[the Ontario goverment] voted down a private member's bill that offered one of the best anti-poverty tools available.
NDP Leader Howard Hampton's bill would have rolled back a Harris-era crackdown on unions and restored the right of card-membership to Ontario workers as it existed from 1950 to 1996.
[...]
Political leaders serious about helping low-income workers, and reducing widening inequality, would make it easier for workers to join unions, he said.
"Labour unions once were, and could be again, the most effective tool to improve the lot" of workers," he said. And card-membership such as that proposed by Hampton "would be the single biggest step to enable unions to grow again."
Sounds relevant, interesting and important, if only I had some idea what they were talking about. What's card-membership? My googling attempts are hindered by references to credit card membership.
And what exactly did Harris do to unions in 1996? I wasn't in the workforce yet then, and by that point all the grownups in my life who have been in unionized jobs had moved up to management by 1996. I've been in both unionized and non-unionized jobs since, but I don't know anyone who has been in unionized jobs both before and after 1996. I know that there are still unions today, but how is the situation different from pre-1996? The columnist seems to be saying that this is a really important issue, but I can't do anything unless I understand what's going on. A sentence or two of exposition would have been helpful.
On a related note, mentioned in passing in an article about how Catholic school board trustees abused their expenses:
Hartmann also said trustees voted themselves medical and dental benefits despite being told by board lawyers those weren't allowed.
Why aren't school board trustees allowed medical and dental benefits??? I mean, I don't agree with the Catholic school board's existence, but as long as it does exist the trustees are still people with jobs, and if OHIP isn't going to step up then jobs should have medical and dental benefits. WTF?
3 comments:
I think I have an answer on the trustee one: being a trustee is far from a full-time job. I last paid attention to them in the mid-90s, and at that point I think Hamilton board trustees were paid about $8000 a year for their services, which was half what trustees got in Toronto (big scandal at the time).
They're more like corporate board members than employees, really, except that they're elected by the public (or a subset of the public; I no longer remember how, because I left the church before being able to vote). I suspect that an elected office that doesn't have a job as such isn't entitled to health benefits.
On the union one, no idea but please post an update if you find out!
I Googled "mike harris anti-union laws" and found lots of things. I don't have enough background (or patience right now) to find a good, concise answer to your question, but that search string should help.
Card-membership is usually just a way of saying official union membership. In the US you used to hear the expression "card-carrying Communist", a dumb way of saying "bona fide".
I don't know if that's how this columnist is using the expression, but The Star loves to use catch-phrase-y expressions without explaining them.
I'm with M@: let us know if you learn more!
THAT I did not know! The whole thing makes much better sense knowing that it isn't a full-time job! I vaguely remember from high school some fuss that the trustees only got paid $5,000 a year, and I thought this was obscenely low and no one could ever support themselves on that, but I figured it was just a symptom of Mike Harris.
I no longer remember how, because I left the church before being able to vote
In Toronto at least, there's a form with your property tax assessment thingy where you indicate whether you're entitled to vote for Catholic or French boards, and then indicate which board you want your property taxes to support. Then this information ends up on the municipal voter rolls (roles?) and you get a ballot with the trustees for the board you support.
You're entitled to vote for the Catholic board if you have been baptised and perhaps under some other circumstances too. I don't know the details, I just remember that I am entitled to vote Catholic by virtue of my baptism so I indicated this on the form, and then said that my property taxes should support the public board in the hopes that someone might notice there are Catholics supporting the public board. I don't know how to find out if anyone notices though. I recently learned that you can renounce your baptism, so I'm trying to figure out whether it's more effective to do that or to be on record as a Catholic who supports the public school board.
I Googled "mike harris anti-union laws" and found lots of things.
Yeah, everything I've been able to google up is similarly complex. I was kind of hoping that there might be a "for dummies" version out there. I'll see if I can find/figure out more, but things that practically predate the internet but aren't quite historical are the worst.
Card-membership is usually just a way of saying official union membership.
Which still exists. At least I've joined a union after 1996, and it seemed real and official and no one was going "OMG, this isn't a real union, things were so much better in the good old days."
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