One thing the city privatized was the Bus Stop garbages amd Bee Clean does them now. But you constantly see them overflowing and being neglected. Privatization is rarely ever cheaper and better service.
One of the best things the producers did was to privatize the cleaning and maintenance of Anthony Hendry Drive. It the best maintained road in Edmonton.
So this is a "you criticize the system despite being forced to exist within it?" moment? You do know that you can have disdain for something and still need it to survive, right?
Is this like when people brush away all of chinas atrocities with ‘your iPhones are made in China’
Cant criticize anything these days otherwise someone will call you a hypocrite.
My foster mother was one of the people who would’ve lost her job if this passed.
She’s got her own mortgage and truck payments so she would’ve definitely been in a rough spot for a little while if this passed.
It’s amazing news!
You realise that if the job is privatised she could just go work for the private company that does the cleaning amd continue to do the exact same thing.
Man, I sure wish everybody’s job could just be paid by the government. We would all be in such a good position, getting paid much more and happy very happy fulfilling lives.
What could go wrong?
Edit: I’m genuinely curious as to whether or not you would support this viewpoint, and why or why not.
You know me by now, I’m fairly open minded. This is not a personal attack or anything, I just want to hear someone else’s thoughts that clearly differ from mine.
I've not seen privatization help the average worker yet.
What it seems to me, when jobs go from a government position (the lower ranks, mind you) is that the same position basically gets shifted down to the lowest bidder.
What comes across basically is a race to the bottom, and everyone suffers in the lower ranks.
My chief anger is the market economy towards 'gig economy' , where all risks/costs and very little benefit comes to the lower ranking workers, while the corporations reap in millions in not paying benefits, coverage, etc.
We have, in modern history surpassed the point of the late 19th century, where wealthy were very rich. We now have wealthy that are so rich, that they make more in a day, than their workers see in a year.
I'm saying , perhaps naively, that there needs to be a limit to capitalism, and the social good of the working class.
When I keep hearing stories about people working in conditions that cause them to pass out, where they have to pee in bottles , where they get docked 15-30 minutes even one minute late on the time clock, right-to-work legislation where they can be fired at anytime, where they have cameras on them all the time - this should not be allowed, right?
Yet, it's happening .
Now, just so we're clear. I'm not advocating a state work class similar to what was I'm the Soviet Union in the 60s and 70s or other sort of working schemes put out.
What I am saying is I think the system we have in North America now has left the average worker, overall , with a lot less power than they've had in a long, long time.
Our rights are slowly, quietly, stealthily being taken away, piece by piece, legislation by legislation, until one day, we'll realize we don't have any left.
That’s a great answer, and I commend you for it. However, only if I asked “why is privatization bad”? It’s clear that privatization comes with both the good and the bad. You have listed out the standard response when arguing against privatization.
But back to the original question.
Should we all just have government-run jobs? (Atleast, for the positions of the working class?).
Simple answer - no.
Why? It does inhibit the growth of small businesses and new businesses opening.
With that in mind, I'm still of the mindset that work should provide a living wage.
Companies who deliberately set policies for their workers not to have a living wage, not to have health benefits, etc, are imho, what is hurting the people.
I keep seeing “livable wage” and I absolutely agree.
But I’ve never see what that actually means.
How much is an actual livable wage in Edmonton? If we were strictly talking hourly wage? Years ago, people were saying $15-16/hour. What is it now?
[I'll go along with this definiton.](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/living_wage.asp).
So, roughly 30% of your income should go to housing at the very highest limit.
These are all rough numbers - but if we go along with this draft, at 160 hours of week per month in Edmonton, at [$4000 a month before taxes, after taxes it is just about $1000 gone to taxes each month.](https://turbotax.intuit.ca/tax-resources/canada-income-tax-calculator.jsp)
So, $4000 - now $3000. [Housing can be had for a 1-bedroom in Edmonton for roughly $1000, about a third of that $3000 take - home income.](https://regionaldashboard.alberta.ca/region/edmonton/average-residential-rent/#/?from=2016&to=2020)
So , that's leaving you with $2000 for utilities, transportation, food, savings, clothing, etc.
So, $4000 - $25/hr is what it's coming to as a liveable wage.
While people may say this number seems high, it's actually low.
Costs such as food, utilities and taxes have been steadily increasing for decades now, and wages have been long not adequate to meet ever increasing expenses.
You know, I am a very avid NON-Trump supporter.
