Category Archives: Organizations

There are two major work stoppages going on in Ontario right now that have shown the division between labour and management in this chilled province. 

In Ottawa, the Amalgamated Transit Union, local 279 have been on strike for fifty-one days.  There is no bus service in Ottawa, the Nation’s Capital and hasn’t been since December.  Traffic is a mess and businesses are hurting, as Ottawa (like any government town) relies on public transit to get folks to the job. 

In Toronto, York University has their teachers on the picket line.  Canadian Union of Public Employees local 3903 has been on the line since November 6th last year.  For the 50,000 students, the academic year is essentially the toilet.  All that is left is to pull the handle, spray some air freshener and walk away.

Today the City of Ottawa and Local 279 have agreed to binding arbitration to settle their dispute with a three-year deal, no preconditions.  The arbitrator will settle it. 

Yesterday the Ontario Government ordered CUPE Local 3903 back to work at York University. 

The score so far?  Unions 1, Government 1.  Binding arbitration is not the best way to get an agreement, but at least it is an agreement.  Back to work legislation for anyone but firefighters, cops, ambulance and health care workers is a slap in the face to the whole concept of collective bargaining. 

We need a bit of perspective here:  Unions came into existence because companies had been behaving like demented Roman Emperors, treating their employees like possessions.  Things like maternity leave, health care benefits, overtime pay, statutory days off, retirement benefits and workplace safety are all direct benefits of ‘the unions’, so perhaps a little gratitude might be in order.  Christmas Day wasn’t always a holiday. 

Unions are not a bunch of greedy monsters, looking to work for 2 hours and be paid for 40.  That was never the style in Canada.  Things are more enlightened than the old stereotype of British mineworkers walking off the job for six weeks because someone in management moved a lunchbox.  It’s a unfair and untrue stereotype of the worst kind, so disabuse yourself of that idea.  Reality is significantly different. 

The real question is why would a union exist in the first place?  That’s easy to answer:  Treat the staff like crap and you’ll get a union in the workplace.  Ideally an organization that treats their people with respect and treats them fairly, rarely has a ‘problem’ with a union.  Even companies that have a unionized workforce, if they play nice and play fair, rarely have ‘union’ problems.

Done properly, employer and employee relations are very simple things.  The company has to recognize that the people who work for them are humans, not possessions.  The employee must recognize that the company wants a fair day’s productive work out of them, so they can make money to pay the salaries and turn a profit. 

Simple isn’t it?  It can be.  It takes a bit of humility on both sides and a bit of common sense. 

Forcing people back to work is by far the easiest way to completely crush morale in any organization.  It sends the message that "You are Meat.  We Own You.  Do What You Are Told To Do And Shut Up."  If your life partner told you that across the pot roast, would there be a loud, vibrant and unpleasant discussion in your household?  The same holds true in the workplace.

Ideally in a labour management negotiation, both sides should come out of it mildly pissed off.  That’s what a good negotiation is all about:  A compromise between the two parties. 

Back to work legislation is nothing more than a back alley beat down by the government.  Binding arbitration is going to leave both Ottawa and the Transit Union angry as binding arbitration is an imposed settlement.  Both sides get it stuck up a major bodily orifice by a third-party.  Sometimes there is a kiss and a cuddle afterwards, but not always.

The busses might start running and the classes might start up again, but there are going to be some truly angry people doing those jobs. 

Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) the folks who ran the medical isotope reactor up here without the proper safety equipment for more than a year, have finally thrown in the multi-million dollar towel.  AECL was building two new contemporary medical isotope generating reactors at Chalk River, called MAPLE. 

Eight years late, several hundred million dollars over budget and still to produce one single isotope, AECL has said "Screw it.  We’re done".  Gary Lunn, Minister for Natural Resources said that "has been plagued with problems since its inception."  No kidding.  The MAPLE reactors are built, but the safety equipment doesn’t work/isn’t installed/will never work, so they can’t fire’em up.

