Rise Up, Precariat! Cheap Labour is Over

"Governments eager to advance the interests of large corporations took advantage of this labour surplus by developing convenient theories to justify a broad assault on wages and salaries – and unions. Things like labour standards, generous Unemployment Insurance and poverty reducing welfare schemes made labour “inflexible” the argument went – by which they meant uppity workers demanding their fair share.

It was left to Liberal finance minister Paul Martin to implement the grand plan in the mid-1990s. Insisting that inflation greater than 2 percent was a threat to the economy, Martin used high interest rates to actually suppress economic growth and deliberately create high levels of unemployment. Few people recall that under Martin’s reign unemployment hovered around 9 per cent for most of the 1990s – higher than at any time following the 2007-08 financial collapse.

Artificially high unemployment was perhaps the most powerful weapon, but Martin also hit workers with draconian cuts to EI eligibility and the elimination of the Canada Assistance Plan (CAP). The CAP transferred money to the provinces and was targeted specifically at establishing a minimum national standard for welfare. With its cancellation the provinces were free too radically reduce social assistance rates. The provinces also began cutting back on the enforcement of labour standards – things like time-and-a-half for overtime, disallowing back to back shifts, unpaid apprenticeships, notice of dismissal, sexual harassment, etc. Added up it meant a dramatic reduction in the power of labour to bargain with employers.

Of course part of the “flexibility” agenda was directed at unions and with more and more part-time and temporary positions in low-wage, high turnover jobs organizing became increasingly difficult. One experiment in well-funded anti-unionism was called Canadians Against Forced Unionism (CAFU). It was a creature of the National Citizens Coalition, the right-wing lobby group headed by Stephen Harper in the late 1990s. The president of CAFU was none other than Rob Anders http://www.lackingcredentials.com/2014/10/worthless-rob-anders.html, the extremely right-wing Calgary MP who managed to retain Harper’s loyalty through multiple controversies."

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/06/rise-up-precariat-cheap-labour-is-over/


Corporate rights bill, TPP, seams to be moving full tilt ahead because they know they know cheap labor is over.