The Bank of Canada has announced that the recession is officially over. Flaherty is a glow with the “sound fundamentals” of the Canadian financial system. Markets are up. Housing starts and transactions are better than first predicted. Canada is poised to emerge ahead of all other major industrial nations. Or so goes the story.
Stats Canada announced today that unemployment is up significantly and the trend does not appear to be changing. The Daily said:
“In May, 778,700 people received regular Employment Insurance (EI) benefits, up 65,600, or 9.2%, from a month earlier, with Alberta and Ontario showing the fastest rates of increase. This rise followed an increase of 3.7% in April.”
Ontario and Alberta are the hardest hit provinces. Since October 2008 EI beneficiaries in Alberta has increased by over 200%! Ontario clocks in at just under 100% increase. Youth unemployment is staggering in the under 25 year demographic with +94% increase.
The official number “eligible” to receive EI benefits is 778,700. Those that are not receiving benefits but cannot find work are not included in the numbers, or those that have exhausted their benefits remain outside of “official” statistics.
Well it seems that the banks and finance speculators are doing alright. For the millions of workers without income the story is different. Hardship still dominates workers’ lives and will remain the central feature for workers as long as the capitalist system of exploitation remains.
Harper, Flaherty, Clements and MacKay and the rest of the rightwing think-tanks, academics and pundits are lying to Canadians. They need to be removed from power at the first opportunity. And those that say that the Liberals are just as bad will get no argument from this writer, however Harper is in power now, we will deal with Igantieff and his ilk when that is required.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Monday, July 13, 2009
Canadian Workers Labour 5 Years for Free!
View the whole article (tables and graphs) at:
http://www.focusonsocialism.ca/random.asp?ID=250
Striking CUPE public sector workers in Ontario are revealing the rapacious nature of capitalism better than any number of ‘exposures’, op-eds and news articles by the academic ‘left’ press. Not only are the courageous CUPE workers fighting for immediate gains against a backdrop of callous and brazen hostility, aimed a breaking the militant union, by the federal, provincial and municipal governments, a reactionary petty bourgeoisie and a venomous corporate media, they are also revealing the economic pillaging of workers wages, the squandering of Canadian productive capacity by corporate Canada and the true malicious nature of the Canadian ruling class towards workers.
Corporate media hacks are hyperventilating trying to out do each other for the most intimidating and argumentative news item. Attempts to ingratiate themselves with their corporate bosses are unwittingly bringing to light concealed and unnoticed information within the seedy backroom world of business council policy makers. Material and data that may otherwise remain obscured from the scrutiny of workers’ eyes is being publicized in a shrouded, but rather dramatic, fashion.
The nature of Canadian imperialism is being revealed not so much in the very evident and real attacks on the CUPE workers, and organized labour in general, by the hired media hack mercenaries of the Miller Toronto municipal council, it is also shown in the anxiety in the economic theoreticians of the Canadian ruling class. The Financial Post (FP) on June 23, 2009 published an article[1] that illustrated the alarm felt in the leading circles of corporate policy makers.
In an unwitting attempt to make a case and “justify” the need to break organized labour and to provide evidence why the Canadian economy is in shambles, the Financial Post in their apparent hyper anxious state does the opposite. The editors at the “Post” in reality expose the real cause of the crisis – capitalism and the irresolvable contradiction between social production and private accumulation. If Harper wasn’t so arrogant and vacuous he would have summoned the editors to the PMO and sternly reprimanded them for their careless “leak”.
Citing the growing strike activity by “public sector” workers, the Financial Post, tries to paint a picture that the “inflexibility” of unions fighting to hold onto “perks” and “fringe benefits” has questioned the “role” and “future” of unions in Canada.
Making a fallacious connection between Canadian labour productivity, workers’ “protected” rights, and wages “linked” to productivity, the FP said, “At a time when workers rights are protected by law and wage increases are generally linked to productivity, competitiveness and the success of the company, the economic downturn has kicked up a storm of dust around the role of unions and their future.”
Thinking workers would howl in jest at such a conclusion if it were not for the sinister undertones in the Financial Post’s remarks. Unions would smirk, roll eyes and shake their heads in collective unison if it were not for the real concessions forcefully extracted from collective bargaining agreements by a vindictive government-corporate coalition. Taken in light of the very real attacks and worsening social and economic conditions of Canadian workers as they, yet again, endure another depression, the FP’s malevolent and deceptive commentary can only be viewed as part of the general coordinated attack on Canadian workers’ living standards by monopoly capital.
The Financial Post attempts to make a case for breaking the “unwilling unions” and defending “flexible” non-union companies. Referring to economist Dale Orr of Global Insight[2], who bemoans that falling trade barriers, “open” and global markets make it more difficult for non-union companies to compete for labour. As the FP paraphrased, “But while a non-unionized company may have greater control over wages, Mr. Orr said this did not necessarily result in lower pay.”
So what is buried in all of this that the striking CUPE workers are exposing? The CUPE workers have agitated the Canadian ruling class to such an extent that the editors of the FP were compelled to counter with the same old tired union bashing trash.
The June 23 Financial Post article leads astute readers to the heart of the matter by quoting a December 2008 Centre of the Study of Living Standards (CSLS) report[3]. Concluding from the CSLS report that, “unions once created value for workers in a protected economy[4] by extracting a share of a company's excess profits for workers” the FP quoting Don Drummond, the senior vice president and chief economist at TD Securities as saying that this will mean that governments will begin to outsource more jobs in an effort to “cut expenses”. CUPE is on the frontline of that fight.
Quoting the CSLS report, the Financial Post asserts, “Unions must therefore accept market conditions or face plant closure. In the longer term, the unwillingness of unions to accept such conditions may potentially lead unionized firms to bankruptcy, while non-unionized competitors increase their market share.”
So then this is nothing more than the same old union tired bashing tirade that the Financial Post, Toronto Star and Globe and Mail regularly engage in. Well to a point. If one is to read and study the CSLS report in more detail a completely different picture emerges. It is a delineation that the Canadian ruling class is most alarmed by. But at the same time monopoly capital is fully engaged and most busily studying the effects and phenomenon described in the CSLS report. That question that is in actual fact posed in the FP anti-union attack is; how can monopoly capital extract more unpaid labour time form Canadian workers to prop up falling rates of profit?
The CSLS not only attempts to assist corporate Canada resolve that obstacle to their “profit dilemma”, they also reveal the extent to which the Canadian capitalist class has brutally exploited Canadian workers over the last 25 years and how they plan to continue to do so.
Piecing together statistics from the CSLS report, Stats Canada and other sources a picture begins to emerge of the depths of wage larceny and the far reaching detrimental consequences on the Canadian economy of decades of shameless labour exploitation by the Canadian ruling class.
The authors of the report in the Abstract openly state the real purpose of the study and reveal the magnitude and mechanisms on which Canadian and United States corporate profits are based. Profits are based solely on the unpaid labour time of Canadian workers. The report reveals the scandalous, immoral and criminal extent to which workers are exploited by the Canadian ruling class for its profits.
The CSLS report Abstract says, “The most direct mechanism by which labour productivity affects living standards is through real wages, that is, wages adjusted to reflect the cost of living. Between 1980 and 2005, the median real earnings of Canadians workers stagnated, while labour productivity rose 37 per cent. This report analyzes the reasons for this situation.” The authors’ suggestion that wages have “stagnated” is a gross understatement.
abour productivity[5] is a favourite topic of discussion amongst bourgeois academia. Hundreds of studies, reports and statistics all attempt to prove that Canadian workers are not productive and that they “lag” many other of the major industrial powers in this regard. Such talk is erroneous. If one is to believe this group of enlightened bourgeois labour economists all that is necessary to increase “lagging productivity” is to do away with unions.
What perplexes the Canadian ruling class and the CSLS authors’ the most is the central question posed and one that has baffled bourgeois economists for centuries; “why don’t workers work harder?” Taken from a Marxist or working class point of view the answer to the question is obvious – workers understand that there is nothing in it for them to work harder, except an early grave.
When viewed from a ruling class point of view the answer to the question becomes more frustrating and is met with a tirade of anti-worker theories that range from being “lazy” to being “uneducated” and “unmotivated”. All of these lead into the same old marsh of idealism and harsher “terms of trade”.
It is plain that the Center for the Study of Living Standards[6] falls into the later category. Founded in 1995 by former Canadian Deputy Minister of Finance, Dr. Ian Stewart, the main objectives of the “independent” CSLS are to:
The CSLS report intended for policy makers among the ruling elite also poses fundamental and basic questions for the working class. Firstly by defining what labour real wages are and what labour productivity is, in lexicon of bourgeois economic theory, the report poses the question;
“Economic theory holds that at the aggregate level the growth of real wages are determined by labour productivity growth, a relationship mediated by the labour’s share of output and labour’s terms of trade (the price of output relative to the price of goods that workers consume). Neither increases in the labour share nor labour’s terms of trade are likely to be a sustainable way of raising real wages because they fluctuate within fairly narrow bands. Only labour productivity growth can raise living standards in the long run. If short- and medium-term changes in the labour share or labour’s terms of trade mean that Canadians are not benefitting from higher labour productivity in the form of higher real wages, then why should they support policies to increase labour productivity growth?”
A good question indeed!