Which is odd, because the Tories decided to bypass the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission ‘No-Start’ order on the old NRU reactor back in the winter, firing the head of the CNSC for being in the way.  Why doesn’t Lunn just ask PM Stevie Harper for another bypass order and get those babies crankin’? 

Or did someone finally notice that Chalk River is only a two and a half hour drive from Ottawa? 

China and Burma have both been savaged with disasters in the past two weeks, Burma with a cyclone and China with a serious earthquake:  Thousands are dead and millions are displaced.  It is heartbreaking.  China rapidly opened their borders for assistance from the rest of the world.  Burma has not. 

There are stories that what aid has trickled into Burma has been re-labelled as "gifts" from General Than Shwe or one of his cronies in the junta.  If you want to give money, the most sensible route, if only to ensure that your donations get to the actual people who need it, is via the Red Cross, which is located here.

A commercial has been plaguing television that is on par with "Head-On, Apply directly to the forehead!".  This would be the "Just A Drop" commercial, which promises a "new way to use the toilet". 

An intriguing concept, don’t you think?  As an abacus?  A porcelain trampoline?  A replacement for your Blackberry?  A medical isotope generator?  Poppy planters for the Afghani heroin crop?  Exactly what is this ‘new way to use the toilet’?

One must, before dropping undergarments, add ‘just a drop’ of the product to the toilet to mask any airborne offence-giving molecules. It would seem that, based on their website and the commercial, that women are paranoid beyond even medical intervention about the resultant odour of having a bowel movement.

Perhaps the better answer is to not gorge on the triple jalapeno nachos, cranberry martinis and vindaloo chicken wings the night before.  And chew your food better.

Note to population:  Shit Stinks.  Get over it. 

On this Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the US, we can look back and see how far we’ve come.

In my personal memory, black people were hung from trees, lynched, simply because they were black. 

In my personal memory, people rioted in cities like Benton Harbour, Detroit, and Los Angeles, burning down whole sections of town, to protest their treatment at the hands of the police. 

In my personal memory Dr. King was assassinated by James Earl Ray. 

In my personal memory, John F. Kennedy was assassinated by persons unknown. 

In my personal memory Robert Kennedy was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan. 

In my personal memory, George Wallace was crippled by Arthur Bremmer. 

As one lives a life, one sees the specter of racism, grow and then recede, grow again and recede again.  Eventually you come to the conclusion that humans have an infinite capacity to hate, as well as an infinite capacity to embrace.  I can still hope that we can get there, despite all the evidence to the contrary.  What keeps me hopeful is the last paragraph of Dr. King’s I Have A Dream speech:

“When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

Wall Street, Bay Street, The Markets.  Do you feel that they exist on some other planet where normal rules of physics don’t always apply?  For the past couple of days I’ve been watching the markets, Canadian, US and the International Bourses to see where reality lives.

I’m not an investment dealer, counselor, or broker, so anything that I say is not intended to give you advice, guidance, or some kind of insight into "the markets", so govern yourself accordingly as I am an ass and might be talking out of my ass too.

Here’s Economics 101:  You sell services, time or things for more than it costs you to make or do them.  The money left over is called profit.  Businesses need profits.  Even non-profit businesses have to pay for the electricity, insurance, photocopy paper, pencils and office chairs.  Those are called costs. 

When you subtract the costs from the amount of money you’ve billed, that’s profit.  You sell 40 (or more) hours of your work to someone and in exchange for that, they give you money.  At the end of the month, when you’ve paid for your own personal expenses, that’s your profit.  Ta Da!  Simple isn’t it?

Except when it comes to The Market.  Let us take a simple example.  Roulette, the gambling game.  You bet that the little white ball will land on a certain number when the croupier spins the wheel one way and shoots the little white ball the other way.  Eventually the little white ball slows down and falls into a hole on the roulette wheel. 

