This is what it's come to!

[CollieButler]

I copied this job "opportunity" from a job board this morning.

PART-TIME Contract Production Assembly North America, Canada
Manpower in partnership with Honda of Canada Mfg. is recruiting for PART-TIME Contract Associates in Production Assembly:

Mondays & Fridays ... more
Manpower in partnership with Honda of Canada Mfg. is recruiting for PART-TIME Contract Associates in Production Assembly:

Mondays & Fridays (16 hours per week)
+ Production Saturdays (approx. 1 per month)
2 & 3 Shift Rotation
1 Year renewable contract
If you have a spouse working at Honda you ARE eligible to apply!!

$17 per hour

Uniform *Safety Shoes* Safety Glasses Provided

CALL TODAY TO FIND OUT MORE!!
705-728-1191
65 Cedar Pointe Drive, Unit 804
Barrie, ON L4N 5R7


Ready to Take Ownership of your Career? Apply Now!


This should be a good paying job in Ontario but it has now been reduced to a part-time agency job.
I've often wondered how Honda and Toyota were able to come into Canada and set up shop non-union,
I would have thought that it should have been a closed trade.

I'm sure there'll be at least a couple of replies.

[mtylerb]

By continually increasing the cost of labour, you are continually increasing the cost of the final product. It makes sense for a company to try to lower costs and labour is the largest chunk of costs at any large company. The alternative is to keep increasing the cost of labour and ending up taking $1.5 Trillion as a bailout or making a product that only the CEO's of these companies can afford. You cannot ALWAYS raise the bar when you're talking about wages and Union's don't understand that.

As for the closed trade comment, I am an electrician in AB. I know of a lot of people who deliberately steer clear of any "Union" jobs. When you refer to "Union" jobs it means specifically IBEW 424. You work for the Union, you have to ask the Union for permission to work anywhere else, etc, so forth and so on. It's ridiculous. So many people choose to work for companies that are either union free or for CLAC, which is essentially an association that covers the absolute basics in their contracts.

Why would I want to work for an oppressive Union like IBEW 424, when I can choose to work for another employer that pays damn close to the same or more and I don't have to worry about somebody getting a job I needed to pay my bills because they have seniority? I basically see a closed trade as a bad thing for the trade in general.

[CollieButler]

Don't you see how it makes it an unlevel playing field?
When people don't make what the job is worth and don't put that money back into the economy how it effects us all?
Forklift jobs in Ontario are now offering less money than I made in 1981!
Don't you see how this lowers the standard of living and will only continue to do so?

As prices for everything continue to rise, wages are declining.

I'm happy, really, I'm happy that you are enjoying a good arrangement with your employer, I can remember similar times in Ontario in the 70's and early 80's.
When the boom ends in Alberta and jobs become more scarce we'll see if the employers treat people as good then.

I think we both know the answer and if the unions are weakened the way they have been in Ontario, well, it'll be the same outcome.

I've seen ads for heavy equipment operators, $17/hour, work at Honda on the line, $17/hour,
forklift operators as low as $11/hour.

Average rent in GTA, for a 1 bedroom is $1000/month, gas 1.25/litre, car insurance, $1000/year,
On $22,000 a year, the math doesn't work.

[mtylerb]

Don't you see how it makes it an unlevel playing field?
When people don't make what the job is worth and don't put that money back into the economy how it effects us all?
Forklift jobs in Ontario are now offering less money than I made in 1981!
Don't you see how this lowers the standard of living and will only continue to do so?

As prices for everything continue to rise, wages are declining.

I'm happy, really, I'm happy that you are enjoying a good arrangement with your employer, I can remember similar times in Ontario in the 70's and early 80's.
When the boom ends in Alberta and jobs become more scarce we'll see if the employers treat people as good then.

I think we both know the answer and if the unions are weakened the way they have been in Ontario, well, it'll be the same outcome.

I've seen ads for heavy equipment operators, $17/hour, work at Honda on the line, $17/hour,
forklift operators as low as $11/hour.

Average rent in GTA, for a 1 bedroom is $1000/month, gas 1.25/litre, car insurance, $1000/year,
On $22,000 a year, the math doesn't work.

No, I don't see an unlevel playing field. From experience, union-indifferent persons will find another job if they don't feel they are being paid their worth or don't enjoy what they are doing. On the other hand, a strongly pro-union person will stay with a company no matter how unhappy with the job. Why? I don't know. Possibly because they also tend to be the ones who rely on the Union to keep them employed due to lack of compliance or lack of performance or otherwise (pure speculation and some opinion, not painting all pro-Union persons with the same brush). I've known some very decent pro-union persons and were friends with them for a good long while.

As for the average rent in GTA, this is a perfect time to prove the whole "standard of living" and "cost of living" thing. Take for example Edmonton, where I'm familiar with.

I rented a two bedroom basement suite for $950/month. Took me forever of shopping around and it wasn't a great neighbourhood, but it fit what we could afford. Insurance, on average, is not cheap. When I first moved to AB, I was quoted anywhere from $3750 to $4450 as a 24 y/o with no accidents, 1 ticket and a driving history going back almost 8 years. Our gas prices tend to be lower than Ontario, but being that the gas is refined here for most of the process, that makes sense. I was making anywhere from $13/hour to $25/hour depending on the job I was at, at the time. "Average Household income in Edmonton is $99,000."

Now, move to Fort McMurray. Persons working at a McDonalds flipping burgers could be paid around the $20/hour. "Average Household income in Fort McMurray is $177,000". Average rent/mortgage is in excess of $2,000/month. Average cost of food is in excess of $1200/month. Here's a table from http://www.woodbuffalo.ab.ca/living_222 ... Living.htm (Fort McMurray decentralized their municipal government a few years back and is now the "Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo":

Item/Service | Average cost per year (Wood Buffalo) | Average cost per year (Alberta)
Food | $14,569 | $8,430
Shelter | $26,701 | $14,235
Clothing | $5,472 | $3,115
Transportation | $21,492 | $10,103
Health & Personal Care | $5,930 | $3,189

So, with the increased wages brought to you by Unions (much of the work up there is heavily unionized), you also brought along a dramatic increase in the cost of living. Forget living on $22,000/year, you can't survive there on $60,000/year.

Heading out for Thanksgiving, so I don't have time to continue and that's why my thoughts are a little unorganized. Happy Thanksgiving!

[green1]

Maybe people working in a job that doesn't require any education, and has a long line of other applicants wishing to do the job, should consider lowering their expectations?
Free market isn't just for customers, it's also for employees. Simple supply and demand, if there are lots of people able to do the job, wages will be lower, if there aren't, wages will be higher. You can either stick with the lower wage, or you can get yourself educated and do a job where you aren't so easily replaceable. Companies wouldn't pay minimum wage if they didn't have lineups of people willing to work for that.

The pro-union side wants it both ways, they want products and services to be dirt cheap, but they want wages and benefits to be sky high, they also want the high wages and benefits regardless of productivity. Something has to give. No company can continually drive down the cost of their products while raising their wages and expecting less output from their workers. Low cost products, high paid workers, low productivity, pick any two.

Not everyone can be a single income family of 6 with a 3000sqft house and 3 cars. sometimes you need to compromise. If you're making minimum wage (which by the way is courtesy of the law, not the unions, has been for decades) then you should expect to have to share the cost of accommodation (either roommate, or spouse) limit discretionary spending, and why on earth would you think owning a car was a good idea???

Wish for past wages all you want, but remember also the way you lived. It's a fact that the average quality of life has never been higher in the entire history of humanity. Most people in our society currently carry a device in their pocket that has more communication, and entertainment capability than an entire household had at their disposal 20 years ago, food is cheap and plentiful, with even people living well below the poverty line being able to purchase a wide variety of foods that would not have been available to anyone but the highest echelons of society even a generation ago. The world is interconnected with a multitude of high speed travel options with middle class people routinely going on vacations that would not even have been possible to the wealthiest people a couple of generations back. Housing sizes have also increased substantially with the average living space per person significantly larger than ever before, and with continual improvements to life expectancy people are living longer and healthier lives than ever before.

CollieButler longs for the wages of 1981, but I bet if she tried to live like it was still 1981 she'd find that she already makes more effective money than she did then. Ditch the cell phones, stick to a smaller house, a car with fewer features (and most notably less safety!), one small TV with a dozen channels, no computer or internet, and quite likely no microwave oven, the list goes on and on. We forget so easily how much further ahead we are, even with fewer dollar signs.

It's not worth looking to the past, the future is far more exciting, and it's brought to you not by your union, but by hard work, and the entrepreneurial spirit.

[NC]

I sure hope she tells her union friends to come and take up the fight. I long for having something like an intellectual exchange with a union supporter. Coillie seemed like a fairly together individual. Her othe rpost in the Retail section suggested she was hanging up on us.

Too bad, but I enjoyed both your posts.