With regards to the article, Power to the
people, in the Sunday, July 25 edition, the customers paying
the utility rates are "the people" whose interests are never
considered by union leaders. Rates rise in direct proportion to
the costs of delivery (including the costs of retirement
benefits, whether they are delivered today, or in 40
years).
While I sympathize with the workers striking
at Greater Sudbury Utilities, it is disingenuous to suggest the
rights of retirement of a few well-paid and generally
well-treated workers should be paramount to us all. A vast
percentage of people have no retirement benefits expectations,
live off minimum wages, and have no hopes of seeing that change
any time soon. Unions do not represent the interests of those
workers, and, in fact, cause an imbalance in the wage market
that suppresses non-union wages as much as they raise union
wages.
As union workers it is their right to use
strikes and other work actions to better their lot in life, and
I wish them well. But it would be less irritating by far if
even one of these CUPE representatives had the sensitivity to
understand their inclusive rhetoric is offensive to anyone
whose working life is
dictated outside union protection.
When the strike is over and retirement
benefits have been settled to the satisfaction of members, it
is the pocketbooks of consumers that will pay for this
benefit. And many of those consumers are paid
minimum wages for working very hard, and will be living on CPP
alone when they "retire."
Frank Buchan
Sudbury