How do you determine which slot the little white ball will call home?  You guess, as roulette is a fairly randomized game of chance, as long as there are no magnets under the roulette wheel, the ball is evenly weighted and so on.  Much like flipping a coin and betting heads or tails, you know you’re going to be right, at least some of the time. 

Now, if someone comes up to you and says "The game is rigged and five times out of ten the little ball will land on Black 22, because they’ve got a magnet under Black 22 and there’s a little iron pellet in the white ball"  That is a crooked game and only those who know the game is fixed, can profit from it.

Which brings us to The Market.  Insider trading is illegal, much like fixing a roulette wheel, or stacking a deck of cards in Blackjack.  Knowing that the company is going to tank, or has a recall of 9 million cans of tainted product coming tomorrow, or thousands of other things, is knowledge that is not commonly available to the average investor.  This means that the entire Market is built on fiddling the rules.  Stocks surge and plummet based on "the whispered street number" or "analyst’s reactions to a conference call" or "primary market determinants".

Since brokers take a piece of the action, if you buy or sell, the broker is incentived to make you buy or sell, as much as possible.  Since the brokerage makes a percentage on every order, they too are incentived to make you sell or buy as much as possible.  The companies do this by giving you all kinds of information, usually by subscription, based on how much you sell or buy.  Call it Quick Quotes, or whatever name you want, it is information, opinion and a big dose of innuendo.  The innuendo can only be divined by the broker, who whispers in your ear.

Now, to put it in a Casino setting:  The Casino takes a rake, a percentage of all winnings.  That’s their fee for running the game and giving you the impression that you can beat the house and win a pile of money.  There is also a number of fees involved, if you do actually win.  A cash-out fee is common, for the conversion of chips to money. 

The Casino posts the rules, and the biggest rule is "If we don’t want to play with you, we can kick you out." and "We can review every big winner and hold their winnings."  Meaning, if you find a way, or are just plain lucky, we’ll find a way to screw you, as the First Rule of the Casino is The House Always Wins.  The Second Rule of the Casino?  See Rule Number One.

Outside the Casino, there are tip sheets for sports gambling, systems for beating all the games of "chance" and of course, insiders who know the ‘fix’ is in, or who have a ‘hot streak’ picking winners and for money, you can tap into their specific knowledge.

Today, despite strong retail sales, reasonable borrowing costs, fine employment numbers and a good economy running nicely, the Toronto Stock Exchange tanked 400 points.  The last time the TSE took that deep a dump, was in 1987.  The reason, at least according to those who read the runes, is that analysts were disappointed with the results of two major transportation companies, Canadian National and Canadian Pacific. 

The performance of CN and CP wasn’t "up to analysts’ expectations", so these invisible analysts decided to whisper to everyone they know "Sell".  Of course, these analysts work for brokerages, who have brokers paid on commission, who make a piece of every transaction.  Which is not a lot different from someone whispering in your ear that there’s a magnet under Black 22 and an iron pellet in the little white ball, so bet Black 22.

Now, what to do about it?  Financial services are the lifeblood of our economy, but the game is rigged for a few, rather than you and I.  Banks don’t want you to park your personal profit (savings) in an account for any length of time, so they don’t pay much more than an honorarium as interest.  The banks also make damn sure that any transaction you make, like taking money out of your account, will make the bank money on the fees for the convenience and pleasure of the bank not paying you interest.

Look at the financial results of just about any major bank.  Profits are through the roof and for this we get?  Um.  Nothing.  We don’t even get the personal satisfaction of knowing that some of our money is going to microloans to small businesses, or green energy developers, or even to nice people who want to buy a house in your neighborhood.

Can we tell banks to pound sand in their collective orifices?  Not really, as they are the casino owners.  Can we tell the stock market to do something unsanitary and anatomically impossible?  No, they own the dice, the cards, the roulette wheel and the little white ball.  Can we leave the casino altogether?  Only if you’re independently wealthy and have no debt whatsoever,or are willing to live in a yurt, off the grid, off the pipeline and off this planet.