Working People Deserve More Paid Vacation
http://canadianlabour.ca/updir/Working_People_Deserve_More_Paid_Vacation.pdf
Here’s the link to a mini study on statutory rights to paid vacation timey just posted to the CLC web site – we fall well short of European standards and there is a surprising amount of variation in Canada.
Nothing is free. More legislated paid vacation will likely mean lower wages. There is a hope, I suppose, that the main effect will be reduced profits and not reduced wages, but it seems unlikely to me, and even if true, reduced profits has nasty side consequences of its own.
Of course, many workers might gladly accept more vacation for reduced wages, but many will not.
In the past, reductions in working time have been paid for primarily by higher productivity.
One of the main points of the SPP, ignored by most, is the “free movement of labour”, which means the replacement of Canadian workers with imported so called “cheap labour”, through the “restructuring” of companies.
The slogan of “Canadian labour priced itself out of the market” has been one of the main policy points of the Manning/Harper Reform days. Does anybody believe that Harper may have changed his colours, while voting for him in union towns, as we have here in the Cariboo, with warmed over Reform fossils being re-elected by the workers, time after time ?
It is all very nice to wish for more free time, but how is it going to be accomplished under the constantly propagandized “competitive environment”, which means lower pay, or income, for the producers and higher prices for the users, not “consumers”, which is another propaganda gimmick to remove the responsibility for pollution by sweeping it under the carpet.
Our economy and governments are dictated by the insatiable demands of the stockmarkets for perennially rising profits and no company would dare to even think of longer vacations.
Especially no CEOs with multimillion yearly thieveries from both sides.
Ed Deak, Big Lake, BC.