Union bashing White Anglo Saxon Protestant middle class suburban fascists
Auld Bob
public sector unions in Toronto having the right to strike. I've
noticed that you rarely see any women, visible minorities, and/or
aboriginals speaking out against unions. By and large the anti-union
types are almost always White Anglo Saxon Protestant males who usually
live in the suburbs and drive gas guzzling SUV's. In Europe workers
both unionized and non-unionized alike tend to support their fellow
workers. The City of Toronto is officially 47% non-White and a huge
portion of the 53% who are White tend to be Italian-Canadians, Greek-
Canadians, and Portuguese-Canadians, ect. Yet almost every name used
my posters on the Toronto Star comments section which attack unions
would appear to denote a WASP surname. Furthermore, all of the
interviews I've seen on Pulse24 and CTV which show ordinary residents
of Toronto bashing unions are all WASP's without fail. I personally
believe that this sort of frugal, sour, dour, mean minded, spiteful,
jealous, petty, childish, and immature mentality on the part of
certain representatives of the aforementioned ethnocultural group is a
direct result of that vicious Cromwellian Protestantism brought here
originally by the British.
I personally believe most Canadians living in English speaking Canada
who may not even be White Anglo Saxon Protestants are still
unconsciously influenced by that puritanical protestant workaholic
"work ethic", which was originally brought here by the British, which
places a great deal of emphasis on the necessity for hard work and the
belief that a person's calling and worldly success is a sign of
personal salvation. This is the reason why there is such widespread
and irrational hated in White Anglo Saxon Protestant countries for
unions and excessive leisure time. The old saying "an idle mind is the
devil's worship" is a very puritanical protestant concept. In White
Latin Catholic Quebec, workers enjoy far more sick days, benefits, and
leisure time than the rest of Canada and also have the strongest
unions in the country. In Canada, non-unionized workers tend to hate
unions and would rather deny the hard fought benefits which unionized
workers have as opposed to pushing for the same benefits for their own
non-unionized workplaces; as it is typically done in Europe. In
Europe, the Anglo-American WASP mentality is absolutely hated with a
passion.
My Italian-Canadian, Greek-Canadian, and Portuguese-Canadian friends
refer to White Anglo Saxon Protestants as "manjacakes"!!!.
-Robert James (Auld Bob) Peffers
Sick leave and city workers: Public sector unions under attack
By Murray Dobbin | June 29, 2009
The city workers on strike in Toronto are taking a beating in the
mainstream media over the sick leave provisions in their contract.
Those provisions -- and I am relying on the media here to have it
right -- provide for 18 days a year or a day and half a month.
There would be no controversy if it ended there. But what has the
anti-union crowd agitated is the fact the sick leaves accumulates year
over year and can be take out effectively as salary in lieu of time
off when the employee retires.
The Toronto Star's Richard Gwyn divines from this issue that the
entire Canadian population is becoming convinced that "public sector
unions and quite possibly public sector workers of all kinds are out
of control."
That's quite a leap Richard, and is in fact sheer nonsense. There is
lots of evidence to the contrary. One example from B.C. was the
illegal teachers' strike in 2005 that lasted 10 days and saw public
support for the teachers increase daily until it plateaued in the last
few days.
But there is an issue here. Union bashers like Gwyn (and he is not the
worst) will take any opportunity to pronounce on how the public is
sick of unions. So perhaps the question is should unions be more
careful about handing critics such rich opportunities to attack them?
For the better part of the last 30 years neo-liberals and their
various megaphones -- the Fraser Institute, the National Post, the
Asper media, etc -- have been deliberately demonizing public sector
workers as part of the ideological assault on social democracy and its
accomplishments.
The strategy was as simple as it was brutal: portray public sector
workers as selfish, overpaid, lazy, privileged and puffed up with a
sense of entitlement and, by doing so, drive a wedge between citizens
and those who provide them with the services they need.
