Category Archives: jobs

We’ll Soon Learn Two Things

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We’re about to learn two things about the Canadian government. The Public Service Alliance of Canada, which represents nearly a quarter million government employees, have gone on strike for…DEI claptrap like mandatory “unconscious bias” training; an intrinsically racist $1,500 bonus that’s only for Cree, Inuktitut, Dene, or any other Canada Indigenous language speakers; more racism in the form of special time off just for Indigenous employees; government-paid, which is to say Canadian taxpayer-paid, time off for union “training;” a union-administered “Social Justice Fund,” which PSAC carefully declines to say is its purpose—just give the union the money—and on and on.

One of the things we’re going to learn is how much courage Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and his government have in standing up to this union’s strike, an action (not unique to PSAC) that is, essentially, extortion in that a striking union is saying it’s not going to allow the struck entity to operate until the entity pays the union’s demanded vig. In particular, will the Trudeau government show the same “courage” against this employee strike that it showed against a recent trucker protest, and will it use similarly heavy-handed tactics, which included freezing/seizing bank accounts, to break up the union strike?

The other thing we’ll learn is how much, or how little, these workers are missed as Canada’s government continues to function without them.

The PSAC 224-page program of demands can be read here.

Higher Ed Administrators and Values

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New Jersey’s Progressive-Democratic Party Governor, Phil Murphy, has decided to intervene, nakedly, on the side of unions in a labor dispute between Rutgers faculty and Rutgers administrators.

Rutgers faculty walked off the job Monday after three employee unions launched a strike. The move has left classrooms empty….

Under New Jersey law, university administrators can go into State court and get an injunction forcing an end to the strike and a resumption/continuation of negotiations. Murphy has stepped in, though, and told the administrators “don’t you dare.” Murphy’s diktat isn’t, strictly speaking, enforceable, but Murphy does control 20% of Rutgers’ state funding, and he appoints the majority of its board.

As the WSJ editorial put it,

…administrators are now under political pressure to cave.

Not entirely, though. They could force Murphy’s hand by going to court anyway. These administrators just have to decide which they value more: their personal jobs or the Rutgers students and their ability to get the education they’re paying princely sums for.

Those administrators’ actions will make their values obvious, regardless of how they might characterize their choice.

Gainful Employment

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In her Wednesday Wall Street Journal op-ed, Judy Shelton wrote extensively about the Federal Reserve Bank’s spotty performance in combatting the latest round of inflation, effort in which the Fed has been engaged for the last year.

Then she concluded her piece with this:

In other words, when capital is allocated through meaningful price signals that reward long-term investment in productive economic opportunities, people become gainfully employed and real growth leads to greater prosperity.

True enough as far as it goes. However, the Fed’s impact on capital allocation isn’t the only factor.

Congressional/Presidential—which is to say our elected representatives—spending and taxing policies are equally important, if not more so, factors. Our current welfare structure, based on high and increasing taxing and high and increasing spending, pays too many able-bodied to not work, and that reduces the number of folks ready to become gainfully employed. With the number of workers artificially reduced, the ability to allocate capital is limited.

An Attack on Workers’ Rights

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Hypocritically, it’s by the Progressive-Democratic Party, which runs Michigan’s government. That’s the party that claims to champion the rights of America’s workers.

[State] Senate Democrats voted along party lines in support of repealing the decade-old “right-to-work” law in a state long considered a pillar of organized labor.

The State’s House already had passed a substantially similar bill, now the two go to conference to reconcile the differences, then the result will be voted up in both houses and sent to Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D) to be signed into law.

Michigan’s workers, for the last decade, had been able to speak for themselves, to join or not join unions, to not pay dues to unions to which they didn’t belong.

The Michigan government is telling those workers they have no voice, and their wishes have no importance. Oh, and pay up, suckers.

So much for workers’ rights when Progressive-Democrats reign in Michigan.

Free Market or Pro-Working Class?

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That’s the question posed regarding the future of the Republican Party in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal Saturday Essay.

The headline and subheadline combine to posit a false dichotomy, though.

Can the GOP Become a Real Working-Class Party?
Some Republicans want the party to break from its longtime free-market agenda and focus instead on the needs and frustrations of workers. Others see danger in moving away from the legacy of Reagan.

It isn’t possible to be pro-working class without being also being pro-free market. It’s the free market that generates the prosperity, flexibility of business decision-making, and breadth of worker and potential worker choice that produce the most benefit for workers.