Who’s next to have their pay cut?
By Letter to the Editor on July 17, 2019.
Re: “Bill 2 creates jobs, opportunity,” July 8 I was disappointed to read the minister of labour and immigration’s guest column. In it he attempts to justify paying young people less than the official minimum wage. That policy, he claims will increase the number of jobs available to young people. I would suggest that the jobs to which he refers are ones that employers are already having to look overseas to fill. As I tried to follow the minister’s reasoning for paying young people less than the minimum wage, I couldn’t help wondering who might be next. Should disabled or handicapped people who work at minimum wage be paid less so that more of them might be employed? How about paying immigrants less as they try to establish themselves? Would that produce more jobs for newcomers to Canada? When my family immigrated to Canada, my father started work at the Co-op packing groceries at the age of 52. Did he deserve to earn less than his native-born colleagues because of his immigration status? As my brother and I were finishing high school, we relied on our first jobs to work our way through university. I think the minister’s proposal (Bill 2) does not take into account that many young people work to help finance post-secondary schooling. Even at the current minimum wage, it is barely possible to finance higher education in this manner. A reduced wage for young people will be significant barrier to providing skilled technical and professional workers for Alberta’s future. Finally, the minister’s column made me think back to the two productions of “Newsies” that were staged at the Esplanade and CHHS in the past year. In that play newspaper tycoons Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, decide that, with a downturn in the economy, young boys selling papers on the streets of New York could afford to take a cut in their “wage.” (In response, the newsies go on strike, but that’s another story). Something eerily similar is happening in Alberta today. A downturn in the economy is being used as an excuse to give a tax break to corporations and the young people who are at the bottom of the economic ladder are told they need to take a cut in pay. Disappointing indeed! Paul Nederveen Medicine Hat 10-9
Paul has nailed it. For years we heard the Klein, Stelmach and Redford governments play the mind games with the fools who listened. According to them Alberta was always in a crisis situation , while they they were the ones creating the crisis by giving away billions in royalties and tax breaks to their rich friends, and destroying everything Lougheed had created for us, while Norway and Alaska built up huge savings accounts for their children’s future. Now when Jason Kenney spreads his lies, telling them the Carbon Tax was going to financially destroy them they believe him and ignore what Klein’s deregulation of power and natural gas has done to them, Sweden has had a carbon tax since 1991 and it’s worked well and has created thousands of jobs. It hasn’t financially destroyed anyone. He tells them that taking the province into more debt to fix the mess the so-called conservatives created for us was unsustainable, and they had better learn to do without proper services, while they are forced to pay a lot more out of their pockets, and they accept it. When those of us from the world of finance knows it was sustainable if you just increase taxes and royalties back up to the Lougheed levels. Kenney claims we don’t need to try to do anything about global warming, while we watch the billions of dollars in damages it’s creating , and while oilmen point us we are headed for lawsuits over the pollution drifting into Sask. and Manitoba and Kenney doesn’t care as long as they have premiers who are dumb enough to agree with him. In other words Kenney has made it crystal clear he is going to do the same things the Klein, Stelmach and Redford governments did to us, and these ignorant fools have made him their hero. Apparently they aren’t smart enough to understand what it will do to them, and sadly their stupidity is taking all of us with them. These seniors who were dumb enough to elect him had better have deep pockets or they are going to be in a lot of trouble.