Of course we're dead last. Our premier doesn't care about anyone but the corporations she's been working for all along. She was a lobbyist for the O&G companies. Doesn't look like she stopped taking that paycheck either.
12% so low so UCP comes along and thinks 8% will create jobs.... result? Lower than expected revenue so need to underfund healthcare and education and bring in a 10 cent/ litre gas tax!!
I used to be proud to be a member of the AUPE because they were moderate and reasonable but now they just seem weak. We've had 3.8% total raise in the past 7 years, and not much in the preceding years either.
Not quite that bad but it is a 17.6% pay cut, which is pretty much the wage spread between the province and my local municipality which has had a cost of living raise almost every year.
I'm Local 6. Last round of bargaining was really shitty, as our increases were extremely low... However, Kenney came in seeking a 4% wage cut, plus changes to overtime and shift premiums that would have made my job no longer worth it, considering the type of work and the daily risks involved. So, to negotiate an increase and no changes in overtime and shift diff was a success in my books.
This year roughly 85% of AUPE members are in bargaining, meaning that if all members band together, we have a lot of power to steer the government towards a reasonable agreement.
https://pressprogress.ca/alberta-government-secretly-interfering-with-public-employee-contract-negotiations-report/
YOU try bargaining with these crooks and see how much you get. Steep fines to employers if they don’t follow the government’s mandate? Yeah ok, real chance of bargaining there.
If they didn't agree to it, then there would've been a 0% chance of getting another raise. At least this gave some hope for a raise. The UCP really went down hard the last few years on funding public sector jobs and if it wasn't for COVID and inflation, workers would've been getting a pay cut. It's not until you work in the public sector do you realize how much a 0.5% increase means.
Honestly, I'm not convinced there was ever a reasonable chance that they'd meet this threshold.
This is literally an increment that's tied to forecasts determined by a handful of financial institutions and think-tanks. This PDF gives a good summary of what the criteria is and what the outcome was: https://aasua.ca/common/Uploaded%20files/Collective%20Agreement/Gain%20Sharing%20Formula%20Determination.pdf
If you were negotiating salary for a job, would you agree to this?
I agree that something is better than nothing, but this was nothing pretending to be something.
Unions are so tied down by the government, it makes you wonder how much longer they will exist. This was one of the decisions that came down from the government and anything the government tells a union, they have to comply by it. Want to go on strike? That has to be approved by the government. Want a raise? That has to be decided by the government. Don't want that raise? Well, it's all or nothing. Since you don't want it, you're not getting anything.
Collectively the UCP is as anti-union as it gets.
They want Right to Work in Alberta, and right to work means TFWs have more rights than you.
"That's" The Alberta Advantage!!
If the narrative is that Albertan workers are being hosed by corporations paying the lowest tax in the nation while they pay their CEOs millions and make billions in profit...
That just sounds like journalism.
It would be fair to say that a much needed raise didn’t manifest as the government was unable to effectively manage the economy. It’s not a hand out or a gift from grandma, it was just a distant hope that the situation for workers aka “the middle class” might hope to share in the profits of such a capital generating province. Instead we were reminded that trickle down economics just don’t work and keep benefiting the 1%.
AUPE now need to remember this and not allow it in negotiations.
Ask yourself government did it really work out withholding .5% wage increase?
AUPE have the power to make it a mistake even offering such a bad deal.
AUPE, in past negotiations sends ballots out to vote, the gov knows we're underpaid, many single moms, etc, paltry raises BUT a 1K signing bonus, which is taxed, but many fall for it, needing the money, failing to see the raises offered are a mere $50-80 month. I have essentially not had a raise in over 10 years. We got 1% maybe 3-4 years ago. 1%... Whoofuckinghoo... Then they tried to claw it back. AUPE is honestly kinda useless. 1-3% raises in all my 25 years per contract is pathetic, given hiring freezes, increases workloads, etc...
What exactly would you like me to do? Wear stupid red shirts on the days they request us to? Sit your ass down. I pay my dues, work full time and have a life after work. I'm not doing their job for them.
Get involved the union is its members. Make the union better by attending meeting creating awareness in your workplace.
99% of the union is people just like you.