Secondly, and most vexing to the economists, the report outlines the true disparity and depths to which workers are being fleeced by the ruling class. Attempting to answer the question leads to only one solution for the bourgeoisie – work workers harder, longer! The report goes on to pose the following and most stunning exposition for all labour leaders, activists and progressive to study:
“The release of data from the 2006 Census has sparked debate over the causes and consequences of the finding that median earnings of individuals working full time on a full-year basis barely increased between 1980 and 2005. Adjusting for inflation, annual earnings increased from $41,348 to $41,401 (in 2005 constant dollars), a mere $53 over 25 years. Over the same time period, labour productivity in Canada rose 37.4 per cent. If median real earnings had grown at the same rate as labour productivity, the median Canadian full-time full-year worker would have earned $56,826 in 2005, considerably more than the actual $41,401. These facts do raise an interesting and important question that this report seeks to answer: what accounts for the divergence between the growth of labour productivity and the growth of real wages?”
Indeed! What does account for $53 (0.13%) in real wage increases over 25 years while productivity increased by 37%? Canadian workers have, on average, been swindled out of $8,946 per year! Taken another way, over $268,000 in their lifetime! So what is causing this? It is a very intriguing question that the report fails to answer. Even the authors admit in the report’s conclusions that, “In some sense, this report raises more questions than answers.” What!? A study supported and funded by some of the biggest “experts” in the field of Canadian economics and they can’t answer the question. Or maybe they don’t want to! [7]
The final statement in the report says, “If most Canadians are not seeing the benefits of labour productivity growth in the form of higher real wages, why should they support policies favouring productivity growth?”
Again the bourgeois economists cannot (or refuse to) answer why Canadian workers have not “shared” in the “wealth creation” and return full circle to the initial question posed in the report’s opening paragraph, answering absolutely nothing in the process except to resolve to return to the question at some later day and try again.
It is much the same as the saying that questions the probability of a million moneys pecking away at a million typewriters infinitely…eventually one of them writes a novel. Only we don’t have to wait until our bourgeois economic cousins descend from the trees and begin the slow arduous journey to standing erect and making fire. Marx has answered that question long ago. The real irony in the report is how well they prove Marx. It is remarkable what our economic simian cousins can unwittingly accomplish for the service of workers when given enough typewriters.
The key findings of the report are fully stated in the first paragraph of the executive summary and which any worker with grade school math can figure out after a life time of calculating and studying the miserable pittance of paycheques that are doled out after a week’s work. Workers can answer why! Why can’t the economists?
Well now let’s get to the meat of the matter. The authors’ key findings are summarized as follows.
From 1980 to 2005 annual earnings increased from $41,348 to $41,401, a mere $53 over 25 years. Over the same time period, labour productivity in Canada rose 37.4 per cent. That is all that is needed. With access to some basics statistics from the internet of Canadian GDP and population over the same period a more complete picture can be sketched out to the extent that Canada is being pillaged, ransacked and shipped out.
Our fiscal primates help out a little, however, when they do the productivity calculation for us and arrive at saying; “If median real earnings had grown at the same rate as labour productivity, the median Canadian full-time full-year worker would have earned $56,826 in 2005, considerably more than the actual $41,401.” Actually it is $15,425 more! In other words 1.37 X $41,401 equals $56,826. Projecting that number to 2009, using the same ratios, that number jumps again by another $2,468 per year.
Over the 25 year period that the study examined, real wages increased a total of $53. That averages out to be less then the cost for a 2 litre carton of milk per year at $2.12. If workers would have received the full benefit of the productivity gains over the same period it would have meant $619.12 per year, or a 29,000% increase! And that is in year 1 of the 25 year period.
Taking productivity into consideration, if we start in 1980 with productivity as 1, then productivity in 2005 would be 1.37. Average annual productivity increases would be just under 1.5% at 0.0148 per year over the 25 year period. Carrying that forward to 2009, productivity would equal 1.429.
The population of Canada grew 9,177,722 to 33,694,000[8] over 25 years from 1980. In 2009 the number of Canadians that worked for salaries and wages was over 18 million or just over 54% of the total population.[9] In 1980 the total Canadian labour force was 11,879,400 for workers 15 years and older. In 2009 the size of the labour force was over 18 million workers.[10] The size of the working class grew by 55% in 25 years! Over the same period of time the total Canadian population grew by 37%. Utilizing the total number of workers from the working class that are employed and applying that number for each year, on average, 51% of the Canadian population works for wages or salaries. (Table 1)
Applying the average lost wage of $619.12 per year per worker and adding it to each previous year’s last wage (and projecting it forward for 2006-2009 incl.) results in the total estimated wage that a worker should have received in 2005, which was calculated by the CSLS economists at just under $57,000. (Table 2)
Taking the product of each year’s lost wages and multiplying by the total population we arrive at the total value of unpaid wages for each year of the 25 year period. Summing the total unpaid wages by all wage earners in Canada from 1980 to 2009 we arrive at $3,973,026,443,300.00! Or in other words over $4 trillion! (Table 3)
Finally, taking the total Canadian GDP for each year we can calculate how much of each was spent by Canadian workers working for free. If the lost wages that should have gone to the workers were never paid, but the values created, the actual material goods, and services are realized in GDP as they were appropriated by the bosses and sold as profit.
Dividing the total lost wages for each year by the total GDP for that year we arrive at ratio of time working for wages that are not returned to the worker in wages. (Table 3) On average it results in .14 of each year is spent labouring free for the bosses. The total number of hours that a worker has worked for free over the 25 year period is 8,778 hours. Over 25 years it amounts to 4.2 years. But we don’t really believe our economist experts are really telling the full truth[11] so let’s just say - 5 years!!!
[1] Alia McMullen, “Unions face uncertain future in global economy”, Financial Post, June 23, 2009
[2] http://www.globalinsight.com/AnalystBio/AnalystBioDetail90.htm
[3] Sharpe, Arsenault, Peter, “The Relationship between Labour Productivity and Real Wage Growth in Canada and OECD Countries”, Centre for the Study of Living Standards, Research Report No. 2008-8, December, http://www.csls.ca/reports/csls2008-8.pdf
[4] “Protected economy” is another way of saying sovereign. Therefore if unions “once” created value for workers in a sovereign economy and are “unable” to do so now in a “competitive and deregulated world” the need for Canadian sovereignty becomes more urgent for Canadian workers. Or looking at it from the other way, selling-out resources and Canadian sovereignty to US and foreign monopoly capital or the highest bidder means greater profits for US finance speculators and investors and lower wages for Canadian workers.
[5] Labour productivity in the bourgeois economist lexicon really means higher rates of profits. Profits can only be realized through the unpaid labour time of workers. There is no other way to generate profits.
[6] http://www.csls.ca/about.asp
[7] If it is the former then they are not real “experts” and all the funding by big business is just wasted time and “taxpayers’ money”. If it is the later then they are barefaced liars and petty crooks (well maybe not as petty as we shall see). Either way in the final analysis they only serve the interests of monopoly capital and not workers. These are the lofty goals to which they aspire.
[8] Statistics Canada, Table 051-0001 - Estimates of population, by age group and sex for July 1, Canada, provinces and territories, annual (persons unless otherwise noted) (table), CANSIM (database), http://cansim2.statcan.gc.ca/cgi-win/cnsmcgi.exe?Lang=E&CNSM-Fi=CII/CII_1-eng.htm, (Accessed July 11, 2009)
[9] Statistics Canada, Labour Force Survey, Relseased July 10, 2009, CANSIM table 282-0087, Labour force characteristics by age and sex – June, 2009, http://www.statcan.gc.ca/subjects-sujets/labour-travail/lfs-epa/lfs-epa-eng.pdf
[10] Statistics Canada. Table 282-0002 - Labour force survey estimates (LFS), by sex and detailed age group, annual (persons unless otherwise noted) (table), CANSIM, http://cansim2.statcan.gc.ca/cgi-win/cnsmcgi.exe?Lang=E&CNSM-Fi=CII/CII_1-eng.htm (Accessed July 11, 2009)
[11] Depending on which data set is used the numbers vary widely from 6 years down to 4.2 years. Therefore we will let the bourgeois economist prove us wrong!
http://www.focusonsocialism.ca/random.asp?ID=250
Striking CUPE public sector workers in Ontario are revealing the rapacious nature of capitalism better than any number of ‘exposures’, op-eds and news articles by the academic ‘left’ press. Not only are the courageous CUPE workers fighting for immediate gains against a backdrop of callous and brazen hostility, aimed a breaking the militant union, by the federal, provincial and municipal governments, a reactionary petty bourgeoisie and a venomous corporate media, they are also revealing the economic pillaging of workers wages, the squandering of Canadian productive capacity by corporate Canada and the true malicious nature of the Canadian ruling class towards workers.
Corporate media hacks are hyperventilating trying to out do each other for the most intimidating and argumentative news item. Attempts to ingratiate themselves with their corporate bosses are unwittingly bringing to light concealed and unnoticed information within the seedy backroom world of business council policy makers. Material and data that may otherwise remain obscured from the scrutiny of workers’ eyes is being publicized in a shrouded, but rather dramatic, fashion.
The nature of Canadian imperialism is being revealed not so much in the very evident and real attacks on the CUPE workers, and organized labour in general, by the hired media hack mercenaries of the Miller Toronto municipal council, it is also shown in the anxiety in the economic theoreticians of the Canadian ruling class. The Financial Post (FP) on June 23, 2009 published an article[1] that illustrated the alarm felt in the leading circles of corporate policy makers.