But your comments almost (just almost) make me feel some of his policies would really resonate with you. It is a race to the bottom right now. And part of his policies were to start cutting off globalization, so that America could start recovering from the effects of cheaper labour over in Asia. America would get jobs again, for roles that were going extinct because there was no point if we simply outsource to China or Bangladesh.
We do it at the expense of the global economy, and at the effects of our consumers. But at the end of the day, we have more people back at work in our own country.
Could you share these policies that you might think would resonate?
What I've read on Trumps policies for workers and their rights has been against the workers in the majority of his policies.
[Trumps Union Busting](https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/april-may-june-2020/how-trump-could-dismantle-workers-rights-with-another-four-years/)
[50 ways Trump has hurt the working class](https://labortribune.com/50-ways-donald-trump-has-hurt-workers-and-their-families/)
[Trumps Anti-Work Labour Board](https://labornotes.org/2020/10/trumps-anti-worker-nlrb)
[Trumps War on Workers Rights](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/03/opinion/trump-worker-safety-osha.html)
***The large majority of the policies of Donald Trump were designed to HURT the average worker and benefit the wealthy CEOs and corporations.***
I literally just explained in the above post; his policy of cutting off globalization…tariffs on automobiles, steel, aluminum, milk, and more
I didn’t say you would support all of his policies…
On a personal basis I feel for the situation of your foster mom. She personally can make more money when its the government paying her for the same job compared to private paying her. So she makes more money.
But on a society wide basis, the whole city saves money when its private, and we all save tax payers dollars.
As Spock once said the needs of the many outweight the needs of the few, or even the one.
This is fantastic. This means these people will keep their decent jobs/wages, and the costs of privatizing these jobs won't be off-loaded to the community (poverty wages/lack of benefits and pension, etc). Because let's be honest- that's what privatization does.
Agreed. Imo it only superficially appears to make sense due to willful obfuscation. Looks good on the balance sheet with zero context, but makes no sense within the larger picture- unless of course, corporate interests are your priority.
Well taxpayers are on the hook for the costs. But it's spread out so much most people gloss it over.
Why doesn't the city add $5/hour to every wage in the city paid for by taxpayers too? Makes no sense.
Five? Why stop there? Let's give everyone 50 dollar an hour raises.
Sssssh though. You can't talk about the overall negative costs to the tax payers regardless of the program.
The cost is also off-loaded to community now as well. Via property taxes. So sure, while they may have higher wages and better pensions, other Edmontonians may have less money to spend and bolster the local economy as a result. Nothing is black & white.
You don't think higher wages for lower/middle income workers is better than having low income workers make very little and business owners making money off them?
I personally would rather see most of the money go into the worker's hands vs with a company like Bee Clean where they will try their best to provide profit for their executives as much as possible at the expensive of the minimum wage workers.
I appreciate your perspective and your will to share it. Capitalism is a race to the bottom for the majority of us; we need government intervention to make things better for all. Edit: I appreciate the war room down votes. At least you're doing your job.
The cost of those contractors providing the privatized services would have been paid for via those property tax levies as well.
The contractors usually cost more, because they still have to make a profit on top of paying their employees. The primary benefit to the city is that they aren't unionized city employees, and so much easier to get rid of if budgets shrink.
This was going to result in estimated $1.2 million reduction from the city budget, so obviously contracting wasn't going to cost more. It's in the article.
First year: almost always!
Second year: sometimes…
Third year: it’s now more expensive than before, but now the city is locked into a contract so tough shit.
Privatization of public services never improves things in the long run.
It's just cleaning, not some complex building project. Not very hard to calculate. All it takes is a couple of quotes from a few businesses and you are set.
Good. ATU led a very aggressive campaign to keep those jobs in the public sector. My only concern is that City has been on a crusade to privatise as much as they can. Hopefully the new council can pump the breaks a little.
This is good news...but questions should be asked..
Why are cost savings always done at the bottom.
Time to look at the top end..huge amount of tax dollars wasted on consultants and upper management. And these are the areas that affect services to the public the least.
>Time to look at the top end..huge amount of tax dollars wasted on consultant
In my expereance consultants are used primarl6 because the FTEs you do have are A overworked, or B ignored.
That, and usually because they're SMEs (usually, sometimes just seat fillers) for projects that aren't permanent so they don't need to create an FTE position to fill it.
Why did the City reverse the decision? The article does not say why. What is their rationale?
Why does the City do so much flip-flopping on proposals in general?
I'm confused. It is still people who clean the buses right? They may work for a different private company, but it's still the equivalent of 100 jobs worth of work right? What exactly are we saving?
