Funny Pictures Union Members Saying No to Contract
John Robson: The Unifor-GM bargain is a watershed moment
It looks like Unifor has finally seen the light. If only public-sector unions would follow suit.
A tentative agreement reached betwixt Unifor and General Motors of Canada may not be a landmark in the traditional sense. Information technology may likewise not be one the marriage is privately inclined to celebrate. But it represents something of a watershed, as representatives for thousands of autoworkers finally abandoned their tenacious battle to remain amidst the dwindling number of private-sector industries offer rich pension benefits to new employees.
Under the agreement, new hires volition exist offered a divers contribution plan, which does not guarantee a set return when they eventually retire. It'southward the first time new employees at the three big U.S. automakers will be limited to such a programme, in place of more secure defined-do good pensions. Unifor President Jerry Dias said it was "worth it" to compromise on pensions, in return for guarantees of new investment from GM to keep assembly lines operating into the futurity. That in itself may marker a new milestone in union credence of economical reality.
For decades, the goal of organized labour was to secure maximum pay and benefits from employers, whatever the bodily value of employees' work. Equipped with the ability to disrupt or close down operations, it often succeeded. Over long periods, even so, such success can bear witness debilitating to both employer and employees, as unions that regularly squeezed more wealth out of a firm than it could afford ended up killing the goose that laid the golden eggs.
One endeavour to head off this problem was to shift the emphasis from increased wages to improve benefits, specially pension plans that didn't come due for many years, keeping investors and workers temporarily happy. The "defined benefit" pension plan, in which workers are typically guaranteed a fixed sum based on pay level and years of experience, was the preferred model for employees, despite the greater cost. Merely many years passed and today became, to utilise journalist Henry Hazlitt's memorable phrase, "the tomorrow which the bad economist yesterday urged usa to ignore." As the alimony bills started coming due, many companies found themselves unable to meet their obligations and had to restructure, renegotiate or fold.
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For decades, the in one case-mighty Northward American automakers were the poster children for rich pay and benefit packages until, overtaken past nimbler foreign competitors and drained by overgenerous contracts, the bottom fell out of the industry. Fifty-fifty with government aid and emergency bailouts, it has became a stake shadow of its erstwhile self. Reluctantly, unions like Unifor have been forced to accept that the goose is no longer capable of supplying golden eggs.
Its agreement — which nevertheless must be ratified and will human action as a model for talks with Ford and Chrysler — leaves public-service unions even more isolated every bit the privileged child of the Canadian workforce. Union membership has fallen dramatically throughout the industrialized world, to a quarter of the British workforce, barely 10 per cent in the U.South. and under one in five in Australia. In Canada, the charge per unit is about 30 per cent, but that broad figure is greatly misleading, as it mixes membership of less than 15 per cent in the private sector with one higher up 75 per cent in the public sector. To exist a union member is close to synonymous with existence paid by the public pocketbook.
The gap in their handling is growing, especially when it comes to pensions. Information technology's non just that six in every 7 authorities employees go one, confronting just one in iv in private utilise. It'southward that v of every six government employees receive a defined-do good pension, against just one in seven elsewhere.
Unions however like to insist members can get more out of "the system" than they pay into it, if merely they remain sufficiently united against "greed," at least in other people. Merely it is a fantasy. If productive commercial enterprises engaged in creating value through skill and innovation cannot survive while paying guaranteed retirement incomes, there is no sensible argument for governments to do so, using levies on taxpayers who themselves receive lesser benefits.
I am not holding my breath hoping for governments to accept this reality, merely anybody else needs to. The danger is not that Canadians will come to see teachers, constabulary and bureaucrats as pampered parasites. It is that they will be right to practise so, and increasingly angry nearly it.
Unifor has seen the light, dimly. It'due south time governments and their employees saw it, too. There is no gratuitous lunch, and you can't keep eating someone else's.
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Source: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/john-robson-the-unifor-gm-deal-is-a-watershed-moment
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