Why Managers Need Unions

COMPENSATION

Managers' overtime victory short-lived

Manitoba quickly closes loophole that handed supervisor a win

VIRGINIA GALT

WORKPLACE REPORTER

The hopes of overworked managers everywhere were briefly raised yesterday when a scrappy former store supervisor from Winnipeg won a victory at the Supreme Court of Canada in her fight for overtime pay.

Before they could even think about collecting countless hours of back pay, however, it became apparent to even the most sleep-deprived manager that the window of opportunity opened by the ruling is about to slam shut.

Effective April 30, the Manitoba government will fall in line with all other Canadian jurisdictions and exempt management employees from overtime-pay provisions in their labour laws.

Sharon Michalowski will bank more than $10,000 in overtime pay she has been battling to get from Nygard International Ltd. since 2003. She says her protracted fight has made her the "the poster girl" for other managers who hoped her case would set a precedent.

Even before the Nygard case had worked its way through the courts, employers in Manitoba -- alarmed by the possible implications -- persuaded the provincial government that managers are generally paid better than other employees, have more power to set their own working conditions and, therefore, should not qualify for overtime pay.

Yeah right they are as exploited as the rest of the employees. Managers need to be unionized with the rest of the workers in a shop. The NDP government should be ashamed of itself for being sucked into this claptrap from the bosses. The difference between a Manager and the rest of the workers in most shops is the colour of their shirts, or that they have to wear a tie. Power to set their own working conditions, yeah right....which means that instead of being paid for Overtime they are owed they can flex their work hours, but of course that never really happens at all, instead they just accrue and accrue more unpaid OT. And if they get time off its at straight time, and at the bosses convenience.

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Canada, workers, work, employees, labour, labor, unions, Manitoba, over time, managers, Labour laws,

Why The Conservatives Are Not Libertarians

You are not a libertarian when you promote the Security State and Law and Order;

It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power; there is never, nor can be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.

Moreover, it follows that with any exercise of State power, not only the exercise of social power in the same direction, but the disposition to exercise it in that direction, tends to dwindle. Mayor Gaynor astonished the whole of New York when he pointed out to a correspondent who had been complaining about the inefficiency of the police, that any citizen has the right to arrest a malefactor and bring him before a magistrate. "The law of England and of this country," he wrote, "has been very careful to confer no more right in that respect upon policemen and constables than it confers on every citizen." State exercise of that right through a police force had gone on so steadily that not only were citizens indisposed to exercise it, but probably not one in ten thousand knew he had it.

Albert Jay Nock: Our Enemy, the State, 1935, Chap. 1

See:

Leo Strauss and the Calgary School

Post Modern Conservatives.

Paranoia and the Security State

Our New Police State

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Canada, anti-terrorism act, Government, Conservatives, War Measures Act, 1970, Arar, terrorism, crime, liberalism, state, statism, libertarian, civil liberties,, Our Enemy The State, anarchism,, RCMP,, CSIS,, Albert J. Nock,
Bemjamin Tucker, Liberty, Lysander Spooner, Godwin, Jury, Constitution, law, libertarian, anarchism, invdidualist-anarchist, Proudhon, mutualist, mutualism, anarchist-law, jury, Canada, Conservatives, Harper, Toews, government, Papineau, Riel, 1837, judge, judicial-reform, three-strikes, police

The Cone of Silence Bank Presidents and the RCMP

Funny but Bank Presidents sound just like the RCMP Superintendent and Commissioners when it comes to telling the truth to Parliamentary Committees.

Deputy Commissioner George, who was suspended from duty after a previous appearance before the committee, was rebuked by MPs, who said her testimony has been evasive and incomplete.

Staff Sgt. Frizzell said the pension investigation took an unexpected turn when documents were uncovered suggesting insurance funds were being diverted with Deputy Commissioner George's approval.

But he was ordered off the case before he had a chance to follow the trail, he said.

She said she had nothing to do with the winding down of the pension-fund investigation, or the issuing of a "cease and desist order" to Staff Sgt. Frizzell directing him to return to other duties.

She did not rule out the possibility that she might have seen documents related to transferring insurance funds to the pension fund.

She did not recall this, but she said she relied on advice from another senior Mountie with expertise in insurance and financial matters that there was nothing untoward with the life-insurance funds.

Back off on ABM legislation, banks warn MPs

Whenever members of the Commons committee probing ATM fees tried to peer inside the world of banking, they were met for the most part with blank expressions or no comments."We won't comment on that," said the Royal Bank's Jim Westlake, group Head, Canadian Banking, when asked about profit margins on the ATM fees.