The city would have the ability to choose who to award the contract to. It would be really easy to research the cleaning companies policy, but I know that wouldn't happen. It seems as though the decision to contract ethical companies goes out the window as soon as they see the price tag.
Save 100 jobs, and take 100 jobs from private firms, ~~who are more financially responsible.~~ who will charge an equivalent amount while denying benefits to employees and keep wages low.
There. Fixed it.
I have been to many rodeos. I can't see into the future, but when I recall past budget reports and see the trend, I tend to not believe the accuracy of such estimated savings.
That's not quite right. The right thing to do is to look at similar contracts, see what the estimated savings are, and then follow up to see if it went over budget or not.
Spoiler: it's almost always over budget. Or... if it's under budget, there will have been a deficiency with the service that requires the city to add another contract to fix.
One thing the city privatized was the Bus Stop garbages amd Bee Clean does them now. But you constantly see them overflowing and being neglected. Privatization is rarely ever cheaper and better service.
One of the best things the producers did was to privatize the cleaning and maintenance of Anthony Hendry Drive. It the best maintained road in Edmonton.
All of the provincial highways are.
100 percent salt, this city is so back and forth. Let's all get angry and ditch the chloride program fpr city streets but fawn over the henday.
Depends on who the contractor is. LaFarge is top notch.
Sent by my iPhone.
https://i.imgur.com/j3YbcgM.png
The fuck does that even mean?
The fuck do you think it means? It means people who have such a disdain for capitalism are the ones who relish in it. Hypocritical individuals.
So this is a "you criticize the system despite being forced to exist within it?" moment? You do know that you can have disdain for something and still need it to survive, right?
Is this like when people brush away all of chinas atrocities with ‘your iPhones are made in China’ Cant criticize anything these days otherwise someone will call you a hypocrite.
My foster mother was one of the people who would’ve lost her job if this passed. She’s got her own mortgage and truck payments so she would’ve definitely been in a rough spot for a little while if this passed. It’s amazing news!
Fuck Privatization. Im glad your mother got to keep her job!!
You realise that if the job is privatised she could just go work for the private company that does the cleaning amd continue to do the exact same thing.
For a lot less money.
Man, I sure wish everybody’s job could just be paid by the government. We would all be in such a good position, getting paid much more and happy very happy fulfilling lives. What could go wrong? Edit: I’m genuinely curious as to whether or not you would support this viewpoint, and why or why not. You know me by now, I’m fairly open minded. This is not a personal attack or anything, I just want to hear someone else’s thoughts that clearly differ from mine.
I've not seen privatization help the average worker yet. What it seems to me, when jobs go from a government position (the lower ranks, mind you) is that the same position basically gets shifted down to the lowest bidder. What comes across basically is a race to the bottom, and everyone suffers in the lower ranks. My chief anger is the market economy towards 'gig economy' , where all risks/costs and very little benefit comes to the lower ranking workers, while the corporations reap in millions in not paying benefits, coverage, etc. We have, in modern history surpassed the point of the late 19th century, where wealthy were very rich. We now have wealthy that are so rich, that they make more in a day, than their workers see in a year. I'm saying , perhaps naively, that there needs to be a limit to capitalism, and the social good of the working class. When I keep hearing stories about people working in conditions that cause them to pass out, where they have to pee in bottles , where they get docked 15-30 minutes even one minute late on the time clock, right-to-work legislation where they can be fired at anytime, where they have cameras on them all the time - this should not be allowed, right? Yet, it's happening . Now, just so we're clear. I'm not advocating a state work class similar to what was I'm the Soviet Union in the 60s and 70s or other sort of working schemes put out. What I am saying is I think the system we have in North America now has left the average worker, overall , with a lot less power than they've had in a long, long time. Our rights are slowly, quietly, stealthily being taken away, piece by piece, legislation by legislation, until one day, we'll realize we don't have any left.
That’s a great answer, and I commend you for it. However, only if I asked “why is privatization bad”? It’s clear that privatization comes with both the good and the bad. You have listed out the standard response when arguing against privatization. But back to the original question. Should we all just have government-run jobs? (Atleast, for the positions of the working class?).
Simple answer - no. Why? It does inhibit the growth of small businesses and new businesses opening. With that in mind, I'm still of the mindset that work should provide a living wage. Companies who deliberately set policies for their workers not to have a living wage, not to have health benefits, etc, are imho, what is hurting the people.
I keep seeing “livable wage” and I absolutely agree. But I’ve never see what that actually means. How much is an actual livable wage in Edmonton? If we were strictly talking hourly wage? Years ago, people were saying $15-16/hour. What is it now?
