Ontario Federation of Labour calls for adoption of "most progressive budget" in years

NorthReport wrote:

OFL leadership is in the back pocket of the Liberals but carry on with your nonsense.

Tell that to Sid Ryan...

On one hand NDP support at this time might be crippling to what is a major electoral opportunity.

On the other hand the Liberals are desperate and have thrown many carrots into the budget. 

Labour wants bird in the hand, NDP is going for the two in the bush.  Who is right depends on where you place the emphasis and who you have faith in to carry out the program.

Quote:

The good bits:

the establishment of a $2.5-billion Jobs and Prosperity Fund, including the development of a strategy to support advanced manufacturing
the proposed establishment of an Ontario Retirement Pension Plan (the details of the plan are still not determined)
a realistic and long-term plan to invest in public transit
increased wages for Personal Support Workers and Early Childhood Educators
the permanent indexation of the Ontario Child Benefit
expansion of dental services to low-income children
introduction of health benefits to low-income children
[s]a 1% increase to social assistance [/s]
progressive income tax reform
increased supports for Aboriginal communities

Fixed that for ya, Jerry. There's nothing remotely good or progressive about a sub-inflationary increase to social assistance.

Or the NDP win.  Or another minority with a stronger NDP contingent.

So there are two threads on an identical topic, albeit with quite different titles.

The other one came first: What's with the Ontario Federation of Labour - are they in the back pocket of the Liberals as well?

Typical of the person who opened the thread: an inflammatory statement for a title thread. People are free to say whatever they want, but it definitely colours things to have to say your piece under a banner that has pre-emptively dismissed your position.

The title of this thread is much more neutral. A good thing in my books.

On the other hand..... along the way, what to many is another "sin against overall promotion of discussion" is committed: open a new thread on what is not a new or newly differntiated topic, so you can push discussion your direction.

I wonder who Unionist learned that from?

You know labour has really lost its way when it starts confusing less "regression", with "progression" because they keep on surrendering more and more turf every year.

"This year, only half a step back! Victory!"

This budget is better described as the "least regressive budget in years".

Unionist wrote:

James Laxer:

Quote:

What urgently important progressive agenda is Horwath advancing that required her to pull plug & open door to hard right Hudak gov?#horwath

 

Rokossovsky,

Thanks for the link.

If the Liberals could not even keep their previous 3 promises to the NDP, iwhat were the possibilities that they were going to make good on 70. This is a zero budget. Campaign on left and govern on the right. As usual it's all smoke and mirrors with the Liberals.

Quote:

In fact, it’s hard to believe the Liberals ever intended this budget to be anything other than a series of election promises. Even while Kathleen Wynne was asking for NDP support in the Legislature days ago, Liberal operatives were handing out misleading attack flyers in Liberty Village, with the Liberal election campaign already clearly underway.

That's easy.

As if those Liberal promoses mean anything. Wynne didn't deliver on 3 promises, so why would anyone think they would deliver on 70?

If there is going to be meaningful change we need to elect your hated NDP.

That is Andrea's job.

And Andrea has to choose the time when she best thinks she can do well in the election. 

Unionist wrote:

NorthReport, hopefully [url=http://opinion.financialpost.com/2010/06/08/resist-the-insurance-lobby-e... link[/url] will work better to your 2010 article.

I thought Horwath's pension proposal was very positive. What I don't understand is why she kept propping up the anti-labour Liberal government until last week, when Wynne actually decided to put the pension plan in the budget? I don't know the whole history, but it seems like a funny way to use one's leverage in a minority government situation. Did Horwath trust the Liberals before, but then last week stopped trusting them?

 

Unionist wrote:

NorthReport wrote:

If there is going to be meaningful change we need to elect your hated NDP.

Then, there are those who defend - with great passion and venom - no matter what the current "leader" does, because they're scared shitless of any kind of criticism. They have no confidence that the party can handle criticism. These forces are the most destructive of all to any positive contribution of the NDP.

