Western Standard - February 22, 2024


Public sector unions must be reined in...

Topics
public sector unions opposition pension improvements public sector unions
Mentioned
Ethel Merman Danielle Smith
$3 85 million fund for emergency care in Alberta communities Trudeau says Poilievre waging culture war with gender ideology

Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

200.64

Word count

1,082

Sentence count

69

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I discuss the Calgary Teachers' Association's decision to cancel classes for two days during a non-instruction period to hold a teachers' convention, and the outrage that ensued. I also discuss the unions' opposition to proposed changes to public pension benefits for teachers and nurses.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 So last week, the annual Calgary Teachers' Convention was held.
00:00:04.500 Every public school in the city was closed for Thursday and Friday as teachers gathered downtown, or at least ostensibly did.
00:00:10.440 There's nothing new, and most professions hold conventions. That's fine.
00:00:14.080 Gatherings of working peers can be very productive in keeping up with new trends and sharing experiences.
00:00:19.440 I was curious about something, though, and I asked on X why the Teachers' Convention is scheduled in February just before a long weekend,
00:00:26.360 when the event could be held at the beginning or the end of the school year so the students aren't disrupted, you know, out of two more days of instruction.
00:00:33.100 I mean, the average teacher, average in Alberta, makes $82,000 a year. Not bad coin, plus a lot of benefits.
00:00:38.700 The average Albertan salary who's not a teacher is about $70,000 a year.
00:00:42.380 But on top of that, teachers work 50 fewer days per year, 50 working days per year less than any other profession.
00:00:48.920 Because they get summer off, fall break, Christmas break, spring break, I don't know, Arbor Day break, Ethel Merman's birthday break.
00:00:56.960 They're always off for one thing or another.
00:00:59.060 So is it unreasonable to ask them to set aside two days during a non-instructional period for their convention?
00:01:04.960 Apparently that was unreasonable, because the reaction to my question on X was nuclear.
00:01:08.860 As accounts flew out of the woodwork to call me, of course, every name in the book, and depicting all teachers as being living saints.
00:01:15.040 And I know there's a lot of great teachers, and it's hard work.
00:01:16.920 But this is nothing new. Whenever I'm critical of anything in health care or education,
00:01:21.100 a swarm of accounts, typically backed by unions, comes into attack mode and comes after me.
00:01:26.120 That's how the unions, I mean, they know how to play social media.
00:01:28.740 But the discussion went on, and hundreds of parents joined that thread on X, actually.
00:01:32.840 And despite the howls of the accounts decrying the question, some parents are concerned, too.
00:01:37.480 And taxpayers, they're wondering about the number of days teachers put in,
00:01:40.980 along with the amount of instructional time our kids are getting.
00:01:43.180 But it's hard to have such a discussion due to the indignant raging of the union accounts, unfortunately.
00:01:48.760 I mean, teachers have a tough and important job. I don't think anybody denies that.
00:01:52.300 So do nurses, for that matter. 0.99
00:01:53.800 But due to this, we should be subjecting those professions to a high degree of scrutiny
00:01:58.080 to ensure we're getting the most from them that we can.
00:02:01.080 We certainly compensate them well enough.
00:02:03.200 Unfortunately, the unions feel the opposite way.
00:02:05.000 They feel that they should shout down anybody questioning the system or anybody working within it,
00:02:09.200 and they facilitate mediocrity within the process.
00:02:12.460 Nurses and teachers both enjoy very lucrative pension plans,
00:02:15.740 where the taxpayers match contributions for them.
00:02:17.540 Hey, good on them.
00:02:18.160 That's what the collective bargaining is supposed to lead towards.
00:02:21.020 Why, though, are the unions directly opposing the efforts of common Albertans to improve their own pension plan?
00:02:26.100 The average payout from the Canada pension plan for retired Canadians is a paltry $758 a month.
00:02:32.220 Rest assured, teachers and nurses are receiving much more than that when they retire.
00:02:37.300 Despite their being generously covered in retirement,
00:02:39.320 the unions are spending dues from members to fight the possible creation of an Alberta pension plan.
00:02:44.560 The Alberta Nurses Union gave $200,000 in members' dues to the Alberta Federation of Labor,
00:02:50.560 specifically for the AFL to fight against Albertans who are seeking a better pension plan.
00:02:56.360 Why do the unions oppose pension improvements for common citizens?
00:02:58.980 Well, the bottom line is the unions don't care whatsoever about the fate of common citizens.
00:03:02.680 They only care about union workers.
00:03:04.720 And they want this financial state for non-union workers to be as miserable as possible,
00:03:09.020 because they're hoping those people will either join unions or form new ones.
00:03:13.160 Private sector union membership's been falling for decades,
00:03:15.780 and the public sector unions are trying to spur a union membership revival by stifling public pension plan reforms.
00:03:22.340 It really does expose how self-serving public service unions are.
00:03:25.440 Now, not all workers are equal. They have variable degrees of talent and work ethic.
00:03:29.460 Some teachers are worth twice what they're making now, and come on, let's face it, some are just mailing it in.
00:03:34.040 They should probably be kicked out and into a different profession.
00:03:36.740 Separating the good from the bad is impossible in a union environment, however.
00:03:40.180 Those who work hard eventually burn out as they watch the lazy standing next to them getting the same compensation.
00:03:45.600 There's little incentive to go above and beyond whatever you have for duty.
00:03:48.960 Only if we're reducing the near-monopoly status of health care and education are we going to be able to reform these services
00:03:54.220 and get the best we can out of them for citizens.
00:03:56.940 Non-union options need to be available for teachers and nurses to work within,
00:04:01.020 so organized labor must compete actually to get the members themselves.
00:04:05.220 Rather than forcing them into an organization in closed shops,
00:04:07.860 patients and parents should be able to choose between non-union schools and medical services as well.
00:04:12.840 Allowing labor and consumer choice, of course, terrifies unions.
00:04:16.240 Which says a lot, doesn't it?
00:04:17.220 They know what we would do if we had a choice.
00:04:19.320 They're collectivists, though.
00:04:20.400 And compensation based on merit goes against everything they stand for.
00:04:23.340 The unions are there for the unions, and they will fight tooth and nail
00:04:26.200 to maintain their stranglehold on segments of the workforce.
00:04:29.520 Look, there's many great workers in the public sector, but there's a bunch of bums in there, too. 1.00
00:04:33.600 And until the public sector unions are disempowered,
00:04:35.720 taxpayers are never going to get full value in return for what's taken from their hard-earned paychecks.
00:04:39.300 The unions know this.
00:04:40.660 That's why they are trying to shut down even the most reasonable of critiques of workers.
00:04:45.520 It's not enough.
00:04:46.400 You know, it's not going to be until citizens know what's going on and speak up.
00:04:50.820 The politicians are going to pay attention.
00:04:52.260 The politicians are terrified of unions, too.
00:04:54.820 The Daniel Smith government is prepared for reforms,
00:04:56.800 but they need to know the populations behind them.
00:04:59.180 So make sure to get up there and speak up, guys.
00:05:01.180 Things can be better, but you've got to take on those unions.
00:05:03.960 They won't get better until that happens.
00:05:05.460 So be fair.