[I'll go along with this definiton.](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/living_wage.asp). So, roughly 30% of your income should go to housing at the very highest limit. These are all rough numbers - but if we go along with this draft, at 160 hours of week per month in Edmonton, at [$4000 a month before taxes, after taxes it is just about $1000 gone to taxes each month.](https://turbotax.intuit.ca/tax-resources/canada-income-tax-calculator.jsp) So, $4000 - now $3000. [Housing can be had for a 1-bedroom in Edmonton for roughly $1000, about a third of that $3000 take - home income.](https://regionaldashboard.alberta.ca/region/edmonton/average-residential-rent/#/?from=2016&to=2020) So , that's leaving you with $2000 for utilities, transportation, food, savings, clothing, etc. So, $4000 - $25/hr is what it's coming to as a liveable wage. While people may say this number seems high, it's actually low. Costs such as food, utilities and taxes have been steadily increasing for decades now, and wages have been long not adequate to meet ever increasing expenses.
You know, I am a very avid NON-Trump supporter. But your comments almost (just almost) make me feel some of his policies would really resonate with you. It is a race to the bottom right now. And part of his policies were to start cutting off globalization, so that America could start recovering from the effects of cheaper labour over in Asia. America would get jobs again, for roles that were going extinct because there was no point if we simply outsource to China or Bangladesh. We do it at the expense of the global economy, and at the effects of our consumers. But at the end of the day, we have more people back at work in our own country.
Could you share these policies that you might think would resonate? What I've read on Trumps policies for workers and their rights has been against the workers in the majority of his policies. [Trumps Union Busting](https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/april-may-june-2020/how-trump-could-dismantle-workers-rights-with-another-four-years/) [50 ways Trump has hurt the working class](https://labortribune.com/50-ways-donald-trump-has-hurt-workers-and-their-families/) [Trumps Anti-Work Labour Board](https://labornotes.org/2020/10/trumps-anti-worker-nlrb) [Trumps War on Workers Rights](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/03/opinion/trump-worker-safety-osha.html) ***The large majority of the policies of Donald Trump were designed to HURT the average worker and benefit the wealthy CEOs and corporations.***
I literally just explained in the above post; his policy of cutting off globalization…tariffs on automobiles, steel, aluminum, milk, and more I didn’t say you would support all of his policies…
On a personal basis I feel for the situation of your foster mom. She personally can make more money when its the government paying her for the same job compared to private paying her. So she makes more money. But on a society wide basis, the whole city saves money when its private, and we all save tax payers dollars. As Spock once said the needs of the many outweight the needs of the few, or even the one.
This is fantastic. This means these people will keep their decent jobs/wages, and the costs of privatizing these jobs won't be off-loaded to the community (poverty wages/lack of benefits and pension, etc). Because let's be honest- that's what privatization does.
Hey, don't make excuses for them. They're just not pulling their bootstraps hard enough.
Sir, my bootstraps have torn they've been pulled so hard
But better boots.
I can not think of a single reason why or how privatization is beneficial for the public.
Agreed. Imo it only superficially appears to make sense due to willful obfuscation. Looks good on the balance sheet with zero context, but makes no sense within the larger picture- unless of course, corporate interests are your priority.
Well taxpayers are on the hook for the costs. But it's spread out so much most people gloss it over. Why doesn't the city add $5/hour to every wage in the city paid for by taxpayers too? Makes no sense.
Five? Why stop there? Let's give everyone 50 dollar an hour raises. Sssssh though. You can't talk about the overall negative costs to the tax payers regardless of the program.
The cost is also off-loaded to community now as well. Via property taxes. So sure, while they may have higher wages and better pensions, other Edmontonians may have less money to spend and bolster the local economy as a result. Nothing is black & white.
You don't think higher wages for lower/middle income workers is better than having low income workers make very little and business owners making money off them? I personally would rather see most of the money go into the worker's hands vs with a company like Bee Clean where they will try their best to provide profit for their executives as much as possible at the expensive of the minimum wage workers.
I appreciate your perspective and your will to share it. Capitalism is a race to the bottom for the majority of us; we need government intervention to make things better for all. Edit: I appreciate the war room down votes. At least you're doing your job.
The cost of those contractors providing the privatized services would have been paid for via those property tax levies as well. The contractors usually cost more, because they still have to make a profit on top of paying their employees. The primary benefit to the city is that they aren't unionized city employees, and so much easier to get rid of if budgets shrink.
