Wade Rathke: Chief Organizer Blog » Ottawa

Lower Remittance Fees Now!

dine — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 12:29:26 +0000

Ottawa In the final event of the first ACORN Canada Convention members gathered in front of the National Bank of Canada, assembling to raise the demand to lower bank and money transfer fees for remittances. With Parliament looming over them car after car honked in support of lower bank fees. Hardly a struggling immigrant driving a cab along the street didn’t lean on their horn, understanding the issue precisely.

A popular radio broadcast on politics on CBC had interviewed Kay Bisnath of ACORN Canada and ACORN International shortly after 8 AM in a national broadcast. A piece had run in the daily paper, Ottawa Citizen, made the campaign clear.

The nearly 100 protests left the Bank of Canada, responsible for regulations, to make the same demand at the offices of the Finance Minister Michael Horgan. We didn’t get far. Police blocked the doors and locked them quickly, as the members chanted below and beat the plastic trash receptacles to a drum beat, calling on the Minister to “come down, meet the people!”

Finally using police as embassaries, Marva Burnett, outgoing president of ACORN Canada and other leaders were able to get their message up and get the answer down. The deputy finance minister agreed to study the issue and issue a response. The finance ministry communication director came down and parsed a few words indicating they had read the Citizen and heard the news, and would “study the matter.”

A mild response, but a step forward because truly this is an issue where there is every indication that the government is totally clueless of the issue despite the huge impact. Back-of-the-envelope figuring had put the cost of excess fees, defined as fees above the G-8 and World Bank target of 5%, sent by immigrant and new Canadians back to families and communities in their home countries as being over $500,000,000 per year!

Members had prepared a “giant invoice” as chant leader, Pascal Apuwa, called it and after the Finance representative slinked away, a chant rose for the giant invoice to be left and collected. Marva Burnett placed it pointing inside the locked doors of the ministry. I am categorically clear that a small piece of history was made here, since I am confident that in the history of social movements over thousands of years, these members may have been the first to chant “GIANT INVOICE!”

Nonetheless, the chant makes the point. This is a huge bill, now past due, that needs to be repaid to the poor and migrant works and immigrant families around the world, being exploited by money transfer organizations and banks on a daily basis at the price of billions.

“Living Wage…What Could Be Better than That?”

dine — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 13:47:25 +0000

Ottawa The members listened intently and applauded frequently as they were addressed by friends from the Canadian labor movement. Unfortunately what they were hearing was less a Canadian problem than part of an orchestrated international attack by governments and corporations on basic employment standards and unions.

Sean McKenny, President of the Ottawa District Labour Council, and Chris Robert, Senior Researcher for the Canadian Labour Congress, were both vivid in describing the real issues behind the settlement of the Air Canada strike with the Canadian Auto Workers over the weekend. For the government to move within 16 hours of the strike was little more than a signal that the new Harper majority administration was fired up for a power play with a slap shot at labor. Clearly the economy was not endangered. Furthermore, a lot of the issue was about pensions, particularly defined benefit pensions which are essentially deferred compensation, and the company’s effort to run from that responsibility and put retirements at risk without paying for the risks. The same thing is happening throughout North America and many other parts of the globe.

Lynn Beu, a vice-president with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) showed up and let people know that essentially the lockout imposed by the Postal Service was the same kind of thing. The excuse for the lockout was a 23 person called strike! Lynn had the crowd going as well when she talked about the partnership already being forged between CUPW, ACORN Canada, and ACORN International in the Remittance Justice Campaign and the fact that they had circulated the original ACORN International report to unions all over the world. Why shouldn’t the postal service be offering a cheaper alternative, she asked? Absolutely, the members agreed! In talking about her enthusiasm for the New West and Ottawa living wage campaigns, she mentioned that when she had first heard about it, she had thought, “Living wages…what could be better than that?” It sounded like a new slogan for the campaign to me.

Later in the evening, the executive vice-president for the Ontario Labour Federation repeated the same themes. Her best line was: “When labor and ACORN Canada stick together, we can’t be stopped!”

Hard times but good friends.