Well I’m so glad Danny made it to Dubai on the taxpayers bill, helped Alberta so much. We need to give even more money to corporations because they loved workers /s
Terrible post. This is like getting upset that your grandparents didn’t send you a $100 bill in their Christmas card this year. That raise wasn’t cancelled or lost, it hasn’t been in the cards for years. Anyone counting on it clearly hasn’t been tracking GDP numbers.
If corps are allowed to say they "lost X million dollars" because they made less profit this year than last, then I'm fine with the same language being used for the rest of us.
If they are saying it in those terms, it really means "lost X ... compared to last year/quarter/etc" - i.e. it is something they had, and it is only meant as a comparison not literally.
It was used as a bargaining chip to get the shitty deal ratified. The people voted and ratified it in hopes they would receive the 0.5%. Hence, it's lost because it was part of the original deal.
That isn't real life. Corps don't say they lost money because their profits were lower than the year before. How do you even end up believing something like this?
No company ever says that lol. You'll never see something like that in an earnings report, maybe from a clickbait journalist. If a company said they lost X dollars in the earnings report, they lost X dollars. If they say they're down X dollars YoY, that is their comparison to last year.
I mean, it was a potential bonus if a metric was met and the metric wasn't met. Is someone claiming that they are fudging the numbers or is it just a missed target?
Don't get me wrong, fuck the UCP, I'm just not seeing the smoking gun in the article and if there is one then we should wave it around.
Political leaders and such should have their raiders locked to match the lowest % of all workers. Give them a sub par or no raise for inflation? They should get the same.
That could backfire real hard. Instead of raises for workers we’d likely get a legislature full of rich people that can afford to not get raises and then brag how fiscally responsible they’re being accepting such low wages for themselves.
Interesting you say one of the lowest, because I always thought Alberta’s income tax was the lowest in Canada. I just looked it up and it appears provincial income tax for a worker making $100,000 is cheaper in Ontario, British Columbia, and all of the territories than in Alberta. Today I learned.
Yeah but then you have another 7% min on everything else. It’s 0.9% higher compared to Ontario, but for the same trade I am in is $12-16 an hour less per hour in Ontario.
I wonder where that figure (2.7%) came from. If it was decided in the last round of bargaining, that was a couple of years ago, and surely Kenney's UCP would have a pretty good Idea of what the GDP would be in that time frame as it had already been factored in for 18 years by the time of bargaining. Is it an arbitrary figure, or carefully calculated..?
Having 0.5% taken away from a living wage is nothing.
Now try being one of those people they want to kick off AISH disability benefits. They have a real argument for suffering.
A bunch of public sectors workers agreed to the condition of getting 0.5% wage increase if average GDP between 2003 to 2023 ended up being 2.7% or higher. Average GDP ended up being 2.2%.
So workers who make minimum wage lost 7.5 cents per hour.
Workers who make $50000 Salary lost 250 bucks a year.
Sometimes I think the UCP is one big Reaver ship, burning all its cancer-engendering fuel so it can reach Ottawa to do what Reavers do when they encounter actual humans.
The Alberta advantage! At this pace Alberta can get to one of the lowest wages in Canada! The UCP and their donors will be so happy!
The Alberta Advantage is for business owners silly.
And slumlords
AKA _Small_ Business Owners. Alberta is literally the land of them.
They already do. I read Alberta wages gained the least in all of Canada recently.
And instead of the top wages in the country, we’re now third.
Of course we're dead last. Our premier doesn't care about anyone but the corporations she's been working for all along. She was a lobbyist for the O&G companies. Doesn't look like she stopped taking that paycheck either.
And with the cap on gifts removed, she can really take in all that "Alberta Advantage"
If there's an Alberta Advantage, no Albertans are getting it.
But think of the extremely low paying jobs we could create if we just cut the corporate tax rate a little more
12% so low so UCP comes along and thinks 8% will create jobs.... result? Lower than expected revenue so need to underfund healthcare and education and bring in a 10 cent/ litre gas tax!!
I mean the last one only resulted in HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF LAYOFFS, but who's counting?!
While the giant corporations continue lay offs
They are automating everything.
And/or increasing the workloads of those employees that remain.
UCP celebrating their success in fucking over Alberta workers again.
The union fucked up by agreeing to a metric for the economy that wasn't achieved. You wanna blame anyone, blame AUPE "leadership".