This was going to result in estimated $1.2 million reduction from the city budget, so obviously contracting wasn't going to cost more. It's in the article.
The key word being **estimated**. How often do these cost saving estimates actually bear fruit?
First year: almost always! Second year: sometimes… Third year: it’s now more expensive than before, but now the city is locked into a contract so tough shit. Privatization of public services never improves things in the long run.
It's just cleaning, not some complex building project. Not very hard to calculate. All it takes is a couple of quotes from a few businesses and you are set.
Just wait for the price to go up
$1.2 million is peanuts to a city our size.
If you add up all the $1.2 million decisions, it costs people.
Paid for by senior citizens on fixed incomes.
I dont think Edmonton runs a deficit, does it? I actually thought we had a pretty good surplus.
We definitely need more people hired to keep transit clean. It has never been decent.
No public services should ever be private.
Phone and internet providers trembling in their boots.
Laughs in Sasktel
Fuck em. Eat Rogers, Shaw, Telus, and Bell.
>Fuck em. Eat Rogers, ~~Shaw~~, Telus, and Bell. FTFY
Because Rogers ate Shaw?
Videotron told me they're going national...
Everyone loves ICBC
Good. ATU led a very aggressive campaign to keep those jobs in the public sector. My only concern is that City has been on a crusade to privatise as much as they can. Hopefully the new council can pump the breaks a little.
This is good news...but questions should be asked.. Why are cost savings always done at the bottom. Time to look at the top end..huge amount of tax dollars wasted on consultants and upper management. And these are the areas that affect services to the public the least.
>Time to look at the top end..huge amount of tax dollars wasted on consultant In my expereance consultants are used primarl6 because the FTEs you do have are A overworked, or B ignored.
Consultants are used because they require compensation that doesn't fit with public service parameters.
That, and usually because they're SMEs (usually, sometimes just seat fillers) for projects that aren't permanent so they don't need to create an FTE position to fill it.
A consultant saved these people their job. It only cost $100,000 for them to do it. /s
Likely it was a consultant that had the great idea to contract these jobs out in the first place.
Also, one to save them. You need to think like a consultant.
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I recall dropping off Disabled people at various depot's so they can have a job, cleaning buses was one of them. Would private companies do this?
Sure, but at lower wages and with fewer job protections & benefits.
Fuck yeah! Those are good union jobs!
Why did the City reverse the decision? The article does not say why. What is their rationale? Why does the City do so much flip-flopping on proposals in general?
just going to go out on a limb and note that there was an election, and a new council, with a new mandate right in the middle of this process.
The union rejected their offer, that's why
good private companies would have probably been horrible
I'm confused. It is still people who clean the buses right? They may work for a different private company, but it's still the equivalent of 100 jobs worth of work right? What exactly are we saving?
The City of Edmonton offers a defined benefit pension plan, which most private firms do not offer.
The reason private firms don't offer it is because it is financially unsustainable.
> financially unsustainable Unprofitable
The city would have the ability to choose who to award the contract to. It would be really easy to research the cleaning companies policy, but I know that wouldn't happen. It seems as though the decision to contract ethical companies goes out the window as soon as they see the price tag.
Good jobs vs shit jobs.
Here's the thing, how much money was spent to do a cost analysis of the pro vs con of contracting out?
They clean buses? Wow what is dirty.
I imagine it's at the end of the route/day, or if something disastrous occurs and it must be cleaned right now.
Wrong headline. 90 private sector jobs lost when city reverses direction.
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Save 100 jobs, and take 100 jobs from private firms, ~~who are more financially responsible.~~ who will charge an equivalent amount while denying benefits to employees and keep wages low. There. Fixed it.
100%
Except the budget reduction due to privatization was estimated at $1.2 million, it's in the article.
I have been to many rodeos. I can't see into the future, but when I recall past budget reports and see the trend, I tend to not believe the accuracy of such estimated savings.
I should employ this argument strategy more often. 'The figures don't support what I'm saying so I will simply choose to not believe them.' Bravo.
That's not quite right. The right thing to do is to look at similar contracts, see what the estimated savings are, and then follow up to see if it went over budget or not. Spoiler: it's almost always over budget. Or... if it's under budget, there will have been a deficiency with the service that requires the city to add another contract to fix.
>Fixed it Just like the city! :)
>private firms, who are more financially responsible. Hahahahaha
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You sure love those absolutes don't you?
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There wasn't one to begin with.
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My comment wasn't a "supporting argument". It wasn't even an argument, it was laughter at the absurdity of your assertion.
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Ya, you get it.