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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32060 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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But his third use of the notwithstanding clause is the most bizarre, norm-upsetting, and (to me) infuriating of all. The contract for the province's school workers (janitors, early childhood educators, school monitors, basically the blue-collar school employees) is up. The average employee in this union makes $46k CAD (33k USD). Their wage increases over the last decade was lower than last year's inflation. And meanwhile the cost of living has exploded, especially in the province's most populous areas. So obviously the province owes it to these critical workers to give them a good deal, right? This is not a case of some fat public-sector union, and the provincial government and society at large has spent the pandemic fêting the heroics of these essential "front-line workers".

Seeing as the median salary is 40k it seems to me that, unless I'm missing something here, these people are getting a very good deal for unskilled, safe labour.

Not only that, but being government jobs, they probably get excellent benefits and don't require them to work very hard. These jobs probably pay well above average. Low skilled government jobs tend to pay far more than equivalent jobs in the private sector in Canada.

A lot of these people are doing labor with a fair degree of skill. Bus drivers, maintenance guys, some janitors and early childhood workers, possibly nurses(not sure if they’re in this union)- all skilled labor.

That's not usually what people mean by skilled labour. Bus drivers, for example, only get a few months training.

Not sure about CA, but all of the "help wanted" signs I'm seeing in the US are advertising bare minimum 16$ an hour, or about 32k a year. That is for starbucks baristas, grocery store stockworkers, etc; if you have any experience, it's probably closer to $18. And I'm not in a city which is particularly high COL (not the lowest, but not like the Bay or NYC either--basically like most growing cities). The average employee making this amount sounds low to me, given recent inflation.

The U.S. is a much richer country than Canada. I have an engineering degree and I make just under $16 USD an hour or about $12 an hour after income tax. This is in a city with a relatively high cost of living.

Also, despite the lower wages, the cost of living is similar to the US.

Huh, so the American factories here in Ireland really are getting cheap labour even though they offer decently paying unskilled jobs by local standards. A barista gets €10.50/hr while factory jobs range from €12.00-16.50/hr.

Yeah but that's a recent change to some degree. Before coronavirus fast food workers in the US weren't making $16/hr outside of very expensive cities. And the Euro was worth more.

You might not be aware of this but the US has over 30% higher GDP per capita than Canada.

40*1.3=52 which is roughly the American average.

I am aware. I took the converted value of 33K, which is the comparison point I was using, at face value, since recently I've seen more people using PPP-adjusted numbers instead of just conversion rates (and which is also better than just using GDP ratio). If that's only adjusted for currency conversion, I don't know off the top of my head what the PPP-adjusted numbers would be, but I think it's closer than GDP alone would indicate.

(Also I think that's quite a bit less than the American average, google says GDP per capita in the US is close to 70k)

Comparing to Sweden, whose numbers I'm very confident in, we get:

American workers compensation of GDP: 76%

Swedish workers compensation of GDP:

78%

It's not all unskilled labour. Some custodial labour is skilled, and there are other roles involved here (like early childcare assistants) that require degrees or specialized education.

I misunderstood what early childcare assistants were. I thought the teachers were called preschool teachers and that the assistants were just that, assistants, an title inflated way to say childcare worker.

Depends a great deal on where you live and what the conditions are. I live in Denver, and I legit have no idea how I would even live on $33k a year. Rent alone would cost 3/4 of my post-tax income! So for someone living here, I'd say no that isn't a good deal at all. For someone living in a small Midwestern town, maybe that's a better deal.

Regardless though, even if they are getting a good deal that doesn't justify using the law like this to say "no, you can't strike and have to take what we give".

I'm not disputing that it's a bad use of the law, I'm objecting to the appeal to emotion in an otherwise interesting post.

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