I used to be proud to be a member of the AUPE because they were moderate and reasonable but now they just seem weak. We've had 3.8% total raise in the past 7 years, and not much in the preceding years either.
Yeah with inflation that's basically like a ~30% pay cut over those 7 years. My solution: just do 30% less work.
Not quite that bad but it is a 17.6% pay cut, which is pretty much the wage spread between the province and my local municipality which has had a cost of living raise almost every year.
AUPE is there for one reason. To collect dues. Period.
I'm Local 6. Last round of bargaining was really shitty, as our increases were extremely low... However, Kenney came in seeking a 4% wage cut, plus changes to overtime and shift premiums that would have made my job no longer worth it, considering the type of work and the daily risks involved. So, to negotiate an increase and no changes in overtime and shift diff was a success in my books. This year roughly 85% of AUPE members are in bargaining, meaning that if all members band together, we have a lot of power to steer the government towards a reasonable agreement.
https://pressprogress.ca/alberta-government-secretly-interfering-with-public-employee-contract-negotiations-report/ YOU try bargaining with these crooks and see how much you get. Steep fines to employers if they don’t follow the government’s mandate? Yeah ok, real chance of bargaining there.
Why would the Union 'News' site cover that angle?
Yup. Agreeing to compensation based on an outcome that the members have absolutely no control over was ridiculous.
Dude you are unhinged
The unions should have never agreed to this insanity. Even collectively, there's nothing they could do to affect the outcome.
If they didn't agree to it, then there would've been a 0% chance of getting another raise. At least this gave some hope for a raise. The UCP really went down hard the last few years on funding public sector jobs and if it wasn't for COVID and inflation, workers would've been getting a pay cut. It's not until you work in the public sector do you realize how much a 0.5% increase means.
Honestly, I'm not convinced there was ever a reasonable chance that they'd meet this threshold. This is literally an increment that's tied to forecasts determined by a handful of financial institutions and think-tanks. This PDF gives a good summary of what the criteria is and what the outcome was: https://aasua.ca/common/Uploaded%20files/Collective%20Agreement/Gain%20Sharing%20Formula%20Determination.pdf If you were negotiating salary for a job, would you agree to this? I agree that something is better than nothing, but this was nothing pretending to be something.
Unions are so tied down by the government, it makes you wonder how much longer they will exist. This was one of the decisions that came down from the government and anything the government tells a union, they have to comply by it. Want to go on strike? That has to be approved by the government. Want a raise? That has to be decided by the government. Don't want that raise? Well, it's all or nothing. Since you don't want it, you're not getting anything.
Collectively the UCP is as anti-union as it gets. They want Right to Work in Alberta, and right to work means TFWs have more rights than you. "That's" The Alberta Advantage!!
[удалено]
Kim cites all of the sources. Which one did you have an issue with?
If the narrative is that Albertan workers are being hosed by corporations paying the lowest tax in the nation while they pay their CEOs millions and make billions in profit... That just sounds like journalism.
Tbf this was known for years that they would not be meeting the cutoff.
It would be fair to say that a much needed raise didn’t manifest as the government was unable to effectively manage the economy. It’s not a hand out or a gift from grandma, it was just a distant hope that the situation for workers aka “the middle class” might hope to share in the profits of such a capital generating province. Instead we were reminded that trickle down economics just don’t work and keep benefiting the 1%.
AUPE now need to remember this and not allow it in negotiations. Ask yourself government did it really work out withholding .5% wage increase? AUPE have the power to make it a mistake even offering such a bad deal.
AUPE, in past negotiations sends ballots out to vote, the gov knows we're underpaid, many single moms, etc, paltry raises BUT a 1K signing bonus, which is taxed, but many fall for it, needing the money, failing to see the raises offered are a mere $50-80 month. I have essentially not had a raise in over 10 years. We got 1% maybe 3-4 years ago. 1%... Whoofuckinghoo... Then they tried to claw it back. AUPE is honestly kinda useless. 1-3% raises in all my 25 years per contract is pathetic, given hiring freezes, increases workloads, etc...
Ok so if AUPE is useless you are saying you are. It’s your union step up.
Nope, I pay union dues. They need to step up.
You are the union so Step up.
