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.

SFL Labour Day message - Fight for the right to be union

Saskatchewan Federation of Labour President Larry Hubich says workers should stand tall this Labour Day and fight for their right to be union.

Feeling No Pain

The truth, of course, is that visiting the emergency room in a medical crisis is no substitute for regular care. Furthermore, while a hospital will treat you whether or not you can pay, it will also bill you — and the bill won’t be waived unless you’re destitute. As a result, uninsured working Americans avoid visiting emergency rooms if at all possible, because they’re terrified by the potential cost: medical expenses are one of the prime causes of personal bankruptcy.

By PAUL KRUGMAN - Feeling No Pain

Cities Debate Privatizing Public Infrastructure

Cleaning up road kill and maintaining runways may not sound like cutting-edge investments. But banks and funds with big money seem to think so. By JENNY ANDERSON

Reeling from more exotic investments that imploded during the credit crisis, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, the Carlyle Group, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse are among the investors who have amassed an estimated $250 billion war chest — much of it raised in the last two years — to finance a tidal wave of infrastructure projects in the United States and overseas.

Read More HERE

The Energy Challenge

Mike Groll/Associated Press

When the builders of the Maple Ridge Wind farm spent $320 million to put nearly 200 wind turbines in upstate New York, the idea was to get paid for producing electricity. But at times, regional electric lines have been so congested that Maple Ridge has been forced to shut down even with a brisk wind blowing. By MATTHEW L. WALD

Wind Energy Bumps Into Power Grid’s Limits

A Short Guide to the Economics of Capitalism

Pluto Press, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, and Fernwood Publishing Inc. have jointly issued Economics for Everyone: A Short Guide to the Economics of Capitalism, by Jim Stanford. Jim is one of Canada's best-known economists: he works for the Canadian Auto Workers, and writes a regular economics column for the Globe and Mail.

Economics for Everyone



Download a PDF Poster of the event here.