That may justify it to some right leaners who don’t seem to care about privatisation anyway, but I don’t think any potential NDP voter doesn’t just see that as his transparent way of feathering his retirement by ingratiating himself to wealthy businessmen. Rae Days legit pissed off all the unionized government workers who weren’t going to risk a pay cut again. I know because I am one of them. That’s all you are going to hear if you bring up the NDP with the older crowd. It’s Pavlovian at this point. They are smart enough to lay the 407 blame at Harris’ feet and have no love for the PCs either, largely because Harris had a personal hatred for government workers. But Rae turning against union workers was something they similarly can’t forgive.
The NDP fights with PCs for votes anyway because workers tend to be right wing anyway.
It’s a mark of not being educated, just like those unionized government workers would rather lose their job than take unpaid days off (wait until you tell them about covid)
Government job cuts aren’t exactly random, and people know when they are in a safe job versus one of the more volatile positions. Rae bucked the trend of how the public service normally handles expansion and contraction and it pissed off the large core of safe workers to protect volatile jobs that would likely be cut in the short to mid term anyway. I imagine it particularly pissed off those retiring soon who had their highest earning years averaged down under Rae, making for smaller pensions. While the actual effect would likely have been small, it did have an outsized psychological effect on government workers. I’m not surprised the public at large never understood it. Rae didn’t either though, and the NDP has never been able to restore their labour party rep since.
That may justify it to some right leaners who don’t seem to care about privatisation anyway, but I don’t think any potential NDP voter doesn’t just see that as his transparent way of feathering his retirement by ingratiating himself to wealthy businessmen. Rae Days legit pissed off all the unionized government workers who weren’t going to risk a pay cut again. I know because I am one of them. That’s all you are going to hear if you bring up the NDP with the older crowd. It’s Pavlovian at this point. They are smart enough to lay the 407 blame at Harris’ feet and have no love for the PCs either, largely because Harris had a personal hatred for government workers. But Rae turning against union workers was something they similarly can’t forgive.
The NDP fights with PCs for votes anyway because workers tend to be right wing anyway.
It’s a mark of not being educated, just like those unionized government workers would rather lose their job than take unpaid days off (wait until you tell them about covid)
Government job cuts aren’t exactly random, and people know when they are in a safe job versus one of the more volatile positions. Rae bucked the trend of how the public service normally handles expansion and contraction and it pissed off the large core of safe workers to protect volatile jobs that would likely be cut in the short to mid term anyway. I imagine it particularly pissed off those retiring soon who had their highest earning years averaged down under Rae, making for smaller pensions. While the actual effect would likely have been small, it did have an outsized psychological effect on government workers. I’m not surprised the public at large never understood it. Rae didn’t either though, and the NDP has never been able to restore their labour party rep since.