“This proposed budget will mean change in Torontonians’ lives today. Change means libraries open seven days a week, transit fares frozen while TTC service increases and thousands more kids fed meals at schools and summer camps,” Chow told reporters at city hall.
“Pools open sooner and longer; renovictions prevented by taking housing off the market and more support for tenants; traffic agents to keep Toronto moving and emergency responders arriving sooner when you need them most.”
☝️Now that’s how a politician should talk about taxes.
The services she mentions are run by people. There are no services without people. Good wages affect hiring, the quality of staff, retention and turnover. Why would that not affect the quality of those services?
Do we have to wait for inflation to outpace wages enough for people to start quitting the services, like nurses are, to realize that good pay is important?
Also weren’t those workers have their pay increases capped to 1% per year during the post-COVID inflation period by Bill 124?
It just creates a two tier system where luck few who managed to get government jobs enjoy full benefits, indexed salaries, etc and the rest have to do precarious gigs at temp agency with night shift at minimum wage. If so called “socialists” cared about ALL working people, I would have less problems with this. Another problem is that a lot of government services like TTC are very expensive, but also very inefficient - I don’t know if you use TTC and were able to use public transport in other countries - we get charged premium prices for subpar services.
These aren’t the only tiers out there. Corporate Canada pays well. Private union shops typically pay well too. The more of those there are, the more jobs one can apply for which aren’t precarious health ruining garbage. The less of those there are, the more people will be in these conditions. That’s what it comes down to. It’s a continuum and if you move, you either go in one or the other direction. The only way up for us working people is to have more people being paid better through whatever working arrangements that can occur.
Unfortunately in our system organizing private firms to get higher wages and better working conditions falls on the shoulders of employees. Fortunately established unions do help.
The prices of transit services around the world are subsidized. As they should be. TTC is one of the least subsidized services in the world. It makes most of its revenue from fares. This is why you see the fares you see. Remember the $3B Doug Ford gave in cheques to people of all incomes? If he spent that on TTC subsidies, fares could be free for 2-3 years.
In addition pay anywhere, whether being in public service, or private firms is used as comparison by employeers and employees elsewhere. If a place pays better, it’s used by employees at another place to ask for better wages. If a place pays less, it’s used by employers elsewhere to give lower wages. Better wages across the board are good for the economy and all working people, up to the point where they start driving up inflation. We’re not anywhere close to that. If you’ve heard the term “wages haven’t caught up to inflation”, the process of catching up is people negotiating higher wages. Just like the current example. Without it, we get poorer and poorer over time. Might sound familiar.