UQAM teachers ask for too much

The professors at UQAM (Université du Québec à Montreal) have been striking since March, students are now accompanying them. The student union has voted 63% in favor of a walkout until April 27th in order too support their professors.

The teachers' union is demanding an 11.5% wage hike of 3 years and the immediate hiring of 300 professors. The province has offered an immediate 4% raise and the hiring of 25 new professors.

In a time of global economic crisis, teachers with pension funds, tenure and benefits are walking out to demand more money and more teachers? Please folks, don't be greedy. This is a time where most of us have to justify our jobs and re-interview for positions we've held for years and here you are with your jobs that you practically CAN'T get fired from and you're asking for more?

Why not sign a provisional contract for 1 or 2 years, take the 4% with an option to renegotiate when the economy does better? That seems fair and reasonable to me and maybe the people of Montreal would be on your side instead of complaining and giving the university yet another black eye following last year's 400 million dollar bailout we gave you that came from our taxes.

But then again, what do I know, I'm just a blogger without tenure or a PHD...

Muchacho Enfermo

Vancouver: Bailing out the Homeless?

The city of Vancouver has announced that it is buying 700 units to help house the growing population of homeless people in the city. Over the last two years the City of Vancouver has spent over 100million dollars buying up 16 old hotels that it is now converting until shelters for the homeless, the mentally ill and the drug addicted.

Now we all know the only reason that they have been doing this is because they Olympics are coming next year and they want the city and the country to look good. Personally I don't care what the reasons are. No one should expect a government (local or otherwise) to be altruistic about these things. I just applaud the move, now if other cities in Canada could do the same it would be great!

In this economy? People need work, our construction industry that is going down the tubes due to the burst of the housing bubble could be hired to renovate old buildings or build new ones. Also the number of poor seems to be growing, they also seem to get younger and they have nowhere to go. It's like sending a bailout package to the most vulnerable people in society. Wether it's shelters or more social housing units, our young and our old could use a hand.

For those of you pessimists that say that it will encourage people to be homeless and underachieve I ask have you ever slept in a shelter with crazy drug addicted people? There are reasons that some homeless people will not go to shelters. Nothing would encourage anyone in their right mind to live on the streets, no matter what.

The plan... please feel free to add more things that I may have forgotten.
1- Government offers tax incentive to corporations who help in the building, maintaining and contribute to the operation of the building.
2-Corporations in need of a tax break spend money on Social Housing.
3-The governments(local, provincial & Federal) provide the rest.
4-Administration of shelters to be overseen by a partnership of local and national charity groups who would keep each other accountable.
5-Social housing would be looked over and administered the same as it is now, with new safeguards such as drug testing and education.
6-Repeat

Love it or hate it's my opinion... If you'd like to read an overwhelmingly negative response to this please go read the comments section in the Globe and Mail when they worte about this.

Muchacho Enfermo

Why don't we bail out Nortel?

When Stephen Harper and Dalton McGuinty announced they would follow suit with the US and hand over a 4 billion dollar bailout package to the big 3, a large portion of the population was supportive of the move.

Checking the website of the CAW (Canadian Auto Workers union) it clearly shows that 13% of their 250,000 members work directly for major auto companies. That means 32,500 people are employed by ALL major automakers that have plants in Canada, not just the big three. In addition the two of the big three have posted tremendous loses in the last 4 years. GM has lost 73 billion dollars since 2004 and Ford lost 12.7 billion dollars in 2006 alone.

That just goes to show a serious lack in the management of these companies even in times of economic boom. But we still gave them 4 billion of our tax dollars.

Nortel on the other hand still employs about 32,500 people (only about 6500 in Canada though) and compared to Ford and GM Nortel actually made money in 2006.

I'm not saying Nortel is an amazing company with and excellent business model but I'm saying that people are quick to judge and remember how much money Nortel cost a lot of in the stock market. A poll in the Globe and Mailshowed that 88% of respondents didn't think that Ottawa should bail out Nortel.

If the government wants to give money to companies with ailing business strategies that are years past their prime like GM and Ford why not give at least a little money to Nortel? The deserve it just as much as those wonderful people in the big 3. Maybe if the employees of Nortel had a huge union behind them it would be a little different who knows?

I just know that thousands of Canadians will lose their job and that a government that was so quick to help the auto-industry seems to want nothing to do with the tech sector.

Muchacho Enfermo