In an unwitting attempt to make a case and “justify” the need to break organized labour and to provide evidence why the Canadian economy is in shambles, the Financial Post in their apparent hyper anxious state does the opposite. The editors at the “Post” in reality expose the real cause of the crisis – capitalism and the irresolvable contradiction between social production and private accumulation. If Harper wasn’t so arrogant and vacuous he would have summoned the editors to the PMO and sternly reprimanded them for their careless “leak”.
Citing the growing strike activity by “public sector” workers, the Financial Post, tries to paint a picture that the “inflexibility” of unions fighting to hold onto “perks” and “fringe benefits” has questioned the “role” and “future” of unions in Canada.
Making a fallacious connection between Canadian labour productivity, workers’ “protected” rights, and wages “linked” to productivity, the FP said, “At a time when workers rights are protected by law and wage increases are generally linked to productivity, competitiveness and the success of the company, the economic downturn has kicked up a storm of dust around the role of unions and their future.”
Thinking workers would howl in jest at such a conclusion if it were not for the sinister undertones in the Financial Post’s remarks. Unions would smirk, roll eyes and shake their heads in collective unison if it were not for the real concessions forcefully extracted from collective bargaining agreements by a vindictive government-corporate coalition. Taken in light of the very real attacks and worsening social and economic conditions of Canadian workers as they, yet again, endure another depression, the FP’s malevolent and deceptive commentary can only be viewed as part of the general coordinated attack on Canadian workers’ living standards by monopoly capital.
The Financial Post attempts to make a case for breaking the “unwilling unions” and defending “flexible” non-union companies. Referring to economist Dale Orr of Global Insight[2], who bemoans that falling trade barriers, “open” and global markets make it more difficult for non-union companies to compete for labour. As the FP paraphrased, “But while a non-unionized company may have greater control over wages, Mr. Orr said this did not necessarily result in lower pay.”
So what is buried in all of this that the striking CUPE workers are exposing? The CUPE workers have agitated the Canadian ruling class to such an extent that the editors of the FP were compelled to counter with the same old tired union bashing trash.
The June 23 Financial Post article leads astute readers to the heart of the matter by quoting a December 2008 Centre of the Study of Living Standards (CSLS) report[3]. Concluding from the CSLS report that, “unions once created value for workers in a protected economy[4] by extracting a share of a company's excess profits for workers” the FP quoting Don Drummond, the senior vice president and chief economist at TD Securities as saying that this will mean that governments will begin to outsource more jobs in an effort to “cut expenses”. CUPE is on the frontline of that fight.
Quoting the CSLS report, the Financial Post asserts, “Unions must therefore accept market conditions or face plant closure. In the longer term, the unwillingness of unions to accept such conditions may potentially lead unionized firms to bankruptcy, while non-unionized competitors increase their market share.”
So then this is nothing more than the same old union tired bashing tirade that the Financial Post, Toronto Star and Globe and Mail regularly engage in. Well to a point. If one is to read and study the CSLS report in more detail a completely different picture emerges. It is a delineation that the Canadian ruling class is most alarmed by. But at the same time monopoly capital is fully engaged and most busily studying the effects and phenomenon described in the CSLS report. That question that is in actual fact posed in the FP anti-union attack is; how can monopoly capital extract more unpaid labour time form Canadian workers to prop up falling rates of profit?
The CSLS not only attempts to assist corporate Canada resolve that obstacle to their “profit dilemma”, they also reveal the extent to which the Canadian capitalist class has brutally exploited Canadian workers over the last 25 years and how they plan to continue to do so.
Piecing together statistics from the CSLS report, Stats Canada and other sources a picture begins to emerge of the depths of wage larceny and the far reaching detrimental consequences on the Canadian economy of decades of shameless labour exploitation by the Canadian ruling class.
The authors of the report in the Abstract openly state the real purpose of the study and reveal the magnitude and mechanisms on which Canadian and United States corporate profits are based. Profits are based solely on the unpaid labour time of Canadian workers. The report reveals the scandalous, immoral and criminal extent to which workers are exploited by the Canadian ruling class for its profits.
The CSLS report Abstract says, “The most direct mechanism by which labour productivity affects living standards is through real wages, that is, wages adjusted to reflect the cost of living. Between 1980 and 2005, the median real earnings of Canadians workers stagnated, while labour productivity rose 37 per cent. This report analyzes the reasons for this situation.” The authors’ suggestion that wages have “stagnated” is a gross understatement.
abour productivity[5] is a favourite topic of discussion amongst bourgeois academia. Hundreds of studies, reports and statistics all attempt to prove that Canadian workers are not productive and that they “lag” many other of the major industrial powers in this regard. Such talk is erroneous. If one is to believe this group of enlightened bourgeois labour economists all that is necessary to increase “lagging productivity” is to do away with unions.
What perplexes the Canadian ruling class and the CSLS authors’ the most is the central question posed and one that has baffled bourgeois economists for centuries; “why don’t workers work harder?” Taken from a Marxist or working class point of view the answer to the question is obvious – workers understand that there is nothing in it for them to work harder, except an early grave.
When viewed from a ruling class point of view the answer to the question becomes more frustrating and is met with a tirade of anti-worker theories that range from being “lazy” to being “uneducated” and “unmotivated”. All of these lead into the same old marsh of idealism and harsher “terms of trade”.
It is plain that the Center for the Study of Living Standards[6] falls into the later category. Founded in 1995 by former Canadian Deputy Minister of Finance, Dr. Ian Stewart, the main objectives of the “independent” CSLS are to:
- contribute to a better understanding of trends in living standards and factors determining trends through research;
- contribute to public debate on living standards by developing and advocating specific policies through expert consensus.
The CSLS report intended for policy makers among the ruling elite also poses fundamental and basic questions for the working class. Firstly by defining what labour real wages are and what labour productivity is, in lexicon of bourgeois economic theory, the report poses the question;
“Economic theory holds that at the aggregate level the growth of real wages are determined by labour productivity growth, a relationship mediated by the labour’s share of output and labour’s terms of trade (the price of output relative to the price of goods that workers consume). Neither increases in the labour share nor labour’s terms of trade are likely to be a sustainable way of raising real wages because they fluctuate within fairly narrow bands. Only labour productivity growth can raise living standards in the long run. If short- and medium-term changes in the labour share or labour’s terms of trade mean that Canadians are not benefitting from higher labour productivity in the form of higher real wages, then why should they support policies to increase labour productivity growth?”
A good question indeed!
Secondly, and most vexing to the economists, the report outlines the true disparity and depths to which workers are being fleeced by the ruling class. Attempting to answer the question leads to only one solution for the bourgeoisie – work workers harder, longer! The report goes on to pose the following and most stunning exposition for all labour leaders, activists and progressive to study:
“The release of data from the 2006 Census has sparked debate over the causes and consequences of the finding that median earnings of individuals working full time on a full-year basis barely increased between 1980 and 2005. Adjusting for inflation, annual earnings increased from $41,348 to $41,401 (in 2005 constant dollars), a mere $53 over 25 years. Over the same time period, labour productivity in Canada rose 37.4 per cent. If median real earnings had grown at the same rate as labour productivity, the median Canadian full-time full-year worker would have earned $56,826 in 2005, considerably more than the actual $41,401. These facts do raise an interesting and important question that this report seeks to answer: what accounts for the divergence between the growth of labour productivity and the growth of real wages?”
Indeed! What does account for $53 (0.13%) in real wage increases over 25 years while productivity increased by 37%? Canadian workers have, on average, been swindled out of $8,946 per year! Taken another way, over $268,000 in their lifetime! So what is causing this? It is a very intriguing question that the report fails to answer. Even the authors admit in the report’s conclusions that, “In some sense, this report raises more questions than answers.” What!? A study supported and funded by some of the biggest “experts” in the field of Canadian economics and they can’t answer the question. Or maybe they don’t want to! [7]
The final statement in the report says, “If most Canadians are not seeing the benefits of labour productivity growth in the form of higher real wages, why should they support policies favouring productivity growth?”
Again the bourgeois economists cannot (or refuse to) answer why Canadian workers have not “shared” in the “wealth creation” and return full circle to the initial question posed in the report’s opening paragraph, answering absolutely nothing in the process except to resolve to return to the question at some later day and try again.
It is much the same as the saying that questions the probability of a million moneys pecking away at a million typewriters infinitely…eventually one of them writes a novel. Only we don’t have to wait until our bourgeois economic cousins descend from the trees and begin the slow arduous journey to standing erect and making fire. Marx has answered that question long ago. The real irony in the report is how well they prove Marx. It is remarkable what our economic simian cousins can unwittingly accomplish for the service of workers when given enough typewriters.
The key findings of the report are fully stated in the first paragraph of the executive summary and which any worker with grade school math can figure out after a life time of calculating and studying the miserable pittance of paycheques that are doled out after a week’s work. Workers can answer why! Why can’t the economists?
Well now let’s get to the meat of the matter. The authors’ key findings are summarized as follows.
From 1980 to 2005 annual earnings increased from $41,348 to $41,401, a mere $53 over 25 years. Over the same time period, labour productivity in Canada rose 37.4 per cent. That is all that is needed. With access to some basics statistics from the internet of Canadian GDP and population over the same period a more complete picture can be sketched out to the extent that Canada is being pillaged, ransacked and shipped out.
