Typically the outdated time-worn cliché’s convey laborious truths. For instance, the view that actuality beneath superior capitalism has outpaced each irony and satire is typically conveyed within the phrases “no future for satire” and “You may’t make these items up. “ This view was famously adopted by the sensible tune author and mathematician Tom Lehrer on the day the long-lasting battle legal and imperial consigliere Henry Kissinger was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The songwriter introduced his rapid retirement, the story goes, lamenting that nothing he might think about could be as glow at nighttime bizarre as a Peace Prize for Nixon’s toadlike grasp of battle.
Dwelling in Vancouver beneath the present proper wing ABC occasion’s hegemony in metropolis authorities, I usually consider Lehrer’s competition. Mayor Ken Sim and his minions often transcend satire as they exert their greatest efforts to deliver town I like again to an imagined previous during which the policeman is our pal and the large planning choices belong correctly within the arms of actual property builders.
Lately, Vancouver authorities information broke that belongs squarely within the “you may’t make this up,” class. A choice made in a closed door in digicam assembly of the council in January of this yr, very quickly after Sim’s Alphabet Gang took energy, reverses a coverage place adopted by the Metropolis of Vancouver in 2017 that required town to pay all its direct workers and subcontracted staff a minimum of the Household Dwelling Wage as outlined by the Canadian Centre for Coverage Alternate options and the Dwelling Wage for Households challenge presently operated by the VanCity Basis. Yearly, the Dwelling Wage for Households challenge calculates a dwelling wage for households determine, which represents the hourly wage wanted for a two revenue couple with two youngsters to satisfy primary bills akin to meals, clothes, lease, baby care, transportation and minimal saving to cowl sickness or emergencies. Almost 400 companies, NGOs and governments throughout BC have made the dwelling wage pledge.
The Metropolis of Vancouver determination to again out of town’s earlier dedication will hit low wage workers of corporations that present meals, cleansing and so on. providers to town as contractors, however it should additionally have an effect on straight employed workers as nicely. In its febrile makes an attempt to appear to be robust cash managers, the ABC council majority started their cuts on the backside of town’s pay scale, hurting a body of workers that’s primarily feminine and brown. When this secretive determination was lastly dropped at the eye of the general public by researchers just like the Service Staff Worldwide Union researcher Alicia Massie, the Vancouver Solar’s Dan Fumano and the Tyee labour reporter Zak Vescera, it was greeted with outrage by many observers. The outrage stage went up as the general public discovered that metropolis council had OK’d a 7.3 per cent wage improve for themselves on the similar time they moved to chop wages on the backside of town’s pay scale.
Former metropolis councillor and lifelong anti-poverty activist Jean Swanson instructed the Vancouver Solar’s Dan Fumano in Could that the choice was “disgusting.” Whereas granting that the pay increase for her former colleagues was mandated by an exterior course of, she argued that councillors might have and will have refused the rise.
“They may have voted to cut back it, which we voted to do throughout COVID,” instructed the Solar. (Swanson herself gave away a big slice of her metropolis pay throughout her time on council.)
Alicia Massie, the union researcher whose freedom of knowledge request first surfaced the January determination to chop the wages of Dwelling Wage protected low-income workers and contractors, instructed me in early November that metropolis bureaucrats refused to inform her what number of staff could be left scraping by on decrease wages after town’s new coverage was in place. I’ve to surprise what the bureaucrats don’t need us to know. Maybe the extremely paid high bureaucrats are emulating their political masters of their dedication to secrecy. The mayor launched a code of conduct grievance towards One Metropolis councillor Christine Boyle for revealing her personal vote in an in-camera assembly of council to the press. It value Boyle $7,000 in authorized charges to efficiently defend herself towards the grievance.
Jean Swanson is correct. This newest austerity transfer by Vancouver’s ABC majority is disgusting. It additionally underscores how necessary it’s that staff and their unions stay lively in metropolis politics to combat for employee pursuits. And not using a vigorous labour response, the brand new wave of right-wing governance and repair eroding austerity can overwhelm most of the features we now have made up to now centuries.
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