Why? So that when right wing governments slashed public services
citizens would be less inclined to complain at the sight of thousands
of public sector workers being laid off -- as was done by Paul Martin
in his 1995 budget. In that instance, while there was a campaign
against the cuts by unions and their civil society partners, there was
scant sympathy for public workers. The groundwork of denigrating those
workers had been done.
To what extent should public sector unions and their members take
account of this political and ideological issue when collective
bargaining? The fact is that Canadians, if asked to consider the
question, are pretty supportive of those who provide them their huge
variety of services. They understand that there is an organic
relationship between the community and those who serve it.
But no matter how nasty their employers get, public sector unions need
to be constantly aware of that relationship and nurture it -- both
because it is the right thing to do (there should be a dedication to
the community) and it is strategically smart. It is surprisingly easy
to trigger the opposite sentiment in the "public" -- the one that says
to public employees, "You work for me!" -- as if every citizen was the
boss of every public employee.
In the case of the sick leave issue it comes down to fairness --
perhaps the strongest core Canadian value there is. My take is that
most people look at sick leave as a right. Accumulating sick leave and
using it when actually sick is totally acceptable. But being able to
cash it in on retirement will be seen by many as crossing the line,
violating the understanding between community and those who serve
it.
Right or wrong, when unions sign collective agreements it would be
wise for them to spend a bit of time imagining how each contract
provision might be used against them the next time they strike -- and
hope for their well-deserved public support.
Allen Cort
> My Italian-Canadian, Greek-Canadian, and Portuguese-Canadian friends
> refer to White Anglo Saxon Protestants as "manjacakes"!!!.
>
Leave it to people like you to hate the people who made this country
livable for scum like you.
Canuck57
"Auld Bob" <fraeoldbob...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:e42bdaaa-46ad-494c...@l34g2000vbi.googlegroups.com...
>I have been watching the people who are opposed to the right of the
> public sector unions in Toronto having the right to strike. I've
Does the employer have the right to lockout and outsource?
Or is it one sided extortion?
Andrew Golebiowski
Why do you even bother to reply to this idiot?
Scotius
<fraeoldbob...@gmail.com> wrote:
First of all, I live in Windsor. The CUPE (Canadian Union of
Public Employees) personnel who "work" here need a good smack in the
head, figuratively speaking.
To wit (not their's... it's sadly lacking):
1) The people who pick up the garbage in Windsor start off,
according to someone I know who says he knows at least, at $24.00+.
Then they go up from that after about a year or so.
Skilled tradesmen often don't make that much, and these twits
want yet more out of city taxpayers. It's not doable, and shouldn't
happen.
Some idiot called into a radio show and mentioned that the
CUPE people will be spending more money in our beleaguered downtown if
they get a raise. So what? It isn't as if they're spending personal
disposable income earned from a for-profit company; it's just OTHER
TAXPAYER'S MONEY. It's not the same.
They also want post retirement benefits for people who haven't
even been hired yet. I do believe there should be some negotiation on
that issue, but I also think the CUPE people should be willing to give
up a couple bucks and hour if they expect everyone to be taken care
of. They want other people to benefit, but not out of THEIR pockets.
The official city lawn mowing people are striking too. What do
they have in common? Well, I'll tell you what this SCUM has been up
to.
1) The grass mowers have been picketing, which is fine, but
they've also been preventing citizens from mowing parks near their
homes so their kids can play in them. This is no threat to their jobs;
these people just want their kids to have a place to play, and of
course the dimwits have no authority whatsoever to prevent them from
doing so anyway. This WILL end.
2) The garbage men (pardon me; "sanitation engineers") have
been marching downtown and trying to prevent businesses from having
private companies haul away their garbage. It's a health and safety
issue, and it's ridiculous they would even try this, but they have.
One CUPE idiot picketing at a privately owned garbage dump saw
a man in his 70s trying to get around the picketers. He jumped on the
man's car, and struck his windshield with the base of an umbrella.