Our fiscal primates help out a little, however, when they do the productivity calculation for us and arrive at saying; “If median real earnings had grown at the same rate as labour productivity, the median Canadian full-time full-year worker would have earned $56,826 in 2005, considerably more than the actual $41,401.” Actually it is $15,425 more! In other words 1.37 X $41,401 equals $56,826. Projecting that number to 2009, using the same ratios, that number jumps again by another $2,468 per year.
Over the 25 year period that the study examined, real wages increased a total of $53. That averages out to be less then the cost for a 2 litre carton of milk per year at $2.12. If workers would have received the full benefit of the productivity gains over the same period it would have meant $619.12 per year, or a 29,000% increase! And that is in year 1 of the 25 year period.
Taking productivity into consideration, if we start in 1980 with productivity as 1, then productivity in 2005 would be 1.37. Average annual productivity increases would be just under 1.5% at 0.0148 per year over the 25 year period. Carrying that forward to 2009, productivity would equal 1.429.
The population of Canada grew 9,177,722 to 33,694,000[8] over 25 years from 1980. In 2009 the number of Canadians that worked for salaries and wages was over 18 million or just over 54% of the total population.[9] In 1980 the total Canadian labour force was 11,879,400 for workers 15 years and older. In 2009 the size of the labour force was over 18 million workers.[10] The size of the working class grew by 55% in 25 years! Over the same period of time the total Canadian population grew by 37%. Utilizing the total number of workers from the working class that are employed and applying that number for each year, on average, 51% of the Canadian population works for wages or salaries. (Table 1)
Applying the average lost wage of $619.12 per year per worker and adding it to each previous year’s last wage (and projecting it forward for 2006-2009 incl.) results in the total estimated wage that a worker should have received in 2005, which was calculated by the CSLS economists at just under $57,000. (Table 2)
Taking the product of each year’s lost wages and multiplying by the total population we arrive at the total value of unpaid wages for each year of the 25 year period. Summing the total unpaid wages by all wage earners in Canada from 1980 to 2009 we arrive at $3,973,026,443,300.00! Or in other words over $4 trillion! (Table 3)
Finally, taking the total Canadian GDP for each year we can calculate how much of each was spent by Canadian workers working for free. If the lost wages that should have gone to the workers were never paid, but the values created, the actual material goods, and services are realized in GDP as they were appropriated by the bosses and sold as profit.
Dividing the total lost wages for each year by the total GDP for that year we arrive at ratio of time working for wages that are not returned to the worker in wages. (Table 3) On average it results in .14 of each year is spent labouring free for the bosses. The total number of hours that a worker has worked for free over the 25 year period is 8,778 hours. Over 25 years it amounts to 4.2 years. But we don’t really believe our economist experts are really telling the full truth[11] so let’s just say - 5 years!!!
So the question that the CSLS economists pose; “what accounts for the divergence between real wages and productivity?” can now be answered – capitalism. It is due to the massive theft of workers’ wages - 5 years of unpaid labour time. Now that we know the answer our economist friends can get onto something more challenging - like how do Canadians get those unpaid wages back?
[1] Alia McMullen, “Unions face uncertain future in global economy”, Financial Post, June 23, 2009
[2] http://www.globalinsight.com/AnalystBio/AnalystBioDetail90.htm
[3] Sharpe, Arsenault, Peter, “The Relationship between Labour Productivity and Real Wage Growth in Canada and OECD Countries”, Centre for the Study of Living Standards, Research Report No. 2008-8, December, http://www.csls.ca/reports/csls2008-8.pdf
[4] “Protected economy” is another way of saying sovereign. Therefore if unions “once” created value for workers in a sovereign economy and are “unable” to do so now in a “competitive and deregulated world” the need for Canadian sovereignty becomes more urgent for Canadian workers. Or looking at it from the other way, selling-out resources and Canadian sovereignty to US and foreign monopoly capital or the highest bidder means greater profits for US finance speculators and investors and lower wages for Canadian workers.
[5] Labour productivity in the bourgeois economist lexicon really means higher rates of profits. Profits can only be realized through the unpaid labour time of workers. There is no other way to generate profits.
[6] http://www.csls.ca/about.asp
[7] If it is the former then they are not real “experts” and all the funding by big business is just wasted time and “taxpayers’ money”. If it is the later then they are barefaced liars and petty crooks (well maybe not as petty as we shall see). Either way in the final analysis they only serve the interests of monopoly capital and not workers. These are the lofty goals to which they aspire.
[8] Statistics Canada, Table 051-0001 - Estimates of population, by age group and sex for July 1, Canada, provinces and territories, annual (persons unless otherwise noted) (table), CANSIM (database), http://cansim2.statcan.gc.ca/cgi-win/cnsmcgi.exe?Lang=E&CNSM-Fi=CII/CII_1-eng.htm, (Accessed July 11, 2009)
[9] Statistics Canada, Labour Force Survey, Relseased July 10, 2009, CANSIM table 282-0087, Labour force characteristics by age and sex – June, 2009, http://www.statcan.gc.ca/subjects-sujets/labour-travail/lfs-epa/lfs-epa-eng.pdf
[10] Statistics Canada. Table 282-0002 - Labour force survey estimates (LFS), by sex and detailed age group, annual (persons unless otherwise noted) (table), CANSIM, http://cansim2.statcan.gc.ca/cgi-win/cnsmcgi.exe?Lang=E&CNSM-Fi=CII/CII_1-eng.htm (Accessed July 11, 2009)
[11] Depending on which data set is used the numbers vary widely from 6 years down to 4.2 years. Therefore we will let the bourgeois economist prove us wrong!
Friday, July 3, 2009
The Ideological Struggle is a Fight for a Working Class World View
A war is being waged. Canadian workers are being punished in record numbers by monopoly capital for its callous policies of profit first, people second. As the spin-doctors for the capitalist press announce almost daily that the ‘recovery is just around the corner’ or the ‘end is in sight’ the reality for millions of Canadian workers and their families can be farther from the truth. Outrage is boiling over in Ontario where the brave CUPE municipal workers in Windsor and Toronto, resisting the combined efforts of business and government forces to break the union, are fighting to protect decades of hard won working class gains clearly demonstrate.
The class divisions within Canada are more evident then ever. While the majority of Canadians are dependent on wages to provide security for their families a shrinking section of the parasitical classes, holding the commanding heights of economic, political and ideological power, attempt to foment ruptures and turmoil within working class unity.
The thin veil of ‘equality’ is being violently stripped off the working class by the economic realities of the capitalist crisis to expose the real depths of class divides and the ideological and economic basis of these schisms. Newspaper editorial blogs deliberately sow confusion within unorganized and unemployed ‘private sector’ workers. News website reader comment sections are bursting with class confusion, bourgeois parroting and anti-worker hate mongering unwittingly among this section of the working class and maliciously by the ideological agents of business dogma that troll anonymously posting outlandish lies and assertions.
Business doctrine is spread liberally by monopoly capital’s bought-and-paid-for ideological think-tanks, academic stooges and hired management consultants, targeting the least class conscious sections of workers. The main objective of these attacks is to win public sentiment for the profit first policies of monopoly capital, divide organized labour into isolated factions and break unions into compliant and voluntary tools of monopoly capital policy.
Objectively, the only barrier between the open dictatorial rule of monopoly capital is organized labour. This is what the CUPE resistance is primarily about. What started as an ‘economic’ struggle is quickly exploding into a broader political struggle. The deepening antagonisms within the growing capitalist crisis are also revealing more clearly two world views – that of peace and progress which is upheld by labour, and that of reaction and violence which are expressed in the anti-union ideology of imperialism led by the minority Harper conservative government.
The municipal workers strike has also exposed the greatest weakness within organized labour – ideology. While the valiant efforts of 24,000 CUPE workers that walk picket lines is a testament to their outrage and courage, the struggle is hand cuffed because they are not armed with partisan working class theory – Marxism. The fight to infuse Marxist ideology into the labour movement is urgent. The forces of peace and socialism are called upon to make the ideological struggle the struggle of primary importance.
The class divisions within Canada are more evident then ever. While the majority of Canadians are dependent on wages to provide security for their families a shrinking section of the parasitical classes, holding the commanding heights of economic, political and ideological power, attempt to foment ruptures and turmoil within working class unity.
The thin veil of ‘equality’ is being violently stripped off the working class by the economic realities of the capitalist crisis to expose the real depths of class divides and the ideological and economic basis of these schisms. Newspaper editorial blogs deliberately sow confusion within unorganized and unemployed ‘private sector’ workers. News website reader comment sections are bursting with class confusion, bourgeois parroting and anti-worker hate mongering unwittingly among this section of the working class and maliciously by the ideological agents of business dogma that troll anonymously posting outlandish lies and assertions.
Business doctrine is spread liberally by monopoly capital’s bought-and-paid-for ideological think-tanks, academic stooges and hired management consultants, targeting the least class conscious sections of workers. The main objective of these attacks is to win public sentiment for the profit first policies of monopoly capital, divide organized labour into isolated factions and break unions into compliant and voluntary tools of monopoly capital policy.
Objectively, the only barrier between the open dictatorial rule of monopoly capital is organized labour. This is what the CUPE resistance is primarily about. What started as an ‘economic’ struggle is quickly exploding into a broader political struggle. The deepening antagonisms within the growing capitalist crisis are also revealing more clearly two world views – that of peace and progress which is upheld by labour, and that of reaction and violence which are expressed in the anti-union ideology of imperialism led by the minority Harper conservative government.
