Government Workers “Sick” The Most Often

Surprise, surprise. The people who average the most absences in the country are federal public servants. According to Statistic Canada, last year employees who work for the federal government were absent for 16.2 days on average, above and beyond ordinary time off. That’s more than one day absent per month. After federal employees, those in health care, provincial public servants, and city servants were next most absent. What does that tell you about how difficult it is for government workers to lose their jobs?

Those people who work “in the real world” dragged down the absenteeism rate in all sectors of the economy to 10.2 days in 2007. And now for some boo-hoo-hoo reasons for inexplicable government employee absences:

He said government workers, like others, have been asked to do more with less for a long time and this has led to frustration, burnout and stress.

“This is especially true in the federal public service,” he said. “It’s a fact that there is a morale problem, and it’s a fact that when people are happy, they show up for work more, and when they are unhappy, they show up for work less.”

Fortier said this is true particularly in unionized workplaces, where sick-day allotments and other special leave benefits tend to be more generous.

Fortier said demoralized workers start to look at these benefits not as “just in case” provisions that they should take when needed, but entitlements used to supplement vacations and other leaves.

“Many, not all, but many workers tend to use up as much of these as they can, and managers will grant more of these when things are difficult,” he said. “In turn, this has a ratcheting effect. People see others do it, so they decide to do it.”

If you read the entire article, you’ll know that the difference why the private and public sector rates are different is obvious. If you do it in the “real world”, you’ll get yourself canned like Bluefin Tuna. Because absenteeism has an effect on productivity in private companies, if you miss work, you’re not making money for the boss. If you’re not making money for the boss, you’re a liability. And of course government isn’t under the same kind of pressure [as evidenced by the fact I haven't received my income tax return back yet and it's near the end of July], which means they pretty much come and go as they please.

Still, a truer word was never spoken than this:

She said federal workers take the days they need off because they can, and the numbers are lower in other sectors because people can’t take the time without losing pay: “If they had these benefits, they would take them, but they don’t, so they go to work sick.”

Exactly. A little anecdote for you. Back when I was working in Toronto, we had a sole-source union contract to renovate the TTC main office building downtown. To be honest, I was a little surprised. These repairs had obviously been needed for decades, and the windows were so old that not only were they not thermal, but they were single-glazed. I can’t imagine the heating bill in the winter with a single pane of glass between the worker and -20 degrees Celsius.

I was working the night shift at the time, so I’d arrive for 6pm and begin working at about the time the cleaning staff for the TTC was there. I have to say, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more useless bunch of people in all my life. When I say they were “working” for the TTC, I use that term in the very loosest sense. Whenever I saw them, they were standing around talking, eating, smoking, or just simply staring off into space. During our breaks we’d sit outside, and sometimes the cleaners would come as well. One of the women on the staff was talking to her coworker, and she said that her manager was upset because she’d used up 17 sick days that year so far. This was August. I don’t think I’ve used 17 sick days in my lifetime, let alone in the first 8 calender months of the year.

17 sick days, and she was still “working” there, for whatever ridiculous union wage she wasn’t earning for herself. Me, I haven’t taken a sick day since 2007. But then again, in construction there’s an expression: a day off is a lay off. We have a high level of incentive to work, rain or shine, in sickness and in health. Our utility to the company is directly proportionate to our dependability to be at work. I can’t imagine what the unemployment rate in Canada would be like if government took this approach.

Canadian Woman In Britain Target Of Law Aimed At Muslims

If you read this article in the Toronto Star, you will learn that a 19-year-old Canadian woman from Revelstoke, B.C., is to be deported from the United Kingdom and her husband because of a new law pertaining to “vulnerable young women” being forced into unwanted marriages:

Rochelle Roberts, originally from Revelstoke, B.C., has been told she is about to be deported from the United Kingdom and will not be allowed back in to live with her Welsh husband Adam Wallis, 28, until she is 21 years old.

The newlyweds have become collateral damage in the wake of changes to British immigration law intended to deter British nationals and their families from bringing young, unwilling brides from abroad and forcing them into often-abusive marriages.

“It’s not right,” Roberts told the BBC. “There shouldn’t be an age limit on when I should and should not be able to get married and be in love, because it just doesn’t feel right.”

Of course it’s not right, and the reason it isn’t right is because Ms.Roberts isn’t being wed by her Muslim parents to a man in Pakistan. I mean, that’s the reason for the law, isn’t it? Not that the government would state such an elementary piece of arithmetic.

The United Kingdom, which has a huge Muslim population of expatriate Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, is being inundated with child brides either being forced to come here from Pakistan, married off by their parents, or else sold into matrimonial slavery to live in Pakistan.

But since a law which only targeted certain nationalities would be, of course, racist, that means Canadians like Rochelle Roberts will have to suffer the politically correct consequences. Great Britain is the only country in Europe to adopt this law. It passed the “Forced Marriages Act” in 2007 as a human-rights measure to protect women from Muslim backgrounds being forced to marry against their will. As usual, Big Government steps up to try to do something about it, and totally falls flat on it’s stupid face:

Williams said he was horrified by their story. “(It is) government policy that starts out with good intentions but a blanket approach that nets in the most innocent of people,” the MP told the BBC.

