Author Topic: 2023 Governance (Waldo free)  (Read 5350 times)

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Offline kimmy

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Re: 2021 Federal Election Culture (Waldo free)
« Reply #30 on: September 02, 2021, 12:26:06 am »
Heck, with O’Toole’s bizarre support for unions and talk of climate change, maybe they’ll join forces with the NDP to oust the Libs!  Haha.  That would be karma…
I've mentioned elsewhere that the traditional left has abandoned their traditional blue-collar base in favor of ivory tower dogshit.  Blue collar workers in the UK and US had somehow come up with the notion that the Tories and Republicans (respectively) were the parties that best represented their interests. So it seems natural for the Conservatives to move to fill that void as well.

This, to me, is actually the most important policy idea of this election.  Not the various well-intentioned but probably counterproductive housing ideas.

https://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/erin-otoole-socialist-crusader/

Quote
    O’Toole’s platform calls for four major things to give workers a voice around corporate governance and economic policy.

    •     Require that large federally-regulated employers—either those with 1,000 or more employees, or $100 million in annual revenue—have worker representation on their boards of directors
    •     Provide tax breaks to employers who sell shares to Employee Ownership Trusts
    •     Amend the Canada Labour Code to give workers a leg up when trying to unionize shops in companies with a history of anti-union activity, especially large multi-nationals
    •     Give labour unions standing at the Canada International Trade Tribunal to file action against companies
And IMO something just as significant, recognition of the increasing prevalence of the "gig economy" and precarious employment:

Quote
It’s taken this election for politicians to finally start talking about what it means to protect workers in the gig economy.

Gig workers—who do everything from drive Uber to deliver groceries to coding and designing —probably numbered shy of 2 million before the pandemic, and have likely only increased in numbers since then. Around 3 million Canadians are self-employed, or freelance, according to Statistics Canada.

These workers, generally speaking, don’t have any of the benefits we associate with employment: If they want supplementary health insurance, Employment Insurance, Canadian Pension Plan benefits, they’ll have to pay for it all themselves.

The Conservatives are proposing a rather elegant solution: An Employee Savings Account. Gig economy companies would have to pay contributions “equivalent to CPP and EI premiums” into their gig workers accounts, where it will sit, tax free, to be withdrawn when needed.

It’s hardly a replacement for a good pension plan or an actual safety net—without employee contributions, and considering the hours worked by these employees, these funds will likely be quite modest.

And yet it’s more than the other parties are proposing.

The increasingly rapid replacement of traditional jobs with "gig economy" jobs is one of the most worrying trends in our economy right now and one of the factors that is accelerating the "race to the bottom".  For me, acknowledging this in their platform and proposing policy to address it probably wins my vote at this point.   I had been planning to vote NDP, but at this point I think the CPC has won my vote based on these pro-worker policy positions.


 -k
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