No Layoffs due to contracting out.
CUPE argues:
- it places a responsibility on the city to retrain and redeploy those individuals that have committed themselves to public service and preserves them as human resource assets within the city.
- Priority Placement
- laid of employees receive priority placement into positions they are qualified
- Bumping Rights
- laid off employees have the right to "bump" less senior employees in equal or lower level jobs providing they are qualified to do the work
- Recall Rights
- laid off employees maintain the right to be recalled to vacant positions in their job classification for up to one (1) year after being laid off
- Severance Rights
- laid off employees are able, at their option, to buy out their recall rights
MY VIEW
Public sector unions will argue they are are stewards of the public trust, not tarnished by profit. The opposite but equally naive argument is that all civic jobs should be privatized to save money.
The absolutist nature of each argument ignores the most important aspect of civic services - Customer Service.
How labour is deployed, be it public or private, union or contracted, should be based on how the customer benefits.
The public sector can not continue to act as if they are a holy priesthood charged with guarding the public trust. In CUPE 15's letter staff are referred to as "those individuals that have committed themselves to public service." Committing oneself to a job is not the sole province of the public sector.
Contracting out is not inherently evil as CUPE portrays it. Should the City of Vancouver be in the restaurant business? Is that what taxpayers expect? I doubt it. Food service professionals operate restaurants on city property and do it at a profit. (Oh my!)
The counter argument of contracting out a service with cost as the determining factor has pitfalls. Service contracts are based on the repetition of core functions. If additional work outside that core function is required then an added fee is charged. Charges can accumulate to the point where projected cost savings are eliminated.
City jobs which are highly repetitive, not subject to high variability and not requiring specialized knowledge, should be open to contracting out. Collecting coins from parking meters is one example where costs could be saved.
I can not see the City backing down from opposing the "No Layoffs" proposal.
Why does CUPE believe it should have a monopoly in providing labour services in the public sector?
3 comments:
Why does CUPE believe it should have a monopoly in providing labour services in the public sector?
Because the labour movement in general and NDP leaning unions in BC in particular see themselves agitating for political power and not just workplace fairness. All of the big social battles are by and large over and the labour movement won them. But CUPE can't admit that because then it would have no more useful purpose. Instead it has to constantly stir the class warfare pot and pit greedy 'capitalists' against the 'honest working man/woman' regardless of the actual relationship between public/private sector workers. If a system developed where all workers were promoted on merit and paid on performance, CUPE would fight such a system (and the NDP, and COPE) to the death. As long as snake oil selling socialists can convince British Columbians that Amerikka lurks around every corner and we have to resist any movement to efficiency and productivity CUPE stays fat and happy.
CUPE is just like any other large corporation. In fact, it's like any other large corporation with monopoly power. Think Microsoft. It doesn't want to give up what it has, and it wants to expand its empire into new markets. Whatever it takes.
"Because the labour movement in general and NDP leaning unions in BC in particular see themselves agitating for political power and not just workplace fairness."
The union movement used to be more broad-based, and workers would fight for all sorts of social justice issues, not only ones related to their own contracts. Sadly, due to legislation, work action is severely restricted and unions largely only fight for their own contracts nowadays. This has the negative side effect of unions being seen as "greedy," and we have lost a lot of public support as a result. Unfortunately, we have played into the capitalists' hand on this one.
"All of the big social battles are by and large over and the labour movement won them."
This is not true. The right is always trying to take away hard-fought gains. There are many issues we still need to fight for. Example: People working in female-dominated sectors like health care support staff and libraries earn much less on average than people in male-dominated sectors. Sexism is still alive and well in the workplace and it needs to be fought. The union movement can help us do that.
"If a system developed where all workers were promoted on merit and paid on performance, CUPE would fight such a system (and the NDP, and COPE) to the death."
"Merit" and "performance" are smokescreens that allow for favouritism and nepotism, and tend to divide workers. It is a capitalist myth that hard work and "merit" will lead you to riches and glory while your lazy neighbour gets what's coming to him. In reality, knowing the right people, the class system, and favouritism are what leads some people to get ahead and leaves others behind.
Do you really think a system to evaluate such subjective concepts as "merit" or "performance" could ever be developed? Inherit bias would plague such a system and lead to resentment and division within bargaining units. Which is why unions oppose it, and why employers embrace it.
Post a Comment