Averaging Disagreement

 What does the word "omnibus" mean to you? Maybe nothing. You might be lucky enough to have never heard it. To me it represents the evil at the heart of politics that makes me sick as a dog, both literally and figuratively, when I think of them. Canada has a long history of omnibus bills being part of politics that dates back to the year after confederation - 1868. Did you know that? Do you know what these things are? Not really? Well of course not really - we're not really supposed to know.

Think of the last time your pet was sick. I'll use a dog for my example because, as Groucho Marx says, "Outside of a dog, books are man's best friend. Inside a dog it's too dark to read." He was a brilliant man but even his brilliance was not enough to illuminate the inside of the dog - presumably a St. Bernard or Newfoundlander or one of the roomier species - where he tested his theory. But I digress.

Maybe we should read more as Groucho's pithy little saying would imply. Inside or outside of any animal, if you read more, you might learn things like the thing I'm about to teach today. What politicians do is analogous to giving medicine to a sick dog. We wrap it in bacon or squash it into a piece of pizza or just jam it into the dog's kibble and say, "Mmmmm... yummy! Who's a good dog? YOU'RE a good dog! Here's a nice healthy piece of bacon/pizza/food to reward you for being so 'good.'" I enclose the word "good" in the single quote marks (or whatever they're called) because in this case the words "dumb" or "gullible" or "stupidly trusting" might convey a more accurate meaning. But let's not be so hard on our best friends. At least the dog isn't as dumb as us. At least it's getting something that will make it better and not something that will make it sicker.

You see folks, when a politician draws up an omnibus bill and says to the Canadian people, "Mmmmm... yummy! Who's a good consumer? YOU'RE a good consumer! Yes you are! And here's a nice french-fry wrapped in Canadian bacon, smothered in gravy, and sprinkled with maple syrup. You've EARNED it by being so 'good.'" I enclose the... etc., etc. We're MORE gullible than the dog and after 159 years of falling for this same old trick I can safely say we're more stupidly trusting as well and you know what makes that literally and figuratively sickening? The fact that what our politicians have concealed in our favourite foods is not medicine to make us better, it's something that will make us, as a people, sicker. 

Before you get swept up in a love affair with Doug Ford for opposing Trump like the WWF wrastler he resembles, and with about the same amount of veracity, let me give you one specific example from just about 7 years ago. If you carefully read the linked article you will notice the typical Fordian support of Canadian BUSINESSES not Canadian workers. This is something awfully Trumpian and, indeed, the gist of the example I will now describe. And rest assured, this is a microcosm of Canadian political work. It's what our politicians do.

Anyone ever heard of Bill 66, the "Restoring Ontario's Competitiveness Act" of 2019? It was an omnibus bill in that it covered a wide variety of diverse and unrelated topics sold to GOOD GOOD Ontarian girls and boys as a YUMMY way to cut corporate "red tape" to lower the cost of doing business and stimulate job creation. Now I've talked about Canadian politicians taking one 30-dollar-an-hour job, dividing it into 3 10-dollar-an-hour jobs and calling it "job creation" before. The aspect of Bill 66 I'd like to focus on today is much like that.

Have you ever heard of an averaging agreement? I think I probably should have enclosed the word "agreement" in single quotes (or whatever they're called) because the words "demand" or "imposition" or "hoop-job" would convey a more accurate meaning. It's an "agreement" to which no worker has ever willingly agreed. It's a do this or you lose your job type of "agreement." I think you know what I'm driving at here. It's something that has recently become common in security work and, despite the reported membership in the United Steelworkers union (which I have yet to confirm) my current job includes. You will understand my skepticism about union membership after I explain what an averaging agreement is. It is the very apotheosis of what unions were designed to fight. Any union that would allow one cannot rightfully call itself a union. It is, and has consistently been ruled on in labour arbitration in Canada, businesses stealing money from their workers. 

I guess I should explain how it works. Okay, if I work three 12-hour shifts one week, that's 36 hours. If I work 4 12-hour shifts in the following week of the pay period, that's 48 hours and in Ontario where a worker gets 1.5 times his/her normal wage for any hours after 44 in a week, that worker is due 4 hours of overtime pay. What the averaging agreement does is exchange reality for fraud that benefits the company. Instead of recording the hours as they were worked, the company and the worker "agree" to pretend that those 4 extra hours worked in the second week were actually worked in the first week. They WEREN'T but let's go to the land of Make Believe for the benefit of the companies. These are often companies paying their workers minimum wage or very little more. RICH companies that need this overtime money FAR less than their struggling employees. So now that we have averaged out the hours, our worker has worked 40 hours in week 1 and 44 hours in week 2 and the company gets to avoid the "red-tape" of paying overtime wages that makes the cost of doing business higher.

Doesn't sound as good when you find out what the words of the politician actually mean, does it? And when I said that arbitration had repeatedly ruled on averaging agreements as stealing money from workers, I wasn't kidding. Before Bill 66, any company in Ontario who wanted to sodomize its workers with one of these "agreements" had to justify it through an application to the government Director of Employment Standards. This was the arbitrator, the regulator, the overseer of business in these matters. Well when Doug Ford's government introduced Bill 66, in the interest of making Ontario's businesses more competitive I guess, they eliminated this procedure. Doug Ford is in favour of rich companies stealing money from their employees. So he may not be as different from Trump as he's trying to appear.

But where did this rule of getting paid overtime after 44 hours come from? Where did the rule of 8 hours off between shifts come from? Or the 11 consecutive hours of free time every 24 hour period? These are all established labour laws in Ontario and these laws were brought to us by that generation we call the Greatest Generation. They weren't just great because they fought in wars. They were great because they also fought for our rights. I get really angry when I see Canadian politicians and lawmakers, at the behest of big business who control them, chipping away the rights and freedoms that our forefathers fought and died for. We ALL should get angry when we see this! But that's the tricky part about these omnibus bills. They hide this. Bill 66 allowed businesses to open faster. It increased childcare options and flexibility for parents. It mandated filters on school computers blocking things kids shouldn't see. This is the bacon, poutine, and maple syrup of the omnibus bill and even though it attacks Canadian workers and endangers nature, some people are like Quickdraw McGraw's dog Snuffles begging for that dog bis cue it. Sigh... I'm old.

The other day my employer called me up at 2 PM for a shift from 6 that night to 6 the following morning. I have been hired on a "casual" basis. "On call" is another term they use. What this means is that I will be judged on whether I accept or decline shifts. The idea that they are offering me a shift and I have the option to take it or not is much like the "agreement" of the averaging agreement. My employer pressures me into granting their unreasonable requests by granting or withholding future work to/from me. This is the sort of stuff that unions USED to fight. Now it's becoming more and more common because our labour rights are being eroded in the exact same way we in Ontario got averaging agreements reinstated. I had been up since about 6 that morning. If I took that shift I would have been up for 24 hours straight. What would I do the next day? Sleep? Try to stay up? 

I don't think employers should have the right to compromise the health of their employees like that. This is the reasoning behind the 8-hour break between shifts and the 11 hours of free time every 24 hours. But we just don't have the type of people we had in the days of the Greatest Generation, or the unions, that would fight for things like these. Because of this we will continue to get omnibussed right back to the days when kids worked 18-hour shifts in the factories for room and board. Leastaways, that's what I reckon.