Another British parliamentarian said the government might be willing to reconsider the law. “This is clearly a case which needs to be looked at by a minister,” Keith Vaz, who chairs the Commons home affairs select committee, told the Guardian newspaper.

Not that anyone will admit that the law should have been targeted toward Muslims and Asians with backgrounds of arranged marriages in the first place, but that’s what happens when you try to be delicate about indelicate subjects.

Unions. Fighting For Workers. [No, Not Those Workers]

Pursuant to my previous post on this, that appeared in the National Post, the Via Rail Teamsters have up and gone strike on the country. Because of their unmitigated, unrestrained, unflappable selfishness in the face of recession, 2,000 employees who are not members of the engineer union, are losing their jobs:

Via Rail has issued layoff notices to about 2,000 employees due to an engineer strike that has shut down passenger train service across the country.

Unionized employees, who work in service areas on trains, in stations and in maintenance centres, were given layoff notices after the strike began on Friday, said Via spokesman Malcolm Andrews.

“Those layoffs, of course, are temporary, and all of those employees would be immediately called back to work as soon as the work stoppage was over,” Andrews told CTV.ca on Saturday.

He added that as many as 400 additional employees may lose work if the strike drags on. Via has about 3,100 employees in total, including union staff and management.

Via’s 340 unionized locomotive engineers walked off the job Friday shortly after a noon deadline passed without a new contract.

That’s almost 6 workers losing their jobs for every striking engineer. When these people apply to the Employment Insurance office, they should send the bill to the Teamsters union instead. After all, why should the people of Canada have to fund this strike? Which is essentially what’s going on here.

Worse than that, the federal government should threaten to renege on their promise to fund VIA Rail by $300 million more in transportation upgrades. I mean, why spend money on an industry prone to sudden extortionist strikes that strand the people who fund their livelihood?

Talk about a good reason to sell off a so-called “asset” that goes on strike during the prime vacation month in Canada.

Dishonour Killings: Not A Part Of Any “Culture”

In the wake of yet another “honour killing” in Canada, the cultural relativist apologists have been keen to note that this is an aberration from cultural norms within Islamic countries. But with each act of wanton malice against women in this country, it becomes a scourge that we cannot ignore any longer. An entire Montreal family has been charged in the murder of their three teenager daughters after a car was pulled from a canal near Kingston, Ontario. The sick news that it was the mother, father, and brother that perpetrated the deeds makes it all the more horrific.

The victims are 19-year-old Zainab Shafia and her sisters Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13. The fourth victim is Rona Amir Mohammad, who was revealed to be Shafia’s first wife. She was previously described as a cousin.

Police allege that the parents and their son all operated the car which was dumped in the canal, and that the father lied when he told police the deaths occurred by accident during a family vacation.

The family originally comes from Afghanistan, but immigrated here after living in Dubai for 15 years. The police say the family’s “culture” may have been the cause for the deaths.

Their culture? What part of any society can it be termed a cultural trait to butcher their female children? It is a disgusting form of apologism to marginalize the deaths of these girls as having been somehow nurtured by a society. It goes against every biological and moral instinct to murder your children. It goes against every single religious and legal tradition. Hiding behind the curtain of some imagined construct of sharia law as interpreted by a misogynistic imam in the Arabian peninsula is no defence in this case.

The practice of honour killings doesn’t seem to be rooted in the actual religious text of Islam, but has permeated into the culture through a regressive patriarchal belief system that has since immigrated to Canada. But to argue this has nothing to do with Islam, is to engage in a climate of denialism:

Amin Muhammad, a Memorial University expert who is preparing a paper on the topic for the federal Justice Department, says honour killing is not religiously motivated.

“Nothing in the Muslim religion would justify this. Nothing in any religion would justify this,” he said. “It’s based on personal agendas, personal egos, personal mindsets.”

Nonsense. When Islam is forwarded as a state religion in the many countries from whence Muslim immigrants originate, their society is heavily influenced by the interpretative moral authority of the religion. When it encourages violence and apartheid against women, it begets violence and apartheid. When it encourages immoral actions in the name of morality, it betrays the original purposes of religion, being one of an omnipresent moral supremacy that maintains law and order through servitude to righteousness. Murdering your children serves nobody, but the false idols of some imagined “honour”. This kind of mentality has nothing to do with culture, then, but with the prefix of that word, the “cult”. The fact is that Islam has become, for all intents and purposes, a large cult that imposes immoral authority, and forces compliance through acts of terrorism against it’s own people.

The stories of conflict between these cult members and members of western society are numerous, and fills the pages of western media every day. Only recently in Great Britain a man was forced to drink sulphuric acid by a spurned Muslim defending his family’s “honour”. And then there are other stories of families disowning their daughters after having been raped because their honour has been spoiled, even when that daughter is only 8 years-old.

The solution to this problem is unclear, but there is a way for western countries to repudiate this type of behaviour. Prospective migrants from countries where this “cult” mentality is prevalent should be required to sign an acknowledgment of western values and laws before they are allowed to enter, and swear an oath to respect and to uphold our moral code. Or don’t bother coming here at all. We don’t need any more cults here.