Corporate executives across North America cheered, hoping for similar battles in their own local markets.

But now, in a dramatic example of how nothing in US politics stays the same, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker is facing recall. The state’s unions, given up for dead, needed 540,000 signatures, but they gathered more than one million, weighing 1.5 tonnes, in a state with only three million voters.

It’s a plot Gordon Campbell would recognize, although he dodged recall. Not Walker, who must now face a mid-term vote along with four senators and the lieutenant governor. A state-wide referendum in Ohio defeated an anti-union initiative there, and Indiana is in turmoil over similar legislation.

Crushing the labour movement is always easier said than done.

It could also be more critical than a “rendering farm,” the massive computer hardware installation that makes data-heavy industries like digital special effects firms happy to be here. (The VEDC is working on one of those as well.)

Lee Malleau, who was unveiling the VEDC’s Economic Action Strategy, said Vancouver is emerging as a key hub of the video and digital special effects sector, along with Los Angeles and London. But unlike those two cities, Vancouver lacks reasonably-priced housing.

Creating that housing will be essential, Malleau said, if the city is to continue to attract international talent, whose wages will go much further in cities with cheaper homes.

The latest summary, circulated last week by the BIA’s Charles Gauthier, shows that the benefits continue for downtown businesses, with incidents of street disorder trending down as shelters open.

The problem is nation-wide, but the worst right here in BC, Kershaw says, which until recently was proclaimed The Best Place on Earth. His solution: provincial childcare programs to reduce the cost of raising a family. Will business leaders heed his call? In this recent column for Business in Vancouver, I express my doubts.

Hard-pressed BC families, whose income stagnated during the boom years no matter how hard they worked, are about to get a brutal wake-up call.
With living costs rising sharply, their wages seem certain to decline in real terms.
This stark reality poses a direct challenge to business leaders who championed low wage strategies to stimulate the economy — including reductions in employment standards and union rights — as the Gordon Campbell Liberals took power a decade ago.
What now?
“We have a hamster-wheel problem,” says UBC professor Paul Kershaw, “where the wheel is turning and turning but we’re not going anywhere.”
No wonder the Occupy Vancouver protesters found surprising support in public opinion polls taken as the movement gained momentum. The gap between the rich and the rest is widening, no matter how hard the rest are working.
Young BC families in the under 45-age bracket have seen their wages flatline since the 1970s, Kershaw says, with household incomes in this group actually declining six percent since 1976.
This despite the massive increase of women in the job market holding down a second job to help the family make ends meet.
It was no use.
Housing costs rose 149 percent during the same period. Without childcare or decent parental leave programs, young parents shelled out the equivalent of a second mortgage to cover babysitting and other parenting costs.
And don’t tell them hard work will help them get ahead: Canadian workers typically work 300 hours a year – almost eight full weeks annually – more than their Dutch or German equals and have nothing to show for it.
It’s a different story for the over-45 generation, Kershaw found, whose pension earnings and real estate equity will shelter them in their twilight years.
Across Canada, average household income actually increased $35,000 since 1976, Kershaw says, but none of it went to young families.
This “generational tension” uncovered by Kershaw is a Canada-wide phenomenon, but by far the worst right here in The Best Place On Earth.
“No other province in Canada reports a decrease in the average young couples’
household income,” Kershaw wrote in a September report.
“Nor does any other province report as large an increase in the cost of housing as does B.C. Together, these trends reveal that the standard of living for the generation raising kids has deteriorated more in B.C. than any other part of the country.”
Now things are about to get worse.
Average weekly earning in BC declined .1 percent in September after nine months of relative stagnation, according to Statistics Canada.
With wages declining .3 percent on a national basis, labour economists expect the situation to worsen, not improve.
Numbers this bad will set the scene for a rough round of collective bargaining during the coming year.
But Kershaw warns that even massive breakthroughs by unions – an unlikely prospect – would not be sufficient to give hard-pressed young families a breather.
He’s championing a New Deal for Families to redress the imbalance by focusing national and provincial policy changes at the root of the problem.
He wants to help young families avoid the huge costs they are bearing to raise their children. (Action on housing costs is another area he believes will take federal and provincial action.)
A national child care program and dramatic expansion of parental leave provisions would provide immediate relief, he says.
Flextime programs would ease the pressure as well, giving parents more time at home. He pegs the cost of his ideas at $22 billion on a national basis.
The benefits for employers?
Kershaw has calculated that the economy is already paying $4 billion a year in lost productivity as beleaguered parents phone in sick or simply drop out of the workforce to juggle economic and family pressures.
Are business leaders ready to look at Kershaw’s solutions? Don’t hold your breath.

