Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Working For The Clampdown

WeWillTeachOurTwistedSpeech
Strummer/JonesVille


So much for Mr. Campbell's promise of cost certainty to the Trans(g)Nats:

"About 1,100 privatized B.C. health-care workers employed by Sodexho have voted 96 per cent in favour of strike action to back their contract demands.

The food service, cleaning staff and support workers are employed at hospitals and nursing homes in the Lower Mainland, Fraser Valley, Victoria and the Sunshine Coast."



You might remember these folks. They used to work for us and we used to pay them a decent wage for their labour. In turn, they used to do a decent job for all of us.

Then they were fired by Mr. Campbell and rehired by the private contractor Sudexho, headquartered in France, who makes a nice fat profit making sure that our hospitals are barely clean and the food barely edible.

The overwhelming majority of these workers now make somewhere in the neighbourhood of $10.15 per hour. That means that if they have a family their annual income is thousands of dollars below the poverty line.

Now they want $2.50 per hour more.

All of which has us wondering if Sodexho has an escape clause in its contract that lets it re-negotiate terms if the workers get organized and/or uppity?

After all, what good is Corporate Entrepreneurial Imperialism if it cant' lock in a little risk certainty right upfront anyway?

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