Why Supporting Cost-of-Living Pay Increases for Frontline Government Workers is Good for BC (and the NDP)
I met BC’s Minister of Finance Brenda Bailey on her recent visit to Prince Rupert. She was attending an event organized by local MLA Tamara Davidson, BC’s Minister of Environment and Parks. A friend told me about Minister Bailey’s visit to Prince Rupert and asked that I attend the event as a long-time labour activist who recently left the NDP to join the BC Conservatives.
I went to meet Minister Bailey and to share my perspectives on the impacts of NDP austerity to Prince Rupert, especially in terms of investing in the pay and working conditions of frontline public workers. Minister Bailey should rethink her position on NDP austerity. Government workers deserve (at least) a cost of living pay increase. Residents deserve a government that invests in frontline services. Austerity is bad for BC. And it’s bad for the NDP.
Austerity is the wrong policy. The BCGEU, the union representing tens of thousands of striking frontline government workers in BC, wants the NDP to invest in government services by paying the workers who provide them wages that keep up with the cost of living. We need this now more than ever, especially to attract enough frontline service providers to get the job done. And that’s why I support the BCGEU’s current labour action for its members and for the people of BC who rely on the services provided by government frontline workers.
Labour-Backed Parties Cannot Advance Austerity Agendas
NDP austerity not only impacts local residents and public workers, but it also impacts the future of left-wing politics. The NDP will not continue as a labour-backed political party if does not prioritize public sector services, the needs of working class residents, and investments in the future of our economy. Rank and file members, the working class, and labour leadership simply cannot afford to back any political party that won’t use its power in government to invest in the public sector.
The public sector operates at the frontline of the struggle between the super rich and everyone else. I am a union activist, and have been a decades-long labour organizer, because I believe that ending poverty is a great moral imperative for our whole society. But there is also the simple fact that I depend on government services for my survival and my way of life. I support the public sector because I need it to work for me.
People who are unemployed, disabled, on a fixed income, or who are paid low wages depend on universal government services like health care, social work, education, transportation, clean water, income support, infrastructure, and economic order – all in order to survive. In fact, it is everyone who depends on these services (even the super rich). Access to government services is a basic need of all people, especially in the age of automated intelligence, social media moguls, and global trade wars.
As a society we pay taxes so that we can invest, together and as a society, in basic infrastructure, public schools, universal health care, and other social services – because these programs are all essential for our quality of life. The NDP forgets this at its peril. Austerity, from a progressive party, means more than just crumbling infrastructure, reduced services, and low wages. It means that there’s no hope.
Minister Bailey: End Austerity & Invest in My Community
I told Minister Bailey that the NDP is failing Prince Rupert. We don’t have reliable access to publicly provided clean water, there are still no mitigations in place for vulnerable city residents when boil notices are in place, our emergency room is unreliable, we face a shortage of doctors and nurses, and Northern Health continues to fail at providing residents with access to basic health care when its needed most. Add to this that our public sector workers are now on strike, over demands for cost of living pay, frontline worker investments, and an end to austerity.
I feel abandoned by the NDP. When I told MLA Bailey how frustrated I am by the NDP, she explained why the NDP won’t do better. To paraphrase, she said that the issues I described are happening in other places, too. It’s not just happening to Prince Rupert. The problem, she implied, is that there is simply not enough money to go around to meet all of public needs. Prince Rupert was not being singled out by NDP inaction, as other places have it just as bad.
(In my view, that’s debatable, but since it misses the overall point that austerity is bad for everyone, let’s move past the question about whether Victoria or Vancouver residents are facing routine boil water notices, frequent ER closures, ongoing denial of basic health care services for their residents, and overall crumbling infrastructure problems.)
My response to her point was this: “I doubt that you went into public service and ran to be an MLA so you could say what you just told me”.
She replied: Certainly not. And to that I said: “But you just said it to me.”
The NDP’s finance minister explains austerity for Prince Rupert by pointing out that other communities also have austerity. That’s not a good reason for austerity in the first place. All communities, ours included, deserve action and need investment in the public sector, not austerity for the sake of spending for other priorities.
(And, the fact is that Prince Rupert is at the bottom of priorities and that basic government services are not being provided to us, even when these services are provided for residents of other parts of BC.)
If the NDP won’t stand up for public sector services, and the workers who provide them, then voters need an alternative. And that starts with voting the NDP out of office. As government, the NDP can prove otherwise – which starts by getting a fair deal for BCGEU workers through collective bargaining. Clean water, enough doctors, open emergency rooms, and cost of living pay for frontline workers should come first, certainly not last.
The problem is that the NDP has its priorities backwards. But there’s another problem for the party too, one which I tried to explain to Minister Bailey by telling her my reasons for leaving the NDP and joining the BC Conservatives in the last election. This problem is a political problem. Running on austerity is a losing position for any progressive political party that wants labour and working class supporters to back it. The NDP cannot stay in power by refusing to invest in the public sector. Austerity is bad politics.
Will the BC Conservatives Do Better for BC’s Working Class?
In response to my points about the NDP losing my support, Minister Bailey asked me: What will the BC Conservatives do for workers?
The truth is that I don’t know what the BC Conservatives will do, especially when that party remains locked in an internal fight between its hard-right and its centre-right factions. As a longtime union activist, I’ve never been a member of a conservative political party before. (And I never wanted to join one either.) Before the last provincial election I was always a member of the NDP, which I just soon after immigrating to Canada in 2007.
But for the NDP (which is in government), the question shouldn’t be about what the BC Conservatives would do if in power, but rather what the NDP does now, when it is in power.
Unfortunately, Minister Bailey is pushing the NDP to become the party that pushes down wages (by not keeping up with the cost of living). Under the leadership of Minister Bailey, the NDP will become the party that cut back on services, allowed essential programs to simply fall to pieces, and that divested the province of public programs in pursuit of NDP austerity. The NDP is making life less affordable, advancing austerity, and prioritizing divestment in the public sector. This is political suicide.
Workers won’t back a party that won’t back them. At some point, the rank and file will force their labour leaders to say “no” to labour’s historic and continued backing of the NDP. Results do matter. Empty food pantries, closed E.R.s, failing water systems, crumbling infrastructure, out of reach housing, higher food costs, and lower wages add up to the kind of austerity that working class voters simply cannot afford to support at the ballot box.
Razor thin elections are supposed to teach political parties (and the government in power) a lesson. The NDP needs to learn the lesson of the last election. Austerity is not good for BC and progressive voters won’t support progressive parties that cut back on services, reduce wages, and don’t invest in frontline government workers. My hope is that Minister Bailey’s visit to northern BC will help her see, first hand, what her brand of austerity means for communities like Prince Rupert.