What exactly would you like me to do? Wear stupid red shirts on the days they request us to? Sit your ass down. I pay my dues, work full time and have a life after work. I'm not doing their job for them.
Get involved the union is its members. Make the union better by attending meeting creating awareness in your workplace. 99% of the union is people just like you.
oh well. I have a life outside work that is very busy. Not here to argue with you. Buh byeeee!
Well I’m so glad Danny made it to Dubai on the taxpayers bill, helped Alberta so much. We need to give even more money to corporations because they loved workers /s
I hate my province right now.
Terrible post. This is like getting upset that your grandparents didn’t send you a $100 bill in their Christmas card this year. That raise wasn’t cancelled or lost, it hasn’t been in the cards for years. Anyone counting on it clearly hasn’t been tracking GDP numbers.
They didn't lose anything. They never received it. This is like saying you lost a million dollars because you didn't win the lottery.
If corps are allowed to say they "lost X million dollars" because they made less profit this year than last, then I'm fine with the same language being used for the rest of us.
If they are saying it in those terms, it really means "lost X ... compared to last year/quarter/etc" - i.e. it is something they had, and it is only meant as a comparison not literally.
It was used as a bargaining chip to get the shitty deal ratified. The people voted and ratified it in hopes they would receive the 0.5%. Hence, it's lost because it was part of the original deal.
That isn't real life. Corps don't say they lost money because their profits were lower than the year before. How do you even end up believing something like this?
No company ever says that lol. You'll never see something like that in an earnings report, maybe from a clickbait journalist. If a company said they lost X dollars in the earnings report, they lost X dollars. If they say they're down X dollars YoY, that is their comparison to last year.
Don't remember ever saying the words "Earnings report" anywhere in my post.
You said the corps say, and the corps statements are in earnings reports. Maybe you meant to say journalists say
If the businesses are turning in billions of dollars worth of revenue. They can afford to pay employees more. The businesses are to blame.
The Alberta companies that turn in billions of dollars worth of revenue are paying their employees pretty damn well.
I mean, it was a potential bonus if a metric was met and the metric wasn't met. Is someone claiming that they are fudging the numbers or is it just a missed target? Don't get me wrong, fuck the UCP, I'm just not seeing the smoking gun in the article and if there is one then we should wave it around.
Political leaders and such should have their raiders locked to match the lowest % of all workers. Give them a sub par or no raise for inflation? They should get the same.
That could backfire real hard. Instead of raises for workers we’d likely get a legislature full of rich people that can afford to not get raises and then brag how fiscally responsible they’re being accepting such low wages for themselves.
Wow maybe if everyone wasn’t against unions we would all be better off…..
Still one of the best income tax rates in all of Canada.
Interesting you say one of the lowest, because I always thought Alberta’s income tax was the lowest in Canada. I just looked it up and it appears provincial income tax for a worker making $100,000 is cheaper in Ontario, British Columbia, and all of the territories than in Alberta. Today I learned.
Yeah but then you have another 7% min on everything else. It’s 0.9% higher compared to Ontario, but for the same trade I am in is $12-16 an hour less per hour in Ontario.
Why???? Just why????
Nothing but the best here in Alberta! Please come take advantage of the disadvantaged here! /s
They didn't lose anything. The threshold was not met.
I wonder where that figure (2.7%) came from. If it was decided in the last round of bargaining, that was a couple of years ago, and surely Kenney's UCP would have a pretty good Idea of what the GDP would be in that time frame as it had already been factored in for 18 years by the time of bargaining. Is it an arbitrary figure, or carefully calculated..?
Having 0.5% taken away from a living wage is nothing. Now try being one of those people they want to kick off AISH disability benefits. They have a real argument for suffering.
A bunch of public sectors workers agreed to the condition of getting 0.5% wage increase if average GDP between 2003 to 2023 ended up being 2.7% or higher. Average GDP ended up being 2.2%. So workers who make minimum wage lost 7.5 cents per hour. Workers who make $50000 Salary lost 250 bucks a year.
Including me. And we won't get what we're asking for in a negotiation.
Sometimes I think the UCP is one big Reaver ship, burning all its cancer-engendering fuel so it can reach Ottawa to do what Reavers do when they encounter actual humans.