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Jack Layton, ATM, NDP, Banks, service charges, bank charges, credit card, bank profits
, Canada,, jobs,, layoffs,, profits, workers,, bank, workers,,Canada, anti-terrorism act, Government, Liberals, NDP, Conservatives, War Measures Act, 1970, Arar, terrorism, crime, liberalism, state, statism, libertarian, civil liberties
Air, India,, John, Marshall,, RCMP,, CSIS,, Sikh,
Giuliano Zaccardelli, Zaccardelli, , RCMP, Resigns, Arar, Commisioner, Harper, Government, lawandorder, Conservatives, Parliament, MPs, Liberals,

The PM's Psychic

Now we know why the Conservatives don't answer questions in QP. They expect the Opposition to know them cause they are psychic.

The use of psychics and witchdoctors to affect sports teams world wide is well known, and of course they are used in North America for the same reason in politics.

Michelle Muntean, a former stylist for CTV News, fusses over Harper's hair, selects his clothes, and even accompanies him on official trips -- most recently to France for the Vimy Ridge Memorial ceremony.

She's also been known to give her clients spiritual advice, leaving some critics wondering if Harper is getting more than fashion advice.

"What is wrong is the use of public dollars to pay for a stylist or a psychic," said New Democrat MP Judy Wasylycia-Leis.

Former prime minister Mackenzie King famously communicated with his dead relatives and dog, and believed his dreams were a good way to contact the spirit world.

Of course as usual the PMO is evasive not only about her roll as a taxpayer funded stylist but now as a psychic.

It appears the opposition has been looking under the wrong heading to find out where she is in the employment list for the PMO. Apparently she is actually a valet.

But Harper's communications director Sandra Buckler said Muntean does not discuss psychic matters with either the prime minister or his wife.

"She doesn't," said Buckler.

"I don't care what she is. She is very helpful. She carries the bags, she opens the door. She is very nice."

The use of psychics of course does conflict with the Conservatives espoused religious fundamentalism.

Though religious revivalism itself is really not much different from occultism, speaking in tongues, spirit possession, playing with snakes.

The involution of the African city, notes Mike Davis (Planet of Slums, Verso, 2005) has as its corollary not an insurgent lumpenproletariat but rather a vast political universe of Islamism and Pentecostalism. It is this occult world of invisible powers—whether populist Islam in Kano or witchcraft in Soweto—that represents the most compelling ideological legacy of neoliberal utopianism in Africa.

Pentecostalism is spiritualism for Christians. After all the Pentecostal founder of social conservative fundamentalism Sister Aimee Semple McPherson was Canadian.

H/T to Impolitic


See:

The PM and the Stylist

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Canada, NDP, Conservatives,Judy Wasylycia-Leis, Stephen Harper, PM, Canada, QP, Question Period, Parliament, psychic, fundamentalism, Michelle Muntean,

420

Note the Time. Instead of 420 being a reference for pot maybe it should be used for LSD.

And Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds (LSD) is now officially 64.

At 4:20 in the afternoon, on April 19th, 1943, the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann deliberately ingested 250 micrograms of LSD-25, a substance he had discovered during experiments with alkaloids of the fungus ergot.

Despite the vanishingly small dosage, he soon found himself stricken with dizziness, euphoria, and an inescapable compulsion to laugh. Within the hour, he could barely write or speak intelligibly, and fearing he'd poisoned himself, rode his bicycle to his nearby home, called a doctor, asked for a glass of milk and collapsed on a sofa. What happened next is best described by Hofmann himself, from his autobiographical book, LSD - My Problem Child:

After a doctor arrived and examined him, finding no physical abnormalities besides extremely dilated pupils, Hofmann realized he wasn't in danger of losing his mind or dying and his experience suddenly took a turn for the better:

Now, little by little I could begin to enjoy the unprecedented colors and plays of shapes that persisted behind my closed eyes. Kaleidoscopic, fantastic images surged in on me, alternating, variegated, opening and then closing themselves in circles and spirals, exploding in colored fountains, rearranging and hybridizing themselves in constant flux. It was particularly remarkable how every acoustic perception, such as the sound of a door handle or a passing automobile, became transformed into optical perceptions. Every sound generated a vividly changing image, with its own consistent form and color.

H/T to Access to Awareness



See:

Rochdale Deja Vu

Psychedelic Saskatchewan

The Misuse of Acid

Cuckoo Clock Economics

Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
420 LSD, hallucinogens, psychohallucenogens, Albert Hoffman, Timothy Leary, pot,

Tags
Albert Hoffman
LSD
Sandos

Smokers and Smokestack Industries

While opposing any form of carbon tax on Greenhouse Gases the Stelmach government in Alberta increases taxes on smokers.