Speaking of "passion and venom" you made a nice effort at personalizing things, rolling  up a rubric of "criticism" in a pastry of histrionics about people who don't agree with you being "the most destructive of all".

Unionist wrote:

[url=http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/nora-loreto/2014/05/progressives-dilemma... progressive's dilemma: The ONDP's election game[/url]

Nora Loreto while living in Saskatchwan doing her masters wrote:

At the heart of the ONDP strategy of the past two years must be the sense that the labour movement doesn't really matter. With a minority of Ontarians actually unionized, and many unionized members supporting right-wing policies and parties, the ONDP clearly doesn't think appealing to and advocating for unionized workers is a winning strategy.

Instead, the rightward drift of the ONDP has placed them into Mike Harris territory.

ROFL. End sane discussion. Where do they find these quacks?

Meanwhile it is the Ontario Liberal Party that is on record as trying to figure a way up the hill Harris couldn't climb: Complete privatization of Ontario Hydro.

And speaking of unionize workers that the NDP doesn't care about, its the ONDP that is echoing ATU 113 and calling out Wynne on "alternative financing", the latest euphemism the Liberals are using to describe how they will sell our stuff to their friends.

It looks like Rosario has decided to go back into politics after being MIA for the last few years:

Ontario’s private-sector gamble is another sucker’s bet

In other news, ATU113 has put out a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_I_ldzwvpcg

There is nothing "confusing" about opposition to privatization. And nothing "progressive" about Wynne looking at 30 year maintenance contracts for non-unionized transit contractors.

Catchfire, just to let you know your biases are showing. But that'ok, we all have them. 

This is the second thread opened on the same topic.

Why have you not closed it yet as you have been asked to do by the author of the thread?

http://warrenkinsella.com/2014/05/someone-just-got-himself-a-football-sc...  

Quote:

Blajer said the ministry has up to a year after the incident to decide whether to press charges. At the time of his death, Knox was working for Advanced Construction Techniques Ltd., an Ontario company subcontracted by Spanish firms Obrascon Huarte Lain and Fomento de Construcionnes y Contratas to do work at the York University site.

Report on impact of worker's death last October expected next month 

Rokossovsky wrote:

That is a terrible article. Anyone can wax prosaic about "labour" and "unions" in an idealistic sense. We are talking some pretty hard core realities about real working people who are being affected by real decisions made by people with real power. Bob Kinear is defending his membership, and prosepective workers who will be employed in non-unioned jobs, under less than desirable working conditions.

Transit maintenance is a dangerous job. People will die because of Wynne's decision here. We have already had a number of deaths in TTC related construction contracts, where Metrolinks decided to "save" money by hiring private contractors.

The only party in the mix that is taking a stand against privatization is the NDP. The Liberals are basically hocking the future, in order to get some cheap "progressive" points by selling off assets, and undermining the rights of working people by deliberately outsourcing service contracts to private, non-union companies.

In fact, despite a lot of progressive jabber from the Liberal party, they have put themselves on record as pursuing the final major policy objective that Mike Harris tried and failed to complete: The Privatization of Ontario Hyrdo.

It is the Liberals that are pursuing the Mike Harris policies. This one among some others. Let us be clear.

Working people in Bob Kinear's union are looking for him to defend their jobs. Real jobs. Real people. He is looking to the NDP to back him up on that. They are doing so. That is what counts.

It is irrelevant if the NDP support working people out of conviction, or opportunism. They are a party whose trademark "pitch" includes bed rock defense of our public institutions. I don't really care if they believe it or not, as long as they do what they are supposed to do, which is oppose privatization. If we must whip them to it, then we must whip them to it.

Whatever one thinks about the NDP, its "rightward" drift, or its ideological lassitude, its failure to live up to its history, or its promise. Saying that the NDP is moving into "Mike Harris" territory is simply irresponsible journalism.

So no, maybe she "shouldn't be guest-editing rabble.ca's new Labour series", if she is going to make hasty judgement calls, about complex situations many miles away from where she is doing her masters, and instead call up Bob Kinear, a real labour leader, and ask him who he thinks is more "Harris-like", Wynne or Horwath, rather than making damaging, irresponsible and silly statements, and having them published under the rubric of labour politics.

