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Hudak Progressive Conservatives attack public sector wages


The Ontario Progressive Conservatives (PCs) tried to amend the provincial government's Throne Speech yesterday with a legislated wage freeze for public sector workers.
The NDP joined the Liberals to vote down the amendment 69 to 37.
PC Leader Tim Hudak said  "I mean, we're simply asking public servants not to get a wage increase next year because families in the private sector are cutting back."
In fact private sector wage settlements have been significantly higher than public sector wage settlements this year and last.  
Naturally, the salaried class (including many PC-supporting bosses) are doing better -- this confirmed by recent Conference Board and  AON reports.   The Conference Board reports private sector salaried staff are doing especially well.   With inflation running at 2.7% in Ontario, a wage freeze would mean a significant reduction in real wages. 
Hudak is broadening his attack on public sector workers.  During the election Hudak's focus was a little narrower, concentrating his fire mostly on settlements for essential service workers (like police, fire and hospital workers) who are required by law to settle contract disputes via interest arbitration rather than free collective bargaining.   
The PCs claim that they don't want to trigger another election - but the defeat of government throne speech would certainly do that.  
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  1. BruceDecember 8, 2011 at 9:24 AM

    With large swaths of the OPS already in the middle of a 3yr wage freeze (myself included), Mr. Hudak is really attacking the unions (read OPSEU) without saying such.

    If he wants to walk like Mike Harris, and act like Mike Harris, Mr. Hudak should at least have the courage to talk like Mike Harris and not pretend he's the friend of the (public or private sector) wage-slave voter.

    ReplyDelete

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