Andrew Hanon2013-05-22T12:03:35-04:00Andrew Hanonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.ca/author/index.php?author=andrew-hanonCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Andrew HanonGood old fashioned elbow grease.Michener Residents Just Collateral Damage to Redford Governmenttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.29243972013-03-21T11:33:07-04:002013-05-21T05:12:01-04:00Andrew Hanonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-hanon/
"He was a fantastic older brother," Bill says. "He was loving and fun, but you had to be able to understand him. The hardest decision we ever made was to have him leave home and live somewhere else."
David was a 200-pound man with the cognitive capacity of a three-year-old. He needed continual supervision and stimulation, but in the mid-1980s programs for developmentally disabled adults were few and far between. David was frequently bored and frustrated, and if people around him didn't understand his behavioral cues, it could quickly escalate into a full-blown tantrum. When David's father died, the family was no longer able give him the care and attention he needed.
That's where the Michener Centre came in. It's a provincial facility for developmentally disabled adults with intense behavioral or medical needs. It has high staffing levels, special equipment and facilities that provide a safe, structured environment. Unlike typical community-run group homes, the staff have been there for years and develop deep relationships with their charges.
David lived at Michener for 27 years until he passed away of natural causes three years ago.
"He was happy and safe," Bill says. "They gave him his life back."
His family frequently visited and took him on outings, but he was always eager to get back home to Michener. He no longer needed to be medicated.
Bill believes so strongly in the program that he has stayed involved and is now president of the Society of Parents and Friends of Michener Centre.
That's why he was so angry when the Redford government announced out of the blue this month that Michener will be shut down and its 125 residents shipped off to parts unknown (government officials admitted they were still working out the details of the "transition," like which communities and group homes the residents would be sent to).
Frank Oberle, Redford's Associate Minister of Services for People with Disabilities, insisted that evicting the residents, many of whom are seniors citizens who've lived at Michener for decades, will somehow give them more dignity.
"Dignity" is one of the government's primary talking points on the Michener evictions, and it's been repeated on an almost Pavlovian scale by the media and a few special interest groups. But in truth, it's a deceitful and manipulative diversion from the real issues.
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In the early to mid-20th Century, Michener Centre was known as the Provincial Training Centre for Mental Defectives. It was the epicentre of Alberta's monstrous eugenics program, where people deemed unsuitable for the gene pool were sterilized against their wills, often without their knowledge. It was one of the most shameful chapters in Alberta history, but it ended over 40 years ago and since then, the facility has transformed into a stellar example of how to care for developmentally disabled adults with respect, compassion and yes, dignity.
Advocates for closure continually dredge up the buildings' dark history and use loaded terms like "institutionalize" to evoke images of sadistic physicians, Victorian straight jackets and scenes from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
But make no mistake about what's really going on here. The government is removing highly vulnerable people from a safe, nurturing place and thrusting them into chaos and uncertainty.
The reason? To save money and offload responsibility for the residents onto someone else.
Oberle has said again and again that this isn't about the bottom line. "That's absolutely not what it's about," he insisted to the Edmonton Journal, claiming any money saved would go back into frontline PDD services.
Yet, two years ago, the government commissioned a financial review of the PDD that urged "opportunities to reduce the reliance on direct operations (government-run facilities like Michener) as a delivery mechanism where possible."
Instead, the review urged the government to encourage more families to become their loved ones' program administrators, effectively downloading all responsibility and cost onto them.
Closing Michener Centre isn't about dignity, compassion or deinstitutionalization -- just ask the families of residents being evicted. It's about cutting the costs. It's about dumping responsibility for maintaining old buildings. Most shameful of all, it's about the Redford Tories wriggling out of their duty to care for Alberta's most vulnerable people.
In the eyes of this government, the residents are just collateral damage.
If you want to send a letter to the Redford Tories urging them to keep Michener Centre open, go to www.keepmicheneropen.com ]]>What Does the Fraser Institute Have Against Women, Anyway?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.26724452013-02-12T17:12:20-05:002013-04-14T05:12:01-04:00Andrew Hanonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-hanon/
They pour seemingly endless resources into selling the premise that workers banding together to ensure decent compensation, safe working conditions and the assurance of a comfortable retirement is somehow a threat to democracy.
These organizations base a lot of their arguments on "studies" conducted by the Fraser Institute, a hardline right-wing think tank based in Vancouver that gets a lot of financial support from David and Charles Koch, the U.S. oil barons who bankrolled Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and his crusade to crush unionized public sector workers in his state.
The Fraser Institute's latest salvo in its war on unions is a paper entitled "Comparing Public and Private Compensation in Alberta." Predictably, the paper's authors suggest that if the Redford Tories want to get the provincial budget deficit under control, they must bring unionized public sector workers' pay "in line" with the private sector.
The paper argues that public sector workers in Alberta enjoy a "compensation premium" over the private sector, including 10 per cent higher pay on average and a better retirement plan.
What its authors fail to grasp is that the 10-per-cent pay difference is largely due to the much wider wage gap between men and women in the private sector. It's not that women in the public service are overpaid, the real problem is that too many women in the private sector are getting ripped off by their bosses. Collective agreements and union representation are the best way to ensure equal pay for equal work.
