April 19, 2005
Kamloops Daily News



The B.C. Liberal plan is not going quite as expected.  It
was a simple plan:  Reduce the wages in order to create  a
desperate labour pool.  Businesses would then flock to B.C.
to take advantage of the cheap labour.

The first part of the plan is going fairy well.  Wages have
dropped since the Liberals came to power according to
Statistics Canada.   In 2000, average weekly earnings were
14% higher in B.C. than nationally.  As of January 2005,
they are 2% lower.

The Liberal way of lowering wages was blunt and crude.  On
January 17, 2001, known as "Black Thursday," the Liberals
began a three-year program of cutting thousands of jobs for
a saving of $3 billion.

What the Liberals didn't anticipate was the discriminatory
effect their job cuts had.  Women were affected far more
than men, according to a report written by sociologists Dr
Sylvia Fuller and Lindsay Stephens.

The Liberal government job cuts were made to the unionized
public sector where most of the positions were held by
women.  Despite claims by the Liberals that governments
don't create jobs, one-fifth of all employed B.C. women were
employed in the public sector.  Since then 15,000 women have
lost jobs - - three times the job loss of male counterparts.

Also contrary to Liberal claims, these were not overpaid
women doing unproductive government jobs.  They worked in
areas of education, health care, legal aid, child
protection, liquor stores, and many more positions that
benefited society.

Women made a fair wage at these jobs.  On average, they made
$23.65 per hour.  But for women who were the only
wage-earner in a family, they  were just getting by.

Now they are part of the working poor who make average of
$15.11 in the private sector and they slipping backwards
even though they are running at full speed.  They were not
making too much wages before, workers in the private sector
were making too little.

The Liberals have made it more difficult for women to get
out of poverty through education.  Higher postsecondary
tuition fees and elimination of grants are a barrier. 
"These changes disproportionately impact women because their
lower earnings make it harder to pay fees up front and to
repay higher loan levels after graduation," say the authors
of the report.

B.C. women found it more difficult to find affordable day
care.  In April, 2002, the Liberals cut $24 million from
child care.

Recent reversal of child care cuts hasn't reopened centres
in neighbourhoods that went out of business shortly after
they lost many of their clients.

In an ironic twist, women now find themselves working for
free at jobs that they used to be paid for.  Women tend to
do a disproportionate amount of care for their children,
family members, and elderly parents.  Liberal restructuring
of long-term care beds and home care services has meant an
added burden of family care.  "This has shifted what was
paid work (performed mainly by women) to unpaid care work by
women in the home," say Fuller and Stephens.

The Liberals weakened protection for workers in the
Employment Standards Act in 2002 which affected more women
than men because women are overrepresented in low-paid and
precarious jobs.  These changes are especially problematic
for women who are vulnerable and least likely to confront
employers who violate working standards.

There has been an increase of  jobs in B.C. but most mostly
in real estate.  And hourly wages have dropped in the last
year.  Strong external conditions have worked in B.C.'s
favour.  The province has benefited from low interest rates
which spurred construction.  High world prices for our
resources have stimulated the economy.  The Liberals can't
claim credit for any of these factors.

The improvements have not been spectacular.  Gross Domestic
Product is up to 3.4 per cent in 2004 but in nine of the
last twenty years the GDP has been equal to that or better.

The Liberals have put B.C. workers, especially women,
through unnecessary grief.   As shown by recent budget
surpluses, the economy would have improved without cutting
wages of lower-middle class British Columbians.

The cruel joke is that Liberals are prepared to give
government hand-outs to the rich through tax breaks but not
pay fair wages to government workers.  Apparently, money is
a virtue in the hands of the rich but a vice in the hands of
ordinary workers.

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