The lone tax increase: Tobacco

Taxes for smokers not smoke stack industries is their motto.

The Ed Stelmach government's first Alberta provincial budget hikes spending by 10%, but has few new initiatives to show for it.Average Albertans will get modest tax relief of about $50 a year, but smokers were hit with a 63-cents-a-pack hike in cigarette taxes as of midnight Thursday, making tobacco taxes in Alberta the highest in Canada.



Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Oil Sands big tobacco, Canada, smoking, Government, politics,
Alberta, health, greenhouse gas, Ed Stelmach

The PM and the Stylist

Does Harpers taxpayer funded stylist help him exfoliate?

NDP submits formal request for answers on Harper's stylist

How much does former CBC makeup artist get paid to advise PM on image?

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis (Winnipeg North, NDP):

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister’s fashion consultant travels with him around the world at the taxpayers’ expense. Really. Is it hard to choose the right Conservative blue suit? Did the Prime Minister have trouble sleeping at night, wondering whether he should wear light blue or dark blue socks? To my mind, ordinary people have other priorities.

Can the Prime Minister tell us who pays for his new fashion consultant and how much it costs?

Hon. Peter Van Loan (Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform, CPC):

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister maintains a tour staff, as do all prime ministers. In fact, I believe members will find that this Prime Minister has a smaller tour staff than all his Liberal predecessors.

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis (Winnipeg North, NDP):

Mr. Speaker, I think a lot of ordinary Canadians are asking why the Prime Minister even needs a stylist.

I am certain that after the disastrous cowboy photo op, prime ministerial lint and stray hairs are at the top of the PMO agenda. Perhaps a one-time consultation but a travelling assistant devoted to tie choices?

The Prime Minister is wasting taxpayer dollars on his own ego. In fact, it was the Prime Minister who harangued his former colleague, Preston Manning, about a $31,000 clothing allowance.

What has changed? Why is it okay now when it was not okay a few years ago?

Hon. Peter Van Loan (Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform, CPC):

Mr. Speaker, a lot of ordinary Canadians are wondering what I am doing answering questions about style and fashion. However, I can assure the House that the Prime Minister pays for all his clothes, unlike some of his predecessors.

Taxpayers paying for Harper's image adviser, Tories admit

It turns out that taxpayers are picking up the tab for Prime Minister Stephen Harper's personal primper.

After two days of ducking media and opposition questions, the Conservatives finally revealed Wednesday that Michelle Muntean is on Harper's government staff. But the revelation raises two more big questions: How much is she being paid? And why is there no government record of her employment.

Harper has been travelling with his personal image adviser for major domestic and international events - most recently at ceremonies at Vimy Ridge in France last week. Muntean helps him perfect his look, including managing his wardrobe and general grooming.

News that Harper uses a style maven had the opposition both frothing and laughing.

See:

Obesity Is A National Problem

Fat Boy Needs Election

Button Up

Baby Fat

Conservatives Take Fashion Lead

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Canada, NDP, Conservatives,Judy Wasylycia-Leis, Stephen Harper, PM, Canada, QP, Question Period, Parliament, suit, fat, Michelle Muntean,

Broken Railroad

Sure blame the workers for your broken railroad,
when it's you that broke it.


Hunter Harrison, CN chief executive, at the company's annual general meeting.
Mr. Harrison said yesterday that after eight months of talks, the union and railway are no closer to a settlement.

And the Liberals and Conservatives in the Senate obliged sourpuss;

Senate passes CN Rail back-to-work bill

See

CN Strike No Hinderance To Honorary Degree

CN not hurting

Could CN Bring Down Harper?

Scab Trains Go Off The Tracks

CN Whines

CN Wildcat

American Union Bosses

CN

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
UTU, Canada, railroad, CN, strike, workers, trains, train,
unions, labour, strike, E. Hunter Harrison,labor, NDP, politics, back to work legislation, workers, Harper, Bill C-46, BQ,
, labour relations, Canada

Senator Brown

The appointment of 'elected' Senator Bert Brown by his old pal our PM, Stephen Harper, is a pale horse compared to the old Reform call for a Triple E senate Brown and Harper used to call for. It is based upon the passing of the Conservatives Senate Reform Bill C-43. Of course Harper as PM can appoint Browne without Bill C-43 but he qualified his appointment as being tied to the bill now in the house.

The Senate (14:50)

Mr. Kevin Sorenson (Crowfoot, CPC)

Right Hon. Stephen Harper (Prime Minister, CPC)

Though Ottawa has no obligation by law to appoint the senators from Alberta's "elected" list, Harper was happy to do so to better publicise his campaign for an elected Senate.