The municipal workers strike has also exposed the greatest weakness within organized labour – ideology. While the valiant efforts of 24,000 CUPE workers that walk picket lines is a testament to their outrage and courage, the struggle is hand cuffed because they are not armed with partisan working class theory – Marxism. The fight to infuse Marxist ideology into the labour movement is urgent. The forces of peace and socialism are called upon to make the ideological struggle the struggle of primary importance.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Dimanno, Hack Journalism: Anti-Canadian to the Core
Toronto Star crack columnist Rosie Dimanno, in the finest tradition of Rush Limbaugh, scratches at the bowels of trash journalism like so many of her contemporary B circuit tabloid critics. With the zeal of an apparent narcotic induced delusional narcissism, which could only have been brought on by years of self aggrandizing, cheap manicures and ‘tween rainbow hairdos, but more suited to the titillation and gossip of a suburban hair salon, Dimanno flatters herself with self righteous bombastic slurs on the workers of Toronto and Hamilton.
The petty and hysterical display of self indulgent opinion, which in the custom of a sagging and frustrated hedonistic mistress of a used car salesman seeking the favour of men half her age, Ms. Dimanno attempts to elevate herself from journalistic hatcheck girl and dogma servant of the pampered classes turning op-ed tricks for shekels, to a hostess at the back doors of their ideological brothels, rewarded for her journalistic anti-worker shock-jock pap. Ms. Dimanno’s journalism, if you could call it that, is a proper wart on the nation.
Dimanno seeks favour from the enmeshed Toronto cocktail circuit crowd of the Levitt-Hudak-Miller “power” elites. Like opening a can of tuna and pouring the juice down the drain Ms. Dimanno’s particular brand of journalistic rubbish stinks. From her aching desire to scratch the Zionist itch burning deep in her breach, between pen and paper, to her pandering to the anti-worker Harper right-wing "taxpayers' money" brain trust, Dimanno is the poster child for the brown shirt lament.
Ms. Dimanno’s journalism is amazingly average and nothing more than that which is produced by any other upper-middle class spoiled brat high school dropout that never worked a day in her life and had daddy pay for her art school college diploma. Or maybe her journalism is just plain bad.
What ever the reason, the editors of the Toronto Star should cut her salary and send her searching for defecating dog stories - it will do the nation good. We can always hope.
The petty and hysterical display of self indulgent opinion, which in the custom of a sagging and frustrated hedonistic mistress of a used car salesman seeking the favour of men half her age, Ms. Dimanno attempts to elevate herself from journalistic hatcheck girl and dogma servant of the pampered classes turning op-ed tricks for shekels, to a hostess at the back doors of their ideological brothels, rewarded for her journalistic anti-worker shock-jock pap. Ms. Dimanno’s journalism, if you could call it that, is a proper wart on the nation.
Dimanno seeks favour from the enmeshed Toronto cocktail circuit crowd of the Levitt-Hudak-Miller “power” elites. Like opening a can of tuna and pouring the juice down the drain Ms. Dimanno’s particular brand of journalistic rubbish stinks. From her aching desire to scratch the Zionist itch burning deep in her breach, between pen and paper, to her pandering to the anti-worker Harper right-wing "taxpayers' money" brain trust, Dimanno is the poster child for the brown shirt lament.
Ms. Dimanno’s journalism is amazingly average and nothing more than that which is produced by any other upper-middle class spoiled brat high school dropout that never worked a day in her life and had daddy pay for her art school college diploma. Or maybe her journalism is just plain bad.
What ever the reason, the editors of the Toronto Star should cut her salary and send her searching for defecating dog stories - it will do the nation good. We can always hope.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Halt the Treasonous Western Premiers! For an All Canadian Power Grid Now!
The almost total and complete binding integration of Canadian power with United States industry is being sinisterly planned and brazenly executed fully in the open and with the active and complete participation of the Western Canadian Premiers of Campbell, Stelmach, Wall and Doer and with the full knowledge and support of the federal Harper regime. It is a treasonous act and must be exposed and condemned by all Canadian patriots. It must be halted!
Plans are well underway to create a massive western power grid called the Western Interconnection[1] that stretches from the northern regions of Alberta and BC to the deep south of the western US and into Mexico. Saskatchewan and Manitoba are also drawing up plans to supply power into the grid from Manitoba’s massive hydro potential and Saskatchewan’s uranium supplies through the construction of nuclear power generation facilities.
The joint initiative between the Western Governors’ Association (WGA) and the United States Department of Energy (DOE) plans to bring Canadian power supplies under the jurisdiction of Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) by dividing the Western Interconnection into Western Renewable Energy Zones (WREZ). The plans are outlined in detail in the Western Renewable Energy Zones – Phase 1 Report.[2]
The report outlines four objectives that the joint initiative is to achieve and which was the focus of three days of meetings at the Western Governors’ Association 2009 Annual Meeting, Park City, Utah on June 14 - 16, 2009. The main plenary session was entitled “Tapping the West’s Renewable Energy Potential”. Also on the agenda at the meeting was the topic “Managing Water in a Changing World”. The four Western Canadian Premiers attended the event. Manitoba Premier Doer said, "The reality is we're all producers of energy, we're all sellers of energy into western United States, and into the mid-western United States,"[3]
The 2006 Western Governors' Association Policy Resolution 06-10, “Clean and Diversified Energy for the West” states that:
“This resolution included a series of recommendations to meet the objectives of adding 30,000 megawatts of clean energy to the West by 2015, increasing energy efficiency by 20% by 2020, and providing 25 years of secure, reliable transmission.”
WGA Policy Resolution 09-1 was the outcome[4]. Among other recommendations it lays the basis for long-term uninterrupted supply of clean energy to the Western United States. It also recommended that the Western Renewable Energy Zones – Phase 1 Report was to be completed. Resolution 09-1 states that the Western United States governors “believe” that the United States must:
“Ensure that energy costs are affordable for consumers and support a sustainable, growing economy (in the US no mention of Canada - ed.) and increase the proportion of our energy supplies that come from domestic resources and friendly trading partners (Canada, who else has the energy and you can’t transmit power across the ocean – ed.)”
In the sweeping Policy Resolution, 09-1 went on to say that US energy development must be through a comprehensive national framework with an “aggressive timeframe” with an energy development and supply infrastructure designed to avoid interruptions. The resolution addressed nuclear power as the fundamental “base load” supply and called on the US federal government to act aggressively to meet the targets in the resolution. The Canadian Western Premiers all have detailed knowledge of the scope and breadth of the document and what the implications are for Canada. To deny this would be to lie.
Of the total identified 8452 MW of hydro power capacity potential in the WREZ’s Alberta and BC accounted for 7892 MW or 93% of the total. BC alone accounts for 72% of all “Western” hydro resources. Total wind power capacity in Western Interconnection was estimated to be 95,219 MW. Alberta and BC accounted for 18,372 MW or 19.2% of the total. Of the total Western Interconnection identified capacity (solar, geothermal, hydro and wind) of 198,789 MW Canada accounted for 14% of the total. It must be noted that the vast majority of power is identified as coming from solar in California but the most reliable and most easily accessible is Canadian hydro. And of the total hydro potential, Canada accounts for the majority. BC “shares” a zone with Washington State increasing its share even further.
The report was completed with the help of Canadian Geothermal Energy Association. The report noted that, “British Columbia voluntarily provided a hub on the British Columbia-Washington border to the WREZ process. This represents a 16,000 gigawatt-hour per year shaped energy product that British Columbia could provide to load serving entities (LSEs) at the border.”
What is clear is that there is widespread support and collusion from Canadian authorities for the supply of cheap Canadian power to the US Governors and willingness from those same authorities and elected officials to supply US energy needs first.
The first objective of the initiative is to identify the WREZ throughout the Western Interconnection that feature the” potential for large scale development of renewable resources”. The report identifies and characterizes “resource-rich” areas “screening out” those areas “where development is prohibited or severely constrained by geography, regulation or statues”. The report went on to say that the initiative will further refine WREZ’s and continue to work towards “implementing additional screens that balance the benefits of renewable energy development with the need to protect wildlife and crucial habitat.”
Secondly the report is the culmination of evaluation for the “various transmission strategies”. Relative economic cost models from source to “load centres” have been developed which will be used calculate power delivery potential across each WREZ. Detailed maps have been developed that show hydro, wind, geothermal and solar potential.
Black and Veatch (B&V) the giant international engineering firm was contracted to complete the study and map the findings. Interestingly enough B&V CEO Len C. Rodman will be a keynote speaker at the Sustainable Water Solutions for Cities forum at the Water Leaders Summit, part of the second annual Singapore International Water Week, which is to be held on 22-26 June 2009.[5]
Thirdly the report “recognizes” that regional development should be completed in “concert” with more “localized” efforts. This suggestion that the WGA and the DOE will work towards municipal efforts at energy development is particularly troubling. With Canada-US agreements on “trade” through NAFTA, SPP and now interconnected with the Western Canadian province’s TILMA the picture is coming more into focus.
Finally the report stated that, “[the initiative] will undertake a range of efforts to lay the foundation for promoting the efficient regional development, procurement and delivery of energy from renewable resource areas to multiple population centers throughout the Western Interconnection”. This is the long-term plan which envisages a massive power grid connecting Canada, the US and Mexico.
Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach lauding the plans said, “They know that we have an excellent opportunity as neighbours on the North American continent to co-operate,”
Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer and Vice Chair of the WGA commenting on Stelmach’s remarks said that the oil sands are a critical component of US energy security. Echoing Governor Schweitzer’s remarks Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter agreed, saying "it's both western parts of Canada and the United States that can play a role in energy independence." Who’s energy independence?
"The most important energy corridor on the planet is no longer the Persian Gulf. It runs from the oilsands, Fort Mc-Murray to Port Arthur, Texas," Schweitzer said. "A large part of energy independence is going to be dependent upon developing the oilsands."
What is plainly evident from all this chatter is, that large scale plans are being rapidly implemented for the exploitation of Canadian energy resources to bolster a flagging and depleted US energy industry all in an attempt to bring the US out of depression on the backs of Canadian workers. This is all being done without the least consideration for Canadian needs or national development and all with the full knowledge and active participation of our treasonous Western Premiers (or maybe it should be said, the Western Canadian Governors).
What is needed in response to these unpatriotic acts is a national energy and labour policy that develops Canadian industry from east to west. Western Canadian labour federations have a particular important role to play in mobilizing opposition to this blatant and brazen sell-out of Canadian sovereignty. The AFL has made a good start with its research papers and policy statements on Alberta oilsands development but they are inadequate to meet the frenzied theft of Canadian resources by big US energy, finance and engineering monopolies in alliance with the Western Premiers and the Harper regime.
Organized labour is the only impediment that can halt this sell-out. All patriotic forces are called upon to take up this question and elevate it to the national level in conjunction with the Canadian Labour Congress, the CAW and the CEP and placed as the centre piece of a new Canadian labour and national development program - lest Canada is permanently relegated to little more than a country of pick axes, shovels and saws.
Notes
[1] The Western Interconnection is the name of the electricity grid that includes the states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming; the part of Texas near El Paso; the Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia; and a small portion of northern Mexico in Baja California. It is overseen by the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC).
[2] Western Governor’s Association and the US Dept. of Energy, “Western Renewable Energy Zones - Phase 1 Report”, June 2009, http://www.westgov.org/wga/publicat/WREZ09.pdf
[3] Jason Fekete, “Western premiers tout energy corridor at US conference”, Calgary Herald, June 15, 2009
[4] WGA, “Policy Resolution 09-1, Energy Policy, Renewable Energy and Transmission for the West”, http://www.westgov.org/wga/policy/09/index.htm
[5] Black & Veatch, “Black and Veatch reveals forum keynote speakers”, http://www.processingtalk.com/news/bla/bla161.html
Plans are well underway to create a massive western power grid called the Western Interconnection[1] that stretches from the northern regions of Alberta and BC to the deep south of the western US and into Mexico. Saskatchewan and Manitoba are also drawing up plans to supply power into the grid from Manitoba’s massive hydro potential and Saskatchewan’s uranium supplies through the construction of nuclear power generation facilities.
The joint initiative between the Western Governors’ Association (WGA) and the United States Department of Energy (DOE) plans to bring Canadian power supplies under the jurisdiction of Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) by dividing the Western Interconnection into Western Renewable Energy Zones (WREZ). The plans are outlined in detail in the Western Renewable Energy Zones – Phase 1 Report.[2]
The report outlines four objectives that the joint initiative is to achieve and which was the focus of three days of meetings at the Western Governors’ Association 2009 Annual Meeting, Park City, Utah on June 14 - 16, 2009. The main plenary session was entitled “Tapping the West’s Renewable Energy Potential”. Also on the agenda at the meeting was the topic “Managing Water in a Changing World”. The four Western Canadian Premiers attended the event. Manitoba Premier Doer said, "The reality is we're all producers of energy, we're all sellers of energy into western United States, and into the mid-western United States,"[3]
The 2006 Western Governors' Association Policy Resolution 06-10, “Clean and Diversified Energy for the West” states that:
“This resolution included a series of recommendations to meet the objectives of adding 30,000 megawatts of clean energy to the West by 2015, increasing energy efficiency by 20% by 2020, and providing 25 years of secure, reliable transmission.”
WGA Policy Resolution 09-1 was the outcome[4]. Among other recommendations it lays the basis for long-term uninterrupted supply of clean energy to the Western United States. It also recommended that the Western Renewable Energy Zones – Phase 1 Report was to be completed. Resolution 09-1 states that the Western United States governors “believe” that the United States must:
“Ensure that energy costs are affordable for consumers and support a sustainable, growing economy (in the US no mention of Canada - ed.) and increase the proportion of our energy supplies that come from domestic resources and friendly trading partners (Canada, who else has the energy and you can’t transmit power across the ocean – ed.)”
In the sweeping Policy Resolution, 09-1 went on to say that US energy development must be through a comprehensive national framework with an “aggressive timeframe” with an energy development and supply infrastructure designed to avoid interruptions. The resolution addressed nuclear power as the fundamental “base load” supply and called on the US federal government to act aggressively to meet the targets in the resolution. The Canadian Western Premiers all have detailed knowledge of the scope and breadth of the document and what the implications are for Canada. To deny this would be to lie.
Of the total identified 8452 MW of hydro power capacity potential in the WREZ’s Alberta and BC accounted for 7892 MW or 93% of the total. BC alone accounts for 72% of all “Western” hydro resources. Total wind power capacity in Western Interconnection was estimated to be 95,219 MW. Alberta and BC accounted for 18,372 MW or 19.2% of the total. Of the total Western Interconnection identified capacity (solar, geothermal, hydro and wind) of 198,789 MW Canada accounted for 14% of the total. It must be noted that the vast majority of power is identified as coming from solar in California but the most reliable and most easily accessible is Canadian hydro. And of the total hydro potential, Canada accounts for the majority. BC “shares” a zone with Washington State increasing its share even further.
The report was completed with the help of Canadian Geothermal Energy Association. The report noted that, “British Columbia voluntarily provided a hub on the British Columbia-Washington border to the WREZ process. This represents a 16,000 gigawatt-hour per year shaped energy product that British Columbia could provide to load serving entities (LSEs) at the border.”
What is clear is that there is widespread support and collusion from Canadian authorities for the supply of cheap Canadian power to the US Governors and willingness from those same authorities and elected officials to supply US energy needs first.
The first objective of the initiative is to identify the WREZ throughout the Western Interconnection that feature the” potential for large scale development of renewable resources”. The report identifies and characterizes “resource-rich” areas “screening out” those areas “where development is prohibited or severely constrained by geography, regulation or statues”. The report went on to say that the initiative will further refine WREZ’s and continue to work towards “implementing additional screens that balance the benefits of renewable energy development with the need to protect wildlife and crucial habitat.”
Secondly the report is the culmination of evaluation for the “various transmission strategies”. Relative economic cost models from source to “load centres” have been developed which will be used calculate power delivery potential across each WREZ. Detailed maps have been developed that show hydro, wind, geothermal and solar potential.
Black and Veatch (B&V) the giant international engineering firm was contracted to complete the study and map the findings. Interestingly enough B&V CEO Len C. Rodman will be a keynote speaker at the Sustainable Water Solutions for Cities forum at the Water Leaders Summit, part of the second annual Singapore International Water Week, which is to be held on 22-26 June 2009.[5]
Thirdly the report “recognizes” that regional development should be completed in “concert” with more “localized” efforts. This suggestion that the WGA and the DOE will work towards municipal efforts at energy development is particularly troubling. With Canada-US agreements on “trade” through NAFTA, SPP and now interconnected with the Western Canadian province’s TILMA the picture is coming more into focus.
Finally the report stated that, “[the initiative] will undertake a range of efforts to lay the foundation for promoting the efficient regional development, procurement and delivery of energy from renewable resource areas to multiple population centers throughout the Western Interconnection”. This is the long-term plan which envisages a massive power grid connecting Canada, the US and Mexico.
Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach lauding the plans said, “They know that we have an excellent opportunity as neighbours on the North American continent to co-operate,”
Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer and Vice Chair of the WGA commenting on Stelmach’s remarks said that the oil sands are a critical component of US energy security. Echoing Governor Schweitzer’s remarks Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter agreed, saying "it's both western parts of Canada and the United States that can play a role in energy independence." Who’s energy independence?
"The most important energy corridor on the planet is no longer the Persian Gulf. It runs from the oilsands, Fort Mc-Murray to Port Arthur, Texas," Schweitzer said. "A large part of energy independence is going to be dependent upon developing the oilsands."
What is plainly evident from all this chatter is, that large scale plans are being rapidly implemented for the exploitation of Canadian energy resources to bolster a flagging and depleted US energy industry all in an attempt to bring the US out of depression on the backs of Canadian workers. This is all being done without the least consideration for Canadian needs or national development and all with the full knowledge and active participation of our treasonous Western Premiers (or maybe it should be said, the Western Canadian Governors).
What is needed in response to these unpatriotic acts is a national energy and labour policy that develops Canadian industry from east to west. Western Canadian labour federations have a particular important role to play in mobilizing opposition to this blatant and brazen sell-out of Canadian sovereignty. The AFL has made a good start with its research papers and policy statements on Alberta oilsands development but they are inadequate to meet the frenzied theft of Canadian resources by big US energy, finance and engineering monopolies in alliance with the Western Premiers and the Harper regime.