You know, when I read these articles, especially by people from urban areas where conservative or right-wing candidates are not a factor at all, I wonder how much contact these people have with conservative voters. It's almost as if there's a fear that the conservative barbarians are wandering about outside the city gates, and they are about to storm the city and take it down, so we have to build a fortress to stop it. Even the strategic voting idea is based on that, stopping the conservatives.

Do you want to know how to stop the conservatives? You go out everywhere and you try to convince more people to support your party than the conservatives, and I truly believe the NDP is better at that than the Liberals, especially in the outlying areas. Look at seats in Essex, Waterloo, London, and Niagra Falls, where without a Liberal incumbent, it was the NDP that won those seats and blocked the conservatives. Federally, we have MPs like Yvon Godin, Charlie Angus, John Rafferty, Nikki Ashton, Nathan Cullen, Alex Atamenenko (this list is by no means comprehensive) who are out in rural areas, many in areas where conservative voters live. Learn from their experience. Talk to conservative voters. You may be surprised at finding elements of their better nature you can tap into.

Nora Loreto is an organizer for Québec Solidaire and she lives in Quebec City. I think she might know a thing or two about convincing people who have voted one way for a long time to vote for a small party with little chance of governing.

Catchfire wrote:

Nora Loreto is an organizer for Québec Solidaire and she lives in Quebec City. I think she might know a thing or two about convincing people who have voted one way for a long time to vote for a small party with little chance of governing.

Fair enough. I was thinking more along the lines of what I read from activists generally,especially having spent almost my entire life in regions that specifically vote for right-wing parties, where they aren't so much an issue in large urban centres, and more activists (at least the ones I'm aware of) seem to be based in larger urban centres. I'd love to hear more from activists in places like the suburbs, small towns, rural areas, and the north, and what activists are doing in areas where unionization tends to be lower and they don't have the attendant benefits that such organization would bring.

KenS wrote:

I dont know a thing about Loreto.

That's obvious. Because the ad hominem smears about whether or not she "walks the talk" are laughable.

Unionist wrote:

The original smear of Loreto in this thread ([b]"End sane discussion. Where do they find these quacks?[/b]) was far far simpler than that. She criticizes the ONDP, so she must be some kind of shill for somebody, and she's fair game for defamation.

No. Not because she criticizes the ONDP, but because the criticism of the ONDP is quackery. 

Nora Loreto wrote:

Instead, the rightward drift of the ONDP has placed them into Mike Harris territory. They have no qualms about using the words common sense. Their criticism of the Liberal budget reads as if it were written by a Red Tory. Their promises are so weak that it's hard to imagine how the democratic will of a party of progressives is being reflected in their policies.

Ridiculous. This trajectory of political broken telephone is nothing more than the sniffling of dissafected NDPrs being manipulated by Liberal spinmasters who are keen on using the alleged nominally "progressive" nature of Kathleen Wynne to encourage people to vote "strategically" for the Liberal Party so that they can succeed where Mike Harris's failed and finally privatize Ontario Hydro. 

Catchfire wrote:

Rokossovsky, perhaps you didn't see the recent Horwath press release where she stated that Ontario needed some "Common Sense" (now removed). That's what the Mike Harris jibe refers to. It's also somehwat shocking that no one working for the ONDP seems to have any notion of Ontario electoral history beyond 2012.

The usage is quite deliberate I assure you.

But Loreto is referencing much more than the use of the phrase "common sense" out of the press release.. She is making an entire analysis based on a faulty premise, and a very cursory reading of the facts. That reference to "common sense" is merely a ricochet from the drive-by, and the only injury was to the intelligence of the reader.

There is a lot of emphasis on emphemeral and intangible optics in this discussion about the ONDP. Liberal leader Kathleen Wynne is making a lot of use of a slogan not unlike "I won't stop until the job is done", which sounds not unlike Jack Layton. Does this by inference means that Kathleen Wynne, is heading into "socialist" territory, given the fact that at the time Layton was using it he was leading a party that had "socialist" in its constitution?

