The CFIB Plays the Blame Game
Jul 08, 2009
Recently, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) decided to use the municipal strike in Toronto to try and stir-up resentment toward public sector workers. Actually, to be more specific, resentment of their salaries.
While the citizens of Toronto do their best to cope with a sanitation workers’ strike that has everyone on edge, and while the striking workers fight for a better contract, the CFIB apparently thinks this would be a good time to poke public employees in the eye.
Suggesting that there is a growing backlash against public sector employees who enjoy wages and benefits that are significantly higher than in the private sector, the CFIB is reporting that the wage gap between public - and private-sector jobs can be as much as 17 percent. When pensions are added into the equation, the spread becomes as much as 30 percent.
The CFIBs basic position is that public sector wages are inappropriate and unsupportable. In a recent Winnipeg Free Press column, Dan Lett quite correctly points out the errors in this approach. As he argues, “to buy into the CFIB argument that public-sector wages are overly generous, you’d have to accept that the lower private-sector wages it espouses provide workers with a real living. And that’s just not true.”
Canadians earning the minimum wage or little better are continuing to fall further and further behind in their bid to keep up to the cost of living. The rich really are getting richer and the poor poorer (see Armine Yalnizyan’s work at www.growinggap.ca, for example). As Lett correctly points out, the only argument that can possibly be made for tax relief is for those at the bottom of the income ladder.
The argument seems to really be about unionization versus non-unionization, not public versus private. The wage gap that exists is based on the former and not the latter. Unionized positions in either sector are of a comparable nature in terms of wages.
And this is what it’s really about. The CFIB is anti-union. They choose to attack unionized public sector workers and their salaries rather than make any effort whatsoever to help their own employees keep more of the wages they earn, or to argue for greater private sector compensation. As Lett states, “…by pushing politicians to pay government workers less, they are simply draining wealth out of the economy that could be used to purchase the goods and services flogged by CFIB members.”
Most people also realize that minimum wages are not only bad for society in general, but they’re bad for business in a lot of ways. Top private sector employers do not pay their employees minimum wage. They realize that healthy compensation and benefits directly contributes to reduced absenteeism, less turnover and greater productivity. This all means a better bottom line for the company.
The main issue – what constitutes a fair wage – gets lost in all the hyperbole and criticism. It goes without saying that many will listen to the CFIB’s rants and focus their frustrations on the public sector. But at the end of the day, perhaps it would be better for them to ask their private sector employers for a better deal. Maybe the CFIB could help.
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