The Fraser Institute paper touches on this, citing a 2010 study that showed men in the public sector averaged 5.4 per cent higher wages than their private-sector counterparts. Women in the public sector, meanwhile, enjoyed wages as much as 20 per cent higher than women in similar positions in the private sector.
Another study by the Canadian Union of Public Employees http://cupe.ca/economics/battle-wages-paid-more-public-private found that while women in the public sector made more than those in the private sector, men in the public sector actually made slightly less than men doing comparable jobs in the private sector. Because the majority of public sector employees are female, CUPE argues, the overall average is higher.
The Fraser Institute's paper is such an obvious distortion of the facts that you really have to wonder, what does it have against women, anyway?
As for retirement plans, the institute and all its patrons love to demonize public-sector defined-benefit pensions as some sort of gold-plated perk, a cash grab from taxpayers. What never seems to get mentioned is that front-line public sector workers pay into these plans out of their own pockets. Government of Alberta employees, for example, contribute 50 per cent of their pension savings.
The Fraser Institute paper also trots out the threadbare trope that public sector unions have taxpayers over a barrel. "Most of the public sector operates as a monopoly, which means there is no threat from competition (unlike private sector companies)," the authors write. "In other words, individuals cannot choose an alternative provider of government services."
But the reality in this province is that public employees can't shut down the government if their contract demands aren't met. Under the Public Service Employee Relations Act, Government of Alberta employees are denied the right to strike. So much for holding the government hostage.
Economist Todd Hirsch http://www.atb.com/learn/daily-economic-comment/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=269 points out that all Albertans -- private and public sector -- are paid 15 per cent more than the national average, and in fact the public sector "compensation premium" is much narrower in Alberta than anywhere else.
"This is a reflection of Alberta's highly paid labour force--especially for workers in the private sector," Hirsch wrote recently. "Wage competition is fierce throughout the province, and in order for governments to attract and retain qualified workers, they feel they have to pay wages competitive with the private sector."
Here's something to keep in mind whenever you hear these special interest groups railing against public sector pay, using questionable research from dubious sources. They claim they're advocating for average taxpayers, but that's nonsense. These groups represent businesses -- it's in their interest to keep all workers' wages as low as possible. The Fraser Institute exists to help them achieve that.]]>The Changing Face Of Organized Labour In Albertatag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.22409932012-12-04T19:47:01-05:002013-02-03T05:12:01-05:00Andrew Hanonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-hanon/
They're the last people you'd expect to be militant union activists. If you had suggested to them a year ago that they'd be waving placards and protesting outside politicians' offices, they would have been mortified.
But there's no denying that these women represent the new face of organized labour.
"In the beginning it was very uncomfortable," said Jaswinder, who came to Canada from India in 1997. "We were not brought up to be standing on the street, screaming and yelling, but what choice do we have?"
Saveeta and Jaswinder are health-care aides at Monterey Place, a seniors' home in northeast Calgary that has been locked in a bitter labour dispute since last summer. Monterey Place's owner, Triple A Living Communities, locked out its 90 employees on June 26.
"I never thought we'd end up on a picket line," said Saveeta, her voice trailing off in disbelief. "All through negotiations, I kept thinking, 'okay, the time will come and we'll get a deal.'"
The workers have been without a contract since January, 2011. Negotiations with Triple A, a private, for-profit company that owns one other facility in Calgary, have been maddeningly slow.
"It's been delay after delay by management," said Jaswinder, who sits on the workers' bargaining committee.
Employees at Monterey place are among the lowest paid in the continuing care industry in Alberta. Most are classified as part-time so they don't qualify for health benefits. There is no retirement plan at all.
The Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, which began representing them in 2011, says there's no excuse for that. Alberta Health Services funds private operators for nursing staff wages and benefits at government rates, but Triple A is among a handful of companies that pay less and pocket the difference.
When the Monterey workers dug in their heels and demanded to be treated fairly, Triple A locked them out. Nearly five months later, they're still being kept from their jobs.
Saveeta came to Canada from Fiji in 1996. Many of her coworkers come from Central America, Africa and across Asia.
The private, for-profit seniors' care industry is booming in Alberta. With our aging population, demand for spaces keeps growing and the government offers heavy subsidies to build, operate and staff new facilities. It's a gold mine that's attracting a vast array of investors -- with varying levels of experience in seniors care, competence and ethical standards.
For many immigrants, especially women, the industry offers an opportunity to enter the workforce. Often, they start out in the kitchen or housekeeping and then advance to the nursing staff as health-care aides and licensed practical nurses.
However, this also offers some employers another opportunity to make their businesses even more profitable -- a workforce that can be exploited because of factors like weak language skills, lack of understanding of labour standards or even ignorance of fundamental Canadian rights.
For some bad actors in the industry, it's not enough to build a business model based on taxpayer handouts. They also have to pick the pockets of their own employees, hoping the workers won't know any better or be too intimidated to speak up.
That ruthless greed is why private seniors care is one of the fastest growing sectors becoming organized in the Alberta labour union movement. Turns out, this workforce of mostly kind, polite, family-oriented women is refusing to stand back and allow their bosses to take advantage of them, just like the miners and textile workers pushed back a century ago.
"Before we didn't have a backbone, but I'm proud of myself for taking this stand," said Jaswinder. With a self-assured chuckle, she added, "Now I'm not scared, not at all. Now I can stand up to anybody."