And that is quackery: Kalthleen Wynne is not by extension now a socialist because she stole Layton's line. This line of thinking elevates completely irrelevant semantic aesthetics to the level of serious critique.

So cursory and ephemeral is her statement, that she seems not to have read the press release or all, just summarized some general feelings, without evidence. Rumours? Chit chat on blogs? What?

Andrea Horwath wrote:

It is time to bring some common sense to the discussion about investing in transit and transportation infrastructure. 

The corporate sector must play a role

The corporate sector – which benefits from investments in transit – needs to be part of the solution.

That is why New Democrats support a modest increase in the general Corporate Income Tax rate to ensure that we can build the transportation infrastructure we need without unfair fees being imposed on families or cuts to education and health services families rely on.

Yeah. That is so "Mike Harris territory". Corporations should pay for public transit through increased taxes -- that is what Harris was talking about when he said "common sense revolution". I can hear the words on his lips in my mind right now.

So, Loreto writes"At the heart of the ONDP strategy of the past two years must be the sense that the labour movement doesn't really matter." Where does that come from? The fact that Syd Ryan at OFL and Unifor, supported the budget, and she saw the phrase "common sense" in a press release? As I said previously, it certainly reads like she is making "hasty judgement calls, about complex situations many miles away from where she is", given that the labour movement is far from being universally in favour of Wynne's budget.

Who did the Liberals turn too when they needed help throwing their teacher allies under the bus. Surely it must have been the NDP that doesn't care about the "labour movement" and is off in "Mike Harris territory"? Oh wait. The NDP opposed Bill 115, and supported ETFO when it wanted changes to Bill 122.

The Liberals turned to the Progressive Conservatives on Bill 115.

If this is where Unionist is getting his information, then his ignoriance is execusable. which is precisely why I said that Loreto's "op ed" is dangerous. damaging and silly. It is.

Unionist wrote:

[url=http://www.benzinga.com/pressreleases/14/05/m4557169/horwath-promise-to-... promise to cut government spending wrongheaded, says CUPE Ontario president[/url]

Quote:

Fred Hahn says he's sure Andrea Horwath didn't mean to sound like other politicians, but worries that's what voters might think when she says the government spends too much and when she promises to cut millions from the budget.

She doesn't mean anything at all, brother. She just means to listen to some unscrupulous brain-dead opportunistic assholes who told her to oppose the budget and force an election. She doesn't mean anything. There is no known cure for what ails her and her string-pullers.

Fred Hahn's part was pretty clear. What followed, I can't figure out.

For one thing Hahn never suggested that he had a problem with Horwath opposing the budget. Indeed, he critiqued the budget roundly, touching on several points that the NDP have made. I don't even recall him placing blame for the failure of the Liberals to convince the NDP to pass the budget on the NDP.

But it isn't the first time you have distorted the opinions of Ontario labour leaders in order to try and fit people in the Liberal "strategic voting" straight-jacket. Here is what Hahn actually said:

Fred Hahn wrote:

"Liberals and Conservatives have already cornered the market on talk about government overspending," says Hahn. "Voters really need an alternative."

Good comments by Hahn, yours, not so much. These are also good: But you would have me replace this guy with some Liberal corporate stooge, because its "strategic".

I am sure Fred Hahn wants that too.

Unionist wrote:

[url=http://www.progressive-economics.ca/2014/05/12/ndp-sectarianism-returns-... sectarianism returns with a vengeance[/url]

Quote:

You have to wonder what Andrea Horwath was thinking. By bringing down the Ontario government a week ago and launching an election as a result, the NDP risks opening the door for the provincial Tories reclaiming power. Which would be a disaster for working people across the province, let alone the social fabric of our communities.

 

How sectarian is it to blame Conservative popularity on the NDP because it was the minority partner for a 3 years during a 10 year reign of Liberal governance. As if the Conservatives were suddenly going to vanish next year.

Some people seem really afraid of elections.