Under Harper's Bill C-43, all senators will be appointed based on "popular consultations" with the provinces before they are inducted into the Red Chamber.

"Alberta did some time ago hold a popular consultation for the filling of a Senate vacancy. When that seat comes due, I will recommend to the Governor General the appointment of Mr. Bert Brown," said Harper.

While the Conservatives are claiming that Bert got over 400,000 votes ( they even lie about that he only got just over 300,000) . And while he ran three times, he actually was in a dead heat with Betty Unger. So Harper had a choice between his old pal or Unger.

The real story is how many folks voted against the phony senate elections held in 2004. In fact the vast number of Albertans abstained from voting or spoiled their ballots,for the right wingers running for Alberta Senator.

Nearly one in five ballots spoiled in Alberta Senate elections

More than 170,000 Albertans, or nearly 19.3 per cent of the total number of those who went to the polls on Nov. 22, rejected or spoiled their ballots.

Alberta's chief election officer Brian Fjeldheim said 85,937 people declined to take a senate ballot, and another 84,643 either filled them out improperly or intentionally marked them so they couldn't be counted.

Voter turnout for the overall election was at a historic low of about 46 per cent, while the senate election turnout was around 35 per cent.

For example in one riding in Northern Alberta the total votes spoiled, rejected, or declined came to 8147, while those who cast votes came to 19,154 split between ten candidates. Clearly the majority was with those who rejected this phony election. No one candidate got anywhere near the number of the total protest non vote.

This was in fact the third time we had Senate elections in Alberta. And Bert is the second such senator appointed to the Senate. The last one was Stan Waters another of the Reform party hacks, who was appointed by Brian Mulroney.

It was almost a decade between elections for Senators in Alberta. The first time when Waters and Brown got elected it was all for show, that the Klein regime was onside with Mannings Reformers. It was a political protest to push the Triple E Senate idea.

Then eight years later, with little reason to call one, a Senate election was tacked onto the provincial municipal elections, the Klein regime also tacked on elections for regional Health Boards. That Senate election had more independents then the previous or the later election.

Ironically those Health Board elections were overturned within a year, the elected board members fired and replaced with Klein government appointees. So much for democratic reform.

The election in 2004 for Senators saw right wingers and only right wingers run. In fact the provincial P.C.'s were reluctant to back anyone, or run anyone, until forced to by their pals on the right.

It is all a clever mirage of pseudo democracy by a province that suffers from a democratic deficit as a one party state. Irony abounds. Here we have the Alberta Reformers wanting democracy in Ottawa when it is lacking at home.

Harpers Bill C-43 continues this made in Alberta pseudo democratic reformism. It is all about appearances not real Senate reform. First Harper appoints an unelected Montrealer to be in Cabinet as Public Works Minister by appointing him to the Senate. Thus his minister can avoid public questioning in the house.

Next he calls for term limits for Senators, then he calls for a bill that would encourage the PM to appoint elected senators, when only one province has made this an issue and ever held an election. The rest of Canada could care less. And for good reason.

The senate is an anachronism that actually disenfranchises Canadians regardless of whether Senators are elected or not. And nothing in Harpers phony senate reform bill will change this basic fact.

According to the Constitution, anyone appointed to the Senate must be over the age of 30, a resident of the province they represent and own property worth $4,000, above their debts.

Renters and young people need not apply for the job.



See:

Deforming The Senate

Senate Reform

Abolish the Senate 1

Democracy Is Messy

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Triple E Senate, Reform Party, Harper, Conservatives, Parliament, parliamentary reform, senate reform, senators, politics, Canada, abolish the senate,

Canada
Federal Election
Politics
Alberta
Abolish the Senate
Harper
Conservatives
electoral reform

No New Apartments in Alberta

Boardwalk REIT claims it would have to raise rents to $1650 a month in order to have enough cash to build new apartments in Alberta, thus its opposition to rent control. However Boardwalk has not built any apartments, as a REIT it buys up existing properties.

Meanwhile the Stelmach government ignores the recommendations of its own public committee to implement rent controls. Claiming it would discourage apartment construction.

Except all current conversions and construction of multiple person dwellings are not apartments but condos, cause thats where the money is.

Developers have not been building rental units in Alberta, even without rent controls. Despite the rapid growth in the Edmonton area, there were 5,050 fewer rental units last year than in 1987, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.

See:

Inflation In Alberta

Housing


Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Alberta, Calgary, Edmonton, Ed Stelmach, housing, rental, condominium, apartment, Boardwalk Reality, Income Trusts, rent controls, homelessness,