Let me tell you something Bob; there are people in this city
who are prepared to give the CUPE people WAY MORE of a free ride than
they want if they try that with them.
I saw a picture in the Windsor Star of a CUPE punk standing in
front of the push-mower of a guy trying to mow a public park. What I
didn't see in the paper was a photo of the CUPE people THROWING STONES
at the people mowing, because they decided to not report that. Despite
all this, CUPE leaders have claimed the Windsor Star has an anti-CUPE
bias. That's how you get the reputation of being anti-union with these
idiots; you report what they DO.
People here are fed up. CUPE no longer has the support of the
public in this city, and that is NOT a bad thing.
>I have been watching the people who are opposed to the right of the
>public sector unions in Toronto having the right to strike. I've
>noticed that you rarely see any women, visible minorities, and/or
>aboriginals speaking out against unions.
Actually, if you talk to many of them you do. The "problem" is
that you're an ivory tower socialist and you don't have many "brown"
friends, so you don't get the latest info on what they think. You just
watch the news and say there aren't enough visible minorities
protesting against what the unions are doing, therefore they must
agree with them, and therefore the unions must be right.
>By and large the anti-union
>types are almost always White Anglo Saxon Protestant males who usually
>live in the suburbs and drive gas guzzling SUV's.
That's irrelevant. The CONTENT of the argument against what
some public sector unions are doing IS relevant, as is the content of
their message ("We want..."), etc.
>In Europe workers
>both unionized and non-unionized alike tend to support their fellow
>workers. The City of Toronto is officially 47% non-White and a huge
>portion of the 53% who are White tend to be Italian-Canadians, Greek-
>Canadians, and Portuguese-Canadians, ect. Yet almost every name used
>my posters on the Toronto Star comments section which attack unions
>would appear to denote a WASP surname. Furthermore, all of the
>interviews I've seen on Pulse24 and CTV which show ordinary residents
>of Toronto bashing unions are all WASP's without fail. I personally
>believe that this sort of frugal, sour, dour, mean minded, spiteful,
>jealous, petty, childish, and immature mentality on the part of
>certain representatives of the aforementioned ethnocultural group is a
>direct result of that vicious Cromwellian Protestantism brought here
>originally by the British.
I don't know about that, but I do know that the union people
aren't inherently right just because you have an objection to the
colour of the skin of the people "bashing" the unions.
And incidentally, I'm NOT a union basher. I think the unions
were necessary to stop runaway exploitation by the robber barons, and
I think that's very obviously true.
However, what the city owes it's workers is a decent middle
class wage standard and some benefits; not a raise from what these
guys are making (at least here in Windsor), and most certainly not
that during a time when the flow of tax dollars is reduced due to an
economic slump. That's insane.
>
>I personally believe most Canadians living in English speaking Canada
>who may not even be White Anglo Saxon Protestants are still
>unconsciously influenced by that puritanical protestant workaholic
>"work ethic", which was originally brought here by the British, which
>places a great deal of emphasis on the necessity for hard work and the
>belief that a person's calling and worldly success is a sign of
>personal salvation. This is the reason why there is such widespread
>and irrational hated in White Anglo Saxon Protestant countries for
>unions and excessive leisure time. The old saying "an idle mind is the
>devil's worship" is a very puritanical protestant concept. In White
>Latin Catholic Quebec, workers enjoy far more sick days, benefits, and
>leisure time than the rest of Canada and also have the strongest
>unions in the country.
I think workers should have plenty of leisure time too, but I
don't think they should spend four hours per day collecting garbage
and be paid for eight, which is currently what happens here in
Windsor. It's ridiculous.
>In Canada, non-unionized workers tend to hate
>unions and would rather deny the hard fought benefits which unionized
>workers have as opposed to pushing for the same benefits for their own
>non-unionized workplaces;
So that's the solution right? Just unionize everyone? No,
because that wouldn't work. Treat them fairly, give them fair deals,
etc, but don't you even try to suggest that everyone being in a union
is anything less than a lunatic's "solution".