Living Wages from Boston to Canada

dine — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 15:47:49 +0000

Boston Talking to organizers the last night about security workers being subcontracted, one casually mentioned what could and could not be done because of the Boston Living Wage ordinance. At Boston University with Professor Lee Staples as we made the case and claims for the power of community organizing it was natural to once again reference the impact of the more than great living wage ordinance ACORN and labor allies had won in Boston what seems like yesterday, but probably more than 10 years ago now.

In living wage fights in the US the issue is often framed around what the impact on jobs and employers will be. In talking about citizen wealth in these fights we often had to defend against whether or not living wages were an appropriate anti-poverty method, rather than being able to assume that everyone shared a value that work should be paid fairly to the laborer.

I couldn’t help thinking as we parsed this again at BU about the very different way that ACORN Canada is dealing with living wage matters in New Westminster (outside of Vancouver) that just voted to research the matter this week or in Ottawa where a critical vote is happening today, 12/3/09. In Ottawa the framing is overtly about citizen wealth and, importantly, poverty reduction, and in taking the issue head on in a report being released today called “Poverty is Not Cheap” (www.acorncanada.org), ACORN Canada doesn’t mince words or dollars. Using figures and methodology from recent reports by the Ontario Association of Food Banks, they were able to calculate that the cost of poverty to every household in the province was a staggering $2300!

Bringing the figure home in Ottawa the report calculated the cost just to the city budget of allowing poverty to exist and encouraging its health by not paying living wages:

What does Ottawa pay towards social programs?

Employment and Financial Assistance	Ontario Works Financial Assistance	$148,834,000
Employment and Financial Assistance	ODSP	$42,396,000
Housing	Public Housing	$23,774,000
	Rent supplement Programs	$19,871,000
	Homeless Support Services	$6,667,000
	National Homelessness Initiatives	$7,197,000
	Affordable Housing	$267,000
*Child Care Services*	Ontario Works	$4,411,000
*Child Care Services*	Best Start	$10,955,000
City of Ottawa – Adopted Operating Expenditures for 2009 and Variance from 2008. http://www.ottawa.ca/city_hall/budget/budget_2009/images/cps_en.pdf, at pp. 4 and 5.

Ottawa’s price tag: $264,372,000

Add to all of this some additional figures that indicated why a living wage should be between $12 and $13 per hour, and when one lay the report back down, it seemed like the leaders of Ottawa would be making a serious financial mistake by not paying all subcontracted workers a living wage!

It’s worth watching this vote closely for what could be history in the making in Canada, just as the living wage ordinance made huge change and critical history in Boston.

Living Wages on Average Hours

jstuart — Sat, 09 May 2009 19:00:04 +0000

As ACORN Canada prepares to introduce its initiative to create the first municipal living wage bylaw (or ordinance) in Canada in mid-May, the behind the scenes debate with city councilors is intensely focusing the politics and economics on the “right” hourly rate as usual, but also on the important question of average hours. The rate will be somewhere between $10 and $15 CN depending on a lot of factors as well as the municipal economics of Ottawa, but ACORN Canada has raised in the backroom debates with its allies the critical question of whether the rate should be pegged to part-time, full-time, or average hours worked.

The organization, Canada Without Poverty (formerly Canadian Anti-Poverty Organization), had issued a number of statistics over the years and one that receives particular attention by ACORN Canada in its “white paper” supporting the Ottawa living wage campaign is the fact that CWP has calculated that the average Canadian only works 30.8 hours a week. Looking at the public policy impact, ACORN Canada has raised the issue, behind the scenes thus far in trial balloons on the campaign, that they believe there is an important and breakthrough case to be made for setting the minimum living wage for municipal contractors at the wage necessary for Ottawa citizen/workers to live and work in Ottawa even if they only make the average hours.

The difference in the living wage figure depending on the calculation of hours could move the number from the low end of what is needed at $10 something to the higher end of the range, closer to $15.00 hour. This will be an interesting debate no matter what decision ACORN Canada makes because the impact and policy implications are significant even if politics ends up winning the day on the number again.