In February 2019 when the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) was in a dispute with the Aéroports de Montréal (ADM), Chris Aylward, PSAC’s National President said: “This is corporate greed, plain and simple.”
It is a favourite talking point apparently, as it is one he is using today as federal workers are on strike. He blames corporate greed for rising costs and the tragic situation he and his members feel they find themselves in.
Treasury Board President Mona Fortier insists negotiations between the federal government and the country’s largest public service union are ongoing this weekend, despite what she refers to as “ups and downs” and “kicking and screaming” over the past couple days.
“We’ve been in mediation for three weeks, we’ve been at the table for three weeks,” Fortier told CTV’s Question Period host Vassy Kapelos in an interview airing Sunday. “There have been ups and downs, there has been kicking and screaming, but the important thing right now is that we are focused, and we have a deal that is good for public servants, a fair one, and that is reasonable for Canadians, and that’s what we’re trying to focus on right now.”
They should stay out a very long time and demonstrate how little needed they are.
“People hate us!”
After the first day of the nationwide strike by federal civil servants, the Ottawa Citizen interviewed strikers on the three picket lines their union (PSAC) was maintaining in our nation’s capital.
Canadians shouldn’t feel sorry for privileged federal bureaucrats.
They don’t worry about losing their jobs or missing a paycheque. They get pay raises and bonuses, even if they don’t meet their own performance targets. Now they want billions more from taxpayers who are struggling to pay for groceries and make their mortgage payments.
To be fair not all civil servants are predators: Only a third of 120,000 striking PSAC members cast vote on work stoppage
… The complaint, which was filed with the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board, was filed by a public servant seeking to invalidate the strike.
His complaint was dismissed but the board did find voting irregularities of “significant concern.”
A recent article in the National Observer suggested that “real” populists would support the public workers currently on strike in Ottawa, which includes 159,000 federal employees in various departments, from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to Veterans Affairs.
The article calls these public workers “working class” and attacks Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre for not championing them. Poilievre sells himself as the politician who cares about the little guy, so why doesn’t he care about these guys? Is this not a populist movement?
Most of Blackie’s media have been pushing this insulting “public service union as working class” canard.
The public service is 74% unionized with wages and benefits the working class, (13% unionized,) can only dream of.
Did you get full pay to stay home during the pandemic? Did you get a bonus for just breathing during the pandemic?
Didn’t think so.
The strike by the Public Service Alliance of Canada – with more than 150,000 members, it accounts for nearly half of all federal government employees – is being described as the largest in Canada since … the 1991 PSAC strike.
Of course, a lot has changed since then. In 1991, the federal government employed roughly 218,000 people (that’s the core public service, not counting agencies such as the RCMP or Crown corporations such as the CBC and Canada Post) for a population of just over 28 million: roughly one federal public servant for every 129 citizens. As of 2022, it employed about 336,000 for a population of just under 39 million: a ratio of one to 116.
If striking bureaucrats get their pay raises, inflation might never end
When 155,000 federal government workers walked off the job this week, they tested more than the resolve of the government and the patience of Canadian taxpayers. They also tested Newton’s third law, which states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
There is no question that the cost of living has been rising and that people need relief. But that does not come from simply giving everyone more money.
Very shortly the Trudeau government and Canada’s public service unions, a critical component of the Liberal Party’s electoral success, will rub shit in your face and tell you to like it.
They will get virtually all they ask for. Trudeau is in need of their support and like the CBC the unions were never non-partisan.
“Public servants believe they should be able to work from home because going to work is risking getting sick.”
Does anyone have some thoughts on this remark? pic.twitter.com/rNqshS9GgC
— Steven_Tyler (@StevenT65674368) April 20, 2023
Justin Trudeau, Pierre Poilievre and Jagmeet Singh all crave the labour vote. Here’s why the federal strike complicates that
OTTAWA—When NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh turned up in front of Parliament Hill Wednesday to join thousands of striking federal workers, the picket line all but turned into a party line.
After all, Singh has noted repeatedly in recent days, his party has always stood on the side of unions.
The Public Service is not the “labour vote”. Labour in Canada is mostly non-unionized.
The unionization rate for private sector employees fell from 19.0% in 1997 to 13.8% in 2021. In contrast, 74.1% of public sector employees were union members in 2021, 4.3 percentage points higher than in 1997.
Trying to pick a side in the public servants’ strike? Here’s how I break the situation down.
While not normally the biggest fan of public sector unions, I have to say that the Public Service Alliance of Canada’s position is reasonable, in most respects. The exception is the 30-per-cent increase that 35,000 Canada Revenue Agency employees are seeking. The number is so ridiculous it’s not even worth examining.
At the beginning of the pandemic, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau repeatedly used the phrase, “We are all in this together and we are there for you,” speaking about the federal government.
But during the pandemic, Canadians learned they weren’t all in this together. Not really.
That there were two classes of Canadians — those in the public sector and those in the private sector.
Report @GovCanHealth identifies capitalism as a root cause of #ClimateChange. Also, ‘If we don’t address colonialism we’re going to tread water & eventually drown.’ https://t.co/LzXC2gqLss #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/cgEojbCY88
— Blacklock’s Reporter (@mindingottawa) April 18, 2023
Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) leadership says all workers in a legal strike position will strike Wednesday if they don’t reach an agreement by 9 p.m. ET Tuesday.
Its bargaining groups — one of about 35,000 Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) workers, the other of about 120,000 staff spread across more than 20 departments and agencies — each moved into legal strike positions last week after strike votes.
Behold the kleptocracy.
Tens of thousands of federal public servants are in a position to strike after months of fruitless negotiations with their Ottawa bosses. Key pieces of dispute include non-wage benefits and whether some type of remote work protection should be part of collective agreements. When it comes to the demand for pay hikes, labour leaders can point to statistics showing Canadian average hourly wages up more than 5 per cent, year-over-year.
But if federal public servants walk off the job in the days or weeks ahead, prepare for a blast of public opinion against the strike, especially outside the Ottawa-Gatineau region.
A union representing more than 120,000 federal public servants across Canada has voted in favour of a strike mandate, leaders said in a news conference Wednesday morning.
The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) did not say when a strike could happen nor how many members voted in favour of a strike, but president Chris Aylward said an “overwhelming majority” voted for a strike mandate.
About 35,000 PSAC workers at the Canada Revenue Agency, which are a different group, voted in favour of strike action Friday ahead of mediation talks set to take place later this month.
Public service unions are part of the political class and a huge reason the likes of Trudeau can be elected. The LPC will give them whatever they want. Buying votes with your money is what they do.
It’s quite remarkable: What is in the best interests of students in Ontario coincides exactly with what will make the teachers’ unions richer, more powerful and less accountable. I learned of this remarkable coincidence last week while commuting in the Toronto subway, where the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association (OECTA), a union of over 45,000 teachers, is currently running an ad campaign. By happy synchronicity, everything the union says will improve students’ learning and well-being benefits the union, too.
Someone is going to have to bust the public service unions one day.
Despite only meeting performance goals less than 60 per cent of the time, federal public servants received just under $200 million in bonuses last year, mostly to public administration executives.
That brings total bonuses handed to federal workers during the COVID-19 pandemic to over half a billion dollars, paid out between the 2019–20 and 2021–22 fiscal years.
Our public service union predator class.