Organized labour is the only impediment that can halt this sell-out. All patriotic forces are called upon to take up this question and elevate it to the national level in conjunction with the Canadian Labour Congress, the CAW and the CEP and placed as the centre piece of a new Canadian labour and national development program - lest Canada is permanently relegated to little more than a country of pick axes, shovels and saws.
Notes
[1] The Western Interconnection is the name of the electricity grid that includes the states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming; the part of Texas near El Paso; the Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia; and a small portion of northern Mexico in Baja California. It is overseen by the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC).
[2] Western Governor’s Association and the US Dept. of Energy, “Western Renewable Energy Zones - Phase 1 Report”, June 2009, http://www.westgov.org/wga/publicat/WREZ09.pdf
[3] Jason Fekete, “Western premiers tout energy corridor at US conference”, Calgary Herald, June 15, 2009
[4] WGA, “Policy Resolution 09-1, Energy Policy, Renewable Energy and Transmission for the West”, http://www.westgov.org/wga/policy/09/index.htm
[5] Black & Veatch, “Black and Veatch reveals forum keynote speakers”, http://www.processingtalk.com/news/bla/bla161.html
Monday, June 22, 2009
Alberta Energy Sector Workers Held Hostage by Anti-Worker Governments and International Finance Speculators
“Alberta oil sands show signs of life” declared the Globe and Mail headline.[1] The article announced that “many” in the province see indications that the economy may be improving in the Alberta energy sector. Citing the announcement by Imperial Oil that it will precede with the $8 billion Kearl Lake mine and that the “run-up” in oil prices have contributed to the optimism the authors, quoting Grande Prairie Mayor Dwight Logan who said, “I'm hesitant to say this, but I feel like we've almost dodged a bullet,” were quick to point out that the reality may be quite different.
The effects of the global capitalist depression on Alberta energy sector workers are particularly acute and have been covered up and relegated to the back pages of the corporate media. In its place is substituted petty bourgeois gossip on mergers and acquisitions, speculation on stock market prices fluctuations and academic theories of “long-term” development and environmental calamity which all amount to nothing more then finance-academia titillation for the parasitically idle classes.
Creating a phoney atmosphere of stability within a real and deepening crisis of employment, access to EI and pensions and resource sell-out the mouthpieces of big oil attempt to ingratiate themselves with the power circles of Calgary energy finance. In an effort to absolve the Harper and Stelmach governments in alliance with the oil monopolies of any responsibility for the economic crisis, betrayal of a national energy policy and deflect criticism from a Made-In-Canada energy crisis the media with support from academia at the University of Calgary hide the true affects for Alberta workers.
Gil McGowan president of the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) said:
“Kearl Lake will create a couple of thousand short- to medium-term construction jobs - and in the current economic climate, that's a welcome thing."
“But over the longer term, this project is deeply troubling because it's focused exclusively on the extraction and export of raw bitumen. The real money - and the real jobs - in this business are in upgrading and refining. Unfortunately Kearl will be sending all of those benefits down the pipeline to Exxon refineries in the US Midwest and Gulf Coast.”[2]
With unemployment in Alberta now reaching 123,000 workers and EI benefits only covering a third of those unemployed, for the majority of out-of-work Albertans the situation is reaching crisis levels. Access to EI benefits are delayed for 10 weeks in Alberta throwing over 34,000 onto the welfare roll.[3] Thousands are losing their homes and rental suites. Workers’ savings are being depleted at a furious pace and debt loads incurred by boom inflation cycle are eating into retirement savings.
The AFL has called on the Western Premiers to convene a national pension summit to demand that the Harper minority Conservative government ensure that all Canadians have full access to pensions and EI benefits. The AFL President said:
"As a result of the global recession and the collapse in equity markets, it has become painfully obvious that our existing patchwork system is not up to the task of providing adequate retirement income for most Canadians."
"Workers in western Canada are being unfairly discriminated against by arbitrary rules that make it much harder for them to qualify for the EI benefits they've paid for. But it's not clear that the new pact between the federal Conservatives and Liberals will do anything to address this fundamental inequity,"
“Energy companies are also storing fuel on tankers, with some 62 million barrels estimated at sea, according to shipbrokers and traders.”[4] The U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration estimated in its May 12, 2009 Short-Term Energy Outlook report that globally, “there are also an additional 130 million barrels of crude oil in floating storage.”[5] Total global daily consumption is about 82 million barrels per day.
So what does this have to do with Alberta unemployment, access to EI and pensions?
This massive inventory of oil and LNG is speculatively traded on spot markets like a “hot potato” passing from one hand to the next but never leaving the tanker. This speculation is artificially pushing prices higher. By maintaining prices at artificially high levels the costs are passed onto Canadian workers who pay world market prices. In other words with all the energy, oil and natural gas that Canada has the costs to prop up global oil speculators and stabilize US oil production capacities are being subsidized by Canadian workers.
A Made-In-Canada domestic price is needed. Halt the shipment of raw bitumen to US upgraders and refineries. Create a national energy policy that forms the basis for industrial expansion in Canada and trade with the world. This will only occur when energy is placed into the hands of workers and the energy industry in nationalized. The necessity to remove the Harper regime at the first opportunity is urgent and can only be achieved on the basis of labour unity acting in its own interests first around a national program of industrial expansion based on the expansion energy.
Notes:
[1] Katherine O'Neill, Dawn Walton, “Alberta oil sands show signs of life”, Globe and Mail, June 22, 2009
[2] Gil McGowan, Statement on Kearl, May 26, 2009, http://www.afl.org/news/default.cfm?newsId=589
[3] Renata D'Aliesio, “As unemployment surges, Albertans waiting 10 weeks for EI”, Canwest News Service, June 21, 2009
[4] Edward McAllister, “Oil slips on dollar, U.S. industrial data, Reuters”, June 16, 2009
[5] US Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, “Short-Term energy Outlook, May 12, 2009, http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/steo/pub/may09.pdf
The effects of the global capitalist depression on Alberta energy sector workers are particularly acute and have been covered up and relegated to the back pages of the corporate media. In its place is substituted petty bourgeois gossip on mergers and acquisitions, speculation on stock market prices fluctuations and academic theories of “long-term” development and environmental calamity which all amount to nothing more then finance-academia titillation for the parasitically idle classes.
Creating a phoney atmosphere of stability within a real and deepening crisis of employment, access to EI and pensions and resource sell-out the mouthpieces of big oil attempt to ingratiate themselves with the power circles of Calgary energy finance. In an effort to absolve the Harper and Stelmach governments in alliance with the oil monopolies of any responsibility for the economic crisis, betrayal of a national energy policy and deflect criticism from a Made-In-Canada energy crisis the media with support from academia at the University of Calgary hide the true affects for Alberta workers.
Gil McGowan president of the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) said:
“Kearl Lake will create a couple of thousand short- to medium-term construction jobs - and in the current economic climate, that's a welcome thing."
“But over the longer term, this project is deeply troubling because it's focused exclusively on the extraction and export of raw bitumen. The real money - and the real jobs - in this business are in upgrading and refining. Unfortunately Kearl will be sending all of those benefits down the pipeline to Exxon refineries in the US Midwest and Gulf Coast.”[2]
With unemployment in Alberta now reaching 123,000 workers and EI benefits only covering a third of those unemployed, for the majority of out-of-work Albertans the situation is reaching crisis levels. Access to EI benefits are delayed for 10 weeks in Alberta throwing over 34,000 onto the welfare roll.[3] Thousands are losing their homes and rental suites. Workers’ savings are being depleted at a furious pace and debt loads incurred by boom inflation cycle are eating into retirement savings.
The AFL has called on the Western Premiers to convene a national pension summit to demand that the Harper minority Conservative government ensure that all Canadians have full access to pensions and EI benefits. The AFL President said:
"As a result of the global recession and the collapse in equity markets, it has become painfully obvious that our existing patchwork system is not up to the task of providing adequate retirement income for most Canadians."
"Workers in western Canada are being unfairly discriminated against by arbitrary rules that make it much harder for them to qualify for the EI benefits they've paid for. But it's not clear that the new pact between the federal Conservatives and Liberals will do anything to address this fundamental inequity,"
“Energy companies are also storing fuel on tankers, with some 62 million barrels estimated at sea, according to shipbrokers and traders.”[4] The U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration estimated in its May 12, 2009 Short-Term Energy Outlook report that globally, “there are also an additional 130 million barrels of crude oil in floating storage.”[5] Total global daily consumption is about 82 million barrels per day.
So what does this have to do with Alberta unemployment, access to EI and pensions?
This massive inventory of oil and LNG is speculatively traded on spot markets like a “hot potato” passing from one hand to the next but never leaving the tanker. This speculation is artificially pushing prices higher. By maintaining prices at artificially high levels the costs are passed onto Canadian workers who pay world market prices. In other words with all the energy, oil and natural gas that Canada has the costs to prop up global oil speculators and stabilize US oil production capacities are being subsidized by Canadian workers.
A Made-In-Canada domestic price is needed. Halt the shipment of raw bitumen to US upgraders and refineries. Create a national energy policy that forms the basis for industrial expansion in Canada and trade with the world. This will only occur when energy is placed into the hands of workers and the energy industry in nationalized. The necessity to remove the Harper regime at the first opportunity is urgent and can only be achieved on the basis of labour unity acting in its own interests first around a national program of industrial expansion based on the expansion energy.
