Chris Schnurr
Carol Kosowan LL.B., B.A. (Law), B.A. (Policy)
While some may dismiss Ken Lewenza’s attempts to explain the costs of the CUPE strike; the information he presents indicates that several options existed that could have seen a quicker end to the 101-day CUPE strike and at less cost to ratepayers than the agreement ultimately reached.
The ward 4 councillor appeared on John Fairley’s Face-to-Face earlier last week and I have included both a transcript of and the video clip of the segment. The in-camera minutes are here.
We were told in no uncertain terms the cost of post-retirement benefits was unsustainable at $97-million and needed to be eliminated for new hires (though this was not completely done since PRB’s remain for employees until the age 65).
At the conclusion of the strike, the Mayor and council settled for a wage increase of around 6% for the life of the contract.
But as some bloggers discussed (and the mainstream media ignored); there were other options available for PRB’s that, according to the councillor, eliminating them won’t save ratepayers much for at least 30 years, a point affirmed by the city’s CFO on July 25:
“It’s been said there is no benefit to this for 30 years,” said treasurer Onorio Colucci. “That’s true, but this liability was really something not sustainable for us” (Windsor Star, July 25, 2009).
Meaning there was ample time to reach a settlement without a prolonged strike.
Councillor Lewenza pointed out in addition to the economic costs of the strike, the salary increases over the same the 30-year period for this contract alone amount to some $160-million and suggested a portion of those salary increases could have gone towards funding post-retirement benefits:
You know, numbers were thrown around that in 30 years, the city’s legacy costs for 543 and 82 is $97-million. To the public, that blows their mind. But essentially what we give away in wages and benefits, if you compare apples to apples, is about $160-million over the same period.
And the councillor revealed, that council would not have necessarily “given away the farm” had they sought arbitration pointing to an arbitrated settlement between IBW and Hotel Dieu hospital that considered the economic realities in Windsor:
I mean I remember showing council one night an arbitration ruling that happened between the IBW and the Hotel Dieu hospital. And the arbitrator essentially ruled a 0.5, a 0.6 and a 0.7 percent increase and essentially said because Windsor was going through a hard economic time, that they didn’t have the ability to pay.
Other points the councillor raised:
- The strike. We got 1,800 hundred public sector workers that were on strike. You got 3 or 4 spin off jobs to every public sector worker, so that’s 10,000 people out of work. Now when you look at the fact that some people have lost between $15 and $20,000 during the work stoppage, I mean that’s a lot of money that is not being circulated in the economy and local business.
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Oh, that’s what we tried to do in the minutes around trying to explore even how you maintain the whole issue around post-retirement benefits. I mean there’s a whole bunch of solutions. Council could’ve looked at capping the existing plan, which would have provided immediate savings to citizens today.
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I mean anyone that reads those minutes, that’s certainly not the case. In fact I can say, without any fear of contradiction, that there was never a time that a member of council put anything on the table that exceeded what the collective group did at the end of the process.
Given this information, how anyone on council can claim “victory” with respect to containing costs with the settlement negotiated is beyond me.
Politically – given the virtual gag order placed on councillors, the councillor would not have been able to share this information – no councillor could.
And that is unfortunate – because if they had been able to, the strike may not have been as long or as divisive or costly as it seems to have turned out to be.
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“Now when you look at the fact that some people have lost between $15 and $20,000 during the work stoppage, I mean that’s a lot of money that is not being circulated in the economy and local business.”
Where did the money go? Did it vanish into outer space? Did we sent it to Nevada with a note saying thanks for the jobs running your casino we built, milking our region dry emptying the purses of we the peasants and sending ‘profits’ to Vegas and a few sheckels for Ottawa? Oh no, that’s right, we sent the money back to the TAXPAYER! Heaven forbid the peasants should decide how to spend their OWN MONEY. Where is Castro when we need a good revolution to throw these bums out?
Government weasel words definition – “Lost the money” means returning it to the people who made it in the first place.
Makes you wonder how long they figure the peasants can sustain all the monster public servant salaries on the sunshine list? We are at a point where even the lowest paid “servants” have now become working class aristocracy, with generous pensions, buyouts, job guarantees and bloated unions. I don’t want to see ANYBODY lose their jobs, I don’t want to see ‘new hires’ get less than previous generations, but these people are living on fantasy island if they think this parasitic relationship is sustainable.
