Convergys diverging: Don’t pay us, we won’t call you
On Tuesday, 300 employees at the Convergys call centre in Cornwallis got the bad news. Their employer—in the euphemistic-speak favoured by bad-news-delivering companies everywhere—had decided to “transition” their jobs elsewhere “to better serve its clients by increasing efficiencies and reducing costs.”
They’d been fired.
The reason: a six-year government payroll rebate program that initially lured the transnational company to set up shop in Cornwallis had run out. Convergys, whose Nova Scotia call centres have generated $15 million in taxpayer-provided rebates for the company, also closed its Truro-Millbrook centre earlier this year when its rebate deal there expired.
Convergys is not alone. Another call centre, run by TeleTech and lured to Nova Sciotia with $11.8 million under the same much-touted government scheme in 2005, shut down in Amherst earlier this month, turfing 215 more workers onto the street.
Despite that, Contact Centre Nova Scotia, an industry-promoting association, insists their industry isn’t “drying up and blowing away” and “remains viable for Nova Scotia.”
Really?
Consider: on the day before Cornwallis workers got their Convergys Christmas present, the company’s Philippines’ unit bragged it had reached its year’s target: 13 call centres and 23,000 employees. This weekend, Convergys further fluffed those numbers during a three-day job fair at Shakey’s Restaurant in Tacloban City. “Transitioning,” anyone?
The Philippines, in fact, is now “the call centre capital of the world,” having displaced India as the non-union, cheap-labour country of choice for runaway call centre companies.
Runaway? Though Convergys is a Cinncinati-based company, its tentacles reach to wherever there’s a government willing to do a deal.
On Friday, Convergys announced—“just in time for the holidays”—it is “seeking candidates for 60 full and part-time positions” at its call centre in Logan, Utah.
More Cornwallis jobs?
More sweeter subsidies?
During the last 20 years, provincial governments have pitched Nova Scotia as—in the words of former premier Rodney MacDonald—“one of the most business-friendly places in the world.”
What that generally meant was that,—in the interests of new job-announcement photo-ops—our governments were willing to pay companies they knew wouldn’t stay to create jobs they knew wouldn’t last.
That’s no way to run a province.
Copyright 2010 Stephen Kimber
Weep not for ‘unrepresented’ business interests
So here’s my question. Who speaks for workers in the 82 per cent of businesses in Nova Scotia whose employees are not represented by a union?
I ask this in light of the recent foofarah over Bill 100, the innocuous-sounding Act to Establish a Unified Labour Board.
The Dexter government claimed it was merely tinkering—merging a bunch of labour boards, creating a labour-management review committee to advise on legislation, clarifying long-standing policy regarding union successor rights when government operations are privatized, making the act’s preamble conform to what’s been in the Canada Labour Code since 1972...
Yawn.
Nova Scotia’s non-union employers, on the other hand, saw socialist Armageddon writ large in invisible ink behind the bill’s bland but—cue-the-ominous-music—“complicated legal wording.”
They were so concerned, in fact, 19 of our most powerful, best-heeled business organizations banded together to fight the power. They wrote an open letter to the premier demanding sections of the bill be scrapped. They cozied up to the opposition, encouraging their filibuster. They even wangled an hour-long face-to-face with Labour Minister Marilyn More to plead their case.
In the end, they got most of what they’d demanded, including the right to be consulted in discussions on changes to labour legislation.
We probably don’t need to lose sleep over whether deep-pocketed business groups will be able to make their voices heard—with or without these amendments.
But what about minimum wage workers? Contract employees? Shop clerks? Telemarketers? Apple pickers? The least powerful among the 70 per cent of workers not represented by unions. Their interests—a living wage, reasonable hours, jobs with benefits, protection from arbitrary employer action—sure as hell won’t get represented by some bleeding-wallet private sector employer.
The opposition parties? “If business is happy,” Liberal leader Stephen McNeil summed up during last week’s legislative dust-up, “we’ll help move this bill forward.” No comfort there.
Trade unions, once the vanguard of championing all workers’ rights, are under siege and in retreat. Too often, they seem more concerned with hanging on to existing entitlements than in extending benefits to the unorganized.
So who will speak for the interests of workers not in unions? That’s still my question.
Copyright 2010 Stephen Kimber
And the rich get… tax cuts
Last week, news reports about three economic reports thudded into my electronic in-basket.
The first had to do with Canadian Business Magazine’s “The Rich List,” an annual compilation of who’s-worth-how-astronomically-much this week.
Toronto’s Thomson family topped the list again with a net worth of $23.36 billion—yes, billion!
As allnovascotia.com noted proudly, Maritime titans were well represented. Eleven regionally-based or connected masters of the universe made the top 100. Most did even better than the year before: the Sobey family’s net worth jumped 27.7 per cent to $2.14 billion, for example, while the divided McCains upped their fortunes by 13 per cent to $2.6 billion (Harrison’s branch) and 18.7 per cent to $2.29 billion (Wallace, godfather). Even the Irvings, who fell from second to third place, increased their net worth by 2.5 per cent to $7.46 billion.
Steve Maich, the magazine’s editor, told allnovascotia “there’s a hugely under-appreciated entrepreneurial culture in Atlantic Canada.”
Perhaps.
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives also released a report last week showing that, as the Globe and Mail put it, “the gains from growth are increasingly concentrated in the hands of the rich.”
According to the study, the richest one per cent of Canadians gobbled up 32 per cent of all income earned from economic growth between 1997 and 2007, and now account for 14 per cent of all personal income, “a bigger cut of the action than any previous generation.”
On the flip side, the report notes Canada’s top tax rate in 2007 was half what it was in 1948—and been reduced since.
Uh…
The third thud came from the Fraser Institute’s latest survey of Canada’s “leading” investment managers on factors they claim create a “positive investment climate.” Perhaps not surprisingly, investment managers favour even lower corporate and personal income tax rates to benefit their clients… if not the middle class or the public interest.
Ironically, on the same day allnovascotia.com reported so favourably on The Rich List, it lamented Nova Scotia ranked ninth on the Fraser Institute’s list and “dead last” for taxing business profits.
It’s clearly time we put more money into the hands of our province’s richest. They need the cash.
Copyright 2010 Stephen Kimber
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About
STEPHEN KIMBER, a Professor of Journalism at the University of King's College in Halifax, is an award-winning writer, editor and broadcaster. He is the author of one novel -- Reparations -- and seven non-fiction books.