Notes:
[1] Katherine O'Neill, Dawn Walton, “Alberta oil sands show signs of life”, Globe and Mail, June 22, 2009
[2] Gil McGowan, Statement on Kearl, May 26, 2009, http://www.afl.org/news/default.cfm?newsId=589
[3] Renata D'Aliesio, “As unemployment surges, Albertans waiting 10 weeks for EI”, Canwest News Service, June 21, 2009
[4] Edward McAllister, “Oil slips on dollar, U.S. industrial data, Reuters”, June 16, 2009
[5] US Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, “Short-Term energy Outlook, May 12, 2009, http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/steo/pub/may09.pdf
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Flaherty Has a Plan!
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced today that “we have a plan”! This is such a relief to all Canadian workers. We can now all rest well at night knowing that the Finance Minister is on the case.
Responding to pressures to explain how the minority Conservatives will reduce the ballooning federal deficit[1] they created by transferring billions of dollars of speculative debt from the balance sheets of the big banks onto the backs of Canadian workers following the G20 summit Flaherty said, “Temporary spending will end. We'll use the surplus first of all to pay off the deficits we incur now.”[2] Where the “surplus” is come from Flaherty doesn’t say.
Today it was also announced by Stats Canada that productivity by Canadian workers grew 0.3% over the first three months of the year. This was said to be “largest gain Canadian businesses have posted in two years”.[3] The Globe and Mail report showed that the decline in overall output fell 1.9% from the previous quarter while the number of hours worked by Canadians was reduced by 2.2%, hence the 0.3% gain in “productivity”.
The report also showed that “labour costs” were lower due to the falling rate of wage increases which fell from 1.5% to 1.2%. Inventories were high even as workers were slashed from payrolls. The report concluded that the trend is far from over and that much more “harsh corrections” are required. Beata Caranci, director of economic forecasting at Toronto-Dominion Bank was quoted in the G&M article as saying, “They're (employers) going to have to become far more aggressive”.
It was noted that the inventories are going to have to be reduced by $70 billion over the next year. In a foot note it was pointed out that a “scale-back” in oil sands activity was also identified as “boosting” efficiency.
So what is Flaherty’s “plan”? Cut wages, throw more workers out of work and work the remained longer. Oh and make sure that “temporary programs” for worker relief are axed as quickly as possible. This is good plan if you are a banker because the gains made in all this increased productivity will be paid back to you with interest for the loans Canadians made to the banks so that the banks could loan the money back to the federal government for Flaherty’s “temporary programs”. This is one big shell game on the backs of workers.
[1] Globe and Mail, “Deficit swells from $34-billion to $50-billion – in 4 months”, May 27, 2009
[2] Globe and Mail, “We have a plan to return to surplus: Flaherty”, June 16, 2009
[3] Globe and Mail, “Productivity rises through deep job cuts”, June 16, 2009
Responding to pressures to explain how the minority Conservatives will reduce the ballooning federal deficit[1] they created by transferring billions of dollars of speculative debt from the balance sheets of the big banks onto the backs of Canadian workers following the G20 summit Flaherty said, “Temporary spending will end. We'll use the surplus first of all to pay off the deficits we incur now.”[2] Where the “surplus” is come from Flaherty doesn’t say.
Today it was also announced by Stats Canada that productivity by Canadian workers grew 0.3% over the first three months of the year. This was said to be “largest gain Canadian businesses have posted in two years”.[3] The Globe and Mail report showed that the decline in overall output fell 1.9% from the previous quarter while the number of hours worked by Canadians was reduced by 2.2%, hence the 0.3% gain in “productivity”.
The report also showed that “labour costs” were lower due to the falling rate of wage increases which fell from 1.5% to 1.2%. Inventories were high even as workers were slashed from payrolls. The report concluded that the trend is far from over and that much more “harsh corrections” are required. Beata Caranci, director of economic forecasting at Toronto-Dominion Bank was quoted in the G&M article as saying, “They're (employers) going to have to become far more aggressive”.
It was noted that the inventories are going to have to be reduced by $70 billion over the next year. In a foot note it was pointed out that a “scale-back” in oil sands activity was also identified as “boosting” efficiency.
So what is Flaherty’s “plan”? Cut wages, throw more workers out of work and work the remained longer. Oh and make sure that “temporary programs” for worker relief are axed as quickly as possible. This is good plan if you are a banker because the gains made in all this increased productivity will be paid back to you with interest for the loans Canadians made to the banks so that the banks could loan the money back to the federal government for Flaherty’s “temporary programs”. This is one big shell game on the backs of workers.
[1] Globe and Mail, “Deficit swells from $34-billion to $50-billion – in 4 months”, May 27, 2009
[2] Globe and Mail, “We have a plan to return to surplus: Flaherty”, June 16, 2009
[3] Globe and Mail, “Productivity rises through deep job cuts”, June 16, 2009
Monday, June 15, 2009
Workers Require Greater Understanding
Many changes have occurred since the last posting of FSP. The absence of commentary on this blog has been precipitated by the collapse in the Canadian economy and the curtailment of oil sands projects in Alberta. This has forced thousands of oil sands workers from all over the country to find alternate sources of income as indirect and direct labour is cut, idled or shifted into other areas.
Workers have been laid off, transferred into other jurisdictions or onto EI or “back on the books”. Thousands have gone back home to eastern Canada or in search of employment in other provinces. Temporary foreign workers have been sent back to their country of origin. Engineering houses have reduced staff, service and consultant contractors have had contracts terminated. Families are under severe economic pressures as the expansion of oil sands extraction and production has shifted into a phase of “wait and see”, consolidation and combine.
This is the situation that this commentator has had to confront which has been the cause of the absence of any commentary on this blog. The necessity for ongoing discussion, commentary and analysis from the perspective of energy sector workers is needed to an even greater degree than has been achieved to date. Rapidly changing conditions within in the energy sector as reflected in state-monopoly relations, the Canadian economy and Canada-US relations dictate that a more consistent and critical approach is applied to this task and with greater urgency.
Workers require greater understanding of the political and economic relations going on within the nation from a Marxist analysis. It is not good enough to comment on the situation in the energy sector without vetting it through close working class scrutiny based on Marxism.
This is to say, how do the rapid changes and the complex relations emerging within inter-monopoly and inter imperialist affairs affect the Canadian working class? What are the critical developments within the industry that affect workers? How can we as workers understand these changes better to move towards regaining control of our nation and nationalizing key section s of industry for the benefit of all Canadian people not just the finance, oil and military speculators, investors and parasites?
Analyzing the relationships between the state and the oil monopolies is of particular necessity. Canada-United States economic and political relations over attempts to further bind Canadian production, extraction and exploration within the “North American” reality requires deeper study. The growing antagonistic relation within competing energy interests are of particular concern as competition for control of markets requires to some degree a “decoupling” of current development strategies to change in anticipation of these new markets.
Further, federal-provincial relations requires greater understand by workers to prepare us for guiding our actions and relations within our own class, to defend our own class interests and to guide our actions and attitudes towards our organized labour bodies to assert a greater and more decisive influence on the nation’s affairs.
All these questions and more require ongoing study, discussion and analysis. To date this blog has not achieved these requisites. It has not approached the level that the sharpening class antagonisms are demanding of the left for ideological and theoretical understanding. Moving forward it is critical that this analysis is guided by partisan approach to the working class.
Workers have been laid off, transferred into other jurisdictions or onto EI or “back on the books”. Thousands have gone back home to eastern Canada or in search of employment in other provinces. Temporary foreign workers have been sent back to their country of origin. Engineering houses have reduced staff, service and consultant contractors have had contracts terminated. Families are under severe economic pressures as the expansion of oil sands extraction and production has shifted into a phase of “wait and see”, consolidation and combine.
This is the situation that this commentator has had to confront which has been the cause of the absence of any commentary on this blog. The necessity for ongoing discussion, commentary and analysis from the perspective of energy sector workers is needed to an even greater degree than has been achieved to date. Rapidly changing conditions within in the energy sector as reflected in state-monopoly relations, the Canadian economy and Canada-US relations dictate that a more consistent and critical approach is applied to this task and with greater urgency.
Workers require greater understanding of the political and economic relations going on within the nation from a Marxist analysis. It is not good enough to comment on the situation in the energy sector without vetting it through close working class scrutiny based on Marxism.
This is to say, how do the rapid changes and the complex relations emerging within inter-monopoly and inter imperialist affairs affect the Canadian working class? What are the critical developments within the industry that affect workers? How can we as workers understand these changes better to move towards regaining control of our nation and nationalizing key section s of industry for the benefit of all Canadian people not just the finance, oil and military speculators, investors and parasites?
Analyzing the relationships between the state and the oil monopolies is of particular necessity. Canada-United States economic and political relations over attempts to further bind Canadian production, extraction and exploration within the “North American” reality requires deeper study. The growing antagonistic relation within competing energy interests are of particular concern as competition for control of markets requires to some degree a “decoupling” of current development strategies to change in anticipation of these new markets.
Further, federal-provincial relations requires greater understand by workers to prepare us for guiding our actions and relations within our own class, to defend our own class interests and to guide our actions and attitudes towards our organized labour bodies to assert a greater and more decisive influence on the nation’s affairs.
All these questions and more require ongoing study, discussion and analysis. To date this blog has not achieved these requisites. It has not approached the level that the sharpening class antagonisms are demanding of the left for ideological and theoretical understanding. Moving forward it is critical that this analysis is guided by partisan approach to the working class.
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