But I heard little about:

1. The crisis for renters

Although half the city rents, few meetings had the intensity we experienced in 2008 with “renovictions” soaring and vacancy rates near zero. The situation for renters has not improved, but the very significant launch of  a new rental housing coalition got little coverage last week. Only Vision Vancouver is making specific commitments to help renters and has generated significant new rental housing construction since the last election.

2. The crisis in the global economy

Although Greece’s economy imploded since nominations closed and Italy has gone to the brink, the economy almost never arose. Meetings generally stayed close to local issues like zoning and housing prices. (Many discussions centred on the impact, if any, of mysterious “foreign” investors.)

But Vision’s platform does lay out specific proposals to support job creation and innovation in Vancouver. I spoke hopefully, in an early-campaign news release, of “economic recovery,” a prospect that seems to be fading in light of the latest news.

3. Climate change and global warming

Perhaps because support and engagement around the Greenest City Action Plan is so broad, there were few arguments about the need to work harder to make Vancouver green.  But the decision to delay approval of the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline means that the push to export bitumen from Metro Port Vancouver will intensify. Vision is the only party with a comprehensive environmental program and convened a special council meeting last year to shine a light on growing oil exports from our port.

Without a strong Vision team at all three levels — council, school and parks — Mayor Gregor Robertson will be hard-pressed to deliver on these commitments, despite their obvious importance.

With Suzanne Anton’s NPA crew offering voters a Vancouver version of Harris’ “common sense” platform in the Nov. 19 election, Lorinc’s deep analysis of “How Toronto Lost Its Groove and Why the Rest of Canada Shouldn’t Gloat,” published in the latest issue of The Walrus, makes for unsettling reading.

Harris’ first blow came in 1995, according to Lorinc, with a botched amalgamation of a dozen cities into the Greater Toronto Authority, a “smaller government” scheme that left the region with 25 mayors, 244 municipal officials and a destructive competition among larger municipalities for economic development and senior government funding.

The second hit came in 1997 when Harris “relieved” municipalities of education funding obligations but handed them the cost of public transit and housing. (Although Lorinc holds up Metro Vancouver’s governance system as a model, it arguably has many of the same deficiencies.)

Of course, Vancouver is not the GTA and a Vancouver election is not the same as an Ontario election. But the “common sense” philosophy is a direct link between Harris, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford and the NPA platform. All in all, it’s a cautionary tale.

The findings suggest that cities like Surrey, Burnaby and Vancouver, with their high share of recent immigrants, may find their economic recoveries lagging as well.

In the latest issue of Business in Vancouver, I explain why:

Metro Vancouver municipalities are headed into uncharted waters in December as the contracts for more than 10,000 unionized employees expire.
Municipalities play a big role in the regional labour market.
In 2010, Metro civic governments paid the equivalent of 8,000 full time employees straight pay of more than $475 million. That’s before benefits and does not include payment to auxiliary workers or compensation for firefighters or police.
Wages and benefits make up one of the largest shares of most city budgets.
These workers are covered by a myriad of collective agreements and are represented about a dozen different unions across the 18 key municipalities.
Given these realities, municipal bargaining is often a hard-fought affair.
Yet almost none of the factors remain in place that drove a region-wide five-year deal in 2007 that came only after a long, bitter strike in Vancouver.
That contract, which was retroactive to 2006, came at the height of the economic boom, amid concerns that a shorter term would give unions a hammer to use on employers on the eve of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.
The resulting settlement, with four percent wage increases in each of the last two years, gave civic workers — most of whom are members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees – a comfortable shield against the cold winds of recession now blowing through the economy.
That shield expires December 31 just as business-friendly think tanks turn their guns on municipal taxes and spending, demanding sharp cuts in civic budgets. Premier Christy Clark’s call for a municipal auditor general is intended to resonate with that audience and civic taxpayers.
Despite annual polls that show high levels of taxpayer satisfaction with the quality and level of public services, business critics are demanding more privatization and less public expenditure, even if that means rollbacks.
They’re echoing, in many cases, the battle that has exploded in the United States over public sector wage and pension benefits, which stand out in an economy that has seen millions of families stripped of jobs, benefits and even their homes.
The context for bargaining has shifted dramatically, but so has the mechanism.
Since the 1970s, Metro municipalities bargained through the Labour Relations Bureau of the regional district. Overall mandates and proposed contracts were vetted by the bureau before local councils could settle.
But the bureau effectively imploded this year as one municipality after another withdrew from the bargaining agency. Surrey, Richmond and Port Coquitlam had either never joined or quit in recent years. Burnaby had given notice to leave.
Vancouver joined the exodus in 2010 and a number of other municipalities followed. (Disclosure: I sit as Vancouver’s council representative on the Metro labour relations board.)
Anxious to find a solution, the Metro Labour Relations Bureau retained veteran labour arbitrator James Dorsey to conduct a review and make recommendