Terry Fox

Fridays With the 2067

The whole idea of the McCain plan is to get families out of employer-paid health coverage and into the health insurance marketplace, where naked competition is supposed to take care of all ills. (We’re seeing in the Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch fiascos just how well the unfettered marketplace has been working.)

Taxing employer-paid health benefits is the first step in this transition, the equivalent of injecting poison into the system. It’s the beginning of the end.

When younger, healthier workers start seeing additional taxes taken out of their paychecks, some (perhaps many) will opt out of the employer-based plans — either to buy cheaper insurance on their own or to go without coverage.

That will leave employers with a pool of older, less healthy workers to cover. That coverage will necessarily be more expensive, which will encourage more and more employers to give up on the idea of providing coverage at all.

Read More from By BOB HERBERT
Published: September 15, 2008

HERE

Late Show - Sen. Barack Obama

Report urges Sask., Alta. to go nuclear

Hanneke Brooymans, Canwest News ServicePublished: Thursday, September 11, 2008

EDMONTON -- Nuclear power offers Alberta and Saskatchewan more opportunities than challenges and both provinces should develop the industry, says a new report by the Canada West Foundation intended to push them toward embracing the nuclear option.

Read more from Brooymans HERE

Canadian businesses clearly have a major advantage, because most of their employees’ medical costs are covered by our universal public health care system. And though many pay for extended coverage for services like dental care and pharmaceuticals, the costs aren’t anywhere close to what U.S. companies must absorb.

PROFIT and Canada’s competitive advantage

U.S. Employee Free Choice Act

Barack Obama, the 2008 Presidential candidate for the Democrats, supports the Bill. An original cosponsor of the EFCA, Senator Obama urged his colleagues to pass the bill during a 2007 motion to proceed:
“
I support this bill because in order to restore a sense of shared prosperity and security, we need to help working Americans exercise their right to organize under a fair and free process and bargain for their fair share of the wealth our country creates.
The current process for organizing a workplace denies too many workers the ability to do so. The Employee Free Choice Act offers to make binding an alternative process under which a majority of employees can sign up to join a union. Currently, employers can choose to accept--but are not bound by law to accept--the signed decision of a majority of workers. That choice should be left up to workers and workers alone.”

Employee Free Choice Act

For more on the U.S. Employee Free Choice Act click here....

Neil Young to Finish off IBEW 2067 Conference at the Brandt

if you have tickets..........

State of the Union: Stanford

Far from further weakening workers' ability to form unions, it's time to push the pendulum back the other way -- as is occurring in Australia. Without strong unions, no society has ever achieved truly mass, inclusive prosperity for average working people. Workers need unions to ensure a decent share of the wealth they produce; the so-called "free market" will never provide that.

Jim Stanford, Financial Post Published: Monday, September 01, 2008

Find out MORE

SFL files historic international complaint

The New Face of Unionbusting

Shattered to Rock IBEW 2067 Conference

Brothers Denny Klatt, Cory Gellner with Band Mates J.D. Michel and Brad Belitski to perform Friday night Oct 17th for IBEW 2067 delegates.