Right in the centre - Union leaders’ single-minded ways must go

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Published on Thursday, February 16, 2017

By Ken Waddell

The Neepawa Banner

Manitoba’s unions are in a bit of a state of shock these days. One must understand the NDP organizational mechanism allows for, no insists, the party has a strange double dipping approach to their party. Like all other political parties, there are members and the members elect delegates to the policy and leadership conventions. But, the NDP also have a large percentage of delegates over and above the constituency delegates that attend the conventions who are appointed by the unions. And it has been the union delegates that have a had a huge sway on the convention outcomes. The most recent occasion was the last leadership convention, where it was the union leaders that not only rounded up their members and herded them to support the eventual winner, they also heavily influenced the delegates at large as well.

The state of shock comes now as the PC Manitoba party holds 40 of the 57 seats and the PC party has little or no loyalty to the unions. The PCs are not beholden to the single-minded ways of the union leadership. The union aims are very narrow, more money, less work. With that in mind, the union leaders seem a little taken aback that the PC government isn’t planning to kowtow to the union theme. The PCs may in fact actually cut back on government jobs, look at freezing wages and may actually open wage agreements to bring about wage reductions. The future looks grim for the government unions.

The reality is that the province must bring the $1 billion annual deficit under control. The province has a huge problem. The unions, and especially their leaders, actually contributed heavily to the problem. The NDP bowed to the union leadership wishes and kept on raising wages in the face of ever increasing deficits.

The government has asked Manitoba Hydro to get their debt load in order and about 900 jobs are being cut. The talk on the street and even from Hydro workers and the public in general is that the cuts were long overdue. That’s the problem with a monopoly. And we have monopolies in Hydro, in health care and education. We can be very thankful that the majority of workers in all three are very conscientious. The same goes for civil servants, most are very conscientious. But there is one very simple difference between the monopoly and private enterprise. Hydro workers get paid whether consumption is high or low. Teachers get paid whether there are 10, 20 or 30 students. Health care workers get paid when they are run off their feet or when there might be a lull in patients in a particular facility. The best accountability is conscientious workers but in private enterprise, the goodwill of the workers is enhanced by the need to actually balance the budget. There is no real incentive to balance the budget in Hydro, education or health care. They can always go back to the ratepayer or taxpayer for more money. 

What is being finally forced on us all is that the endless deficits, adding each year relentlessly to the provincial debt, is affecting our bond rates. Credit ratings are being down graded and that means higher interest rates on the provincial debt. Both past accumulations and present debt is affected as bonds are rotated constantly. With rates creeping upward, the effect is magnified.

Nearly everyone I talk to, from educators, to health care workers, to Hydro workers, to business people say the province has a major problem. So what are the solutions? One can cut costs but increasing income is a good thing too. It’s time to cut the garbage out of public policy. It is possible to build hog barns, and lots of them, safely and without negative impact on the lakes and environment. Mining can be a good thing, so can oil and coal production. Pipelines are a good thing. Weaning ourselves off oil from democratically and morally challenged countries should be an immediate goal.

There are many great ideas for economic expansion but those ideas will never come to fully benefit our economy as long as the union leadership holds to their single-minded ways of running the country.