskins a year after it declared a trial to replace the distinctive headwear with hats fashioned from synthetic fur had failed because they got " waterlogged" on rainy days.

Senior officers complained that the man-made hats lacked the "life" and "bounce" of real bearskin - the focus of millions of tourist photographs every year and, as one MoD official put it, "as much an icon of Britishness as a red telephone box.

Ohh our poor bears suffer so that an icon of Britishness can continue. Gimme a break.


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America: Economic Basket Case

America is an economic basket-case. It is in debt to China, Japan and other cash rich lenders. It is flying high on consumer debt. It is an economic basket case about to collapse. If it does it will take the world economy with it. I have said it before and Toronto Star Columnist Tom Walkom agrees;

Perhaps we're all living in a fool's paradise

Big trouble if U.S. economy falters

As long as interest rates and the U.S. dollar stayed stable, investors were satisfied. But the U.S. dollar has been sinking. And now the country's new central banker, Federal Reserve Board chief Ben Bernanke, is indicating that he wants to push up rates to forestall inflation.That, in turn, means bad news for ordinary Americans. Currently, Americans are in the unusual position of spending more, on average, then they earn. An economist would say they have a negative savings rate. More simply put, they are in debt.They are in debt to buy houses; they are in debt to buy cars; they are in debt to buy groceries and clothes and geegaws. Even more than Canadians (who save a paltry 1.9 per cent of their disposable income), Americans owe money.As long as interest rates stayed low, this did not matter. Now that the central bank is talking of raising rates, it does. If Americans suddenly find their loans and mortgages being called in, they won't be able to afford toasters from China and cars from Windsor. If they are forced to default on mortgages they can no longer afford, the big North American real estate bubble will burst, with repercussions for the entire financial system.

See:

Debtors Nation

The Real Debt and Deficit Crisis

Storm Clouds Over The US Economy

Housing Boom or Bust

Greenspans Legacy

Warren Buffet: U S Capitalism in Crisis

What's good for GM is bad for Workers

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