The point the councillor is making is that for the duration of the strike, these salaries were not being circulated in the economy. The $72.00 cheques won’t circulate until later this month.
With respect to the “sunshine” list, I’d like to see how many of those local 543 and 82 members make over $100 G’s. I believe councillor Halberstadt answered that question on his blog – I’ll have to go back and find it.
The overall point – the strike did not have to last 101-days. If you read the minutes, and compare that to the media coverage, the councillor is correct – council called CUPE’s bluff on a number of ocassions – EXCEPT for finding alternatives to eliminating PRB’s (ie self funded, PRB’s in lieu of wage increases etc.).
Council would not even allow their negotiating team to do so.
Ken Lewenza could be quickly and easily dismissed had council presented that option to CUPE and CUPE rejected it.
So now, all anyone can do, is speculate and say, well CUPE wouldn’t have agreed to do that.
My response to that is, prove it.
That was one of council’s mistakes in addition to ignoring their own original motion in the minutes of a net zero solution.
I know what he’s saying – his point is idiotic.
The wages of those who produce nothing and make their living on the backs of taxpayers do not add anything to ‘the economy’. GDP does not include ’services’ warranted or not. Thus we must reduce the number of ‘employed’ by subtracting all those who earn their living off the taxes of other people, because they do not create any real wealth or produce any tangible ‘thing’ that can be sold as a product, they merely provide an optional/mandatory/monopoly ’service’ that can be either wanted or not.
50% tax rates is the break-point (so-called ‘tax freedom day’ is now six months) where the parasite consumes more than the host body can produce to sustain itself.
The crisis will deepen and affect more working people. It cannot be resolved by tinkering with tax cuts for the wealthy, by “targeted investments” or through “government spending”. It can only be resolved when the relationship between those who must labour to live and those who live off of the labour of others is fundamentally changed.
Now we’re getting to the point and requires some discussion.
How must this be fundamentaly changed?
I agree, and I think Mr. Lewenza would as well, how do we make it sustainable?
Reading the council minutes from the strike, Mr. Lewenza is simply pointing out there were more affordable options on the table that were rejected than what we were ultimately saddled with.
It boils down to the contracting out argument and the pros and cons.
If those who produce nothing (ie government employees) is transferred to the private sector, what miraculous transformation occurs in that something is produced?
You need planners. You need lawyers to interpret the laws. You need administrators to keep the records, etc. etc. even in the private sector.
I would agree government has gone way too far in regulating every minute detail of our lives which in turn creates a demand for more employees to provide the support, but aside from a complete revolution, I unfortunately do not see this changing substantially unless something precipitates that change – which may be coming – because you’re right the current structure is simply not sustainable.
So what do we do? What thresholds are acceptable? How do we ease the transition without significant disruption?
This is a good discussion.
The ‘sure thing’ platitude of death and taxes is true for death, but taxes are historically a fairly recent addition, and these monster tax rates are a very recent invention of the last 50 years or so.
This is a wild guess but I think my parasite/host body analogy is apt – at over 50% tax rates we run into trouble because it is no longer a symbiotic relationship. Half seems to be the limit, after which all ‘services’ become negative-value-subtracted. 100% is communism, at which point society collapses (eventually) due to waste, greed, huge levels of inefficiency. As with communism, we don’t really have to “do” anything, it will collapse on its own of internal contradictions.
What contradictions?
Ugh, I don’t want to get into writing a philosophical manifesto here, but our economic system is founded on Adam Smith utilitarian ethics which is rife with paradox and does not recognize greed or avarice as moral wrongs but rather enlightened self interest. There is a reason for this. Add greed to the utilitarian calculus and the system falls apart – results in the greatest good for the smallest number. Free market capitalism is supposed to rectify inequality by allowing free competition, which necessarily results in inequalities. Marx was a tradition rebuttal but his system didn’t work out any better for the peasantry. There is the equilibrium mathematics of John Nash, but it took 100 years after Smith for humans to notice that child labour was a moral wrong.
This is also a very new ‘economic’ invention as most cultures in our tribal history punished greed (hoarding) with death. We celebrate hoarding. Tony Toldo is a big hero. Bill Gates is a near-deity, in spite of his guilt ridden ‘philanthropy’ he always needs another billion or ten. He sees no connection whatsoever between his enormous wealth and the poverty and suffering of millions, in fact just the opposite.
History also tells us people resist change unless faced with real, massive levels of crisis.
I would suggest stocking up on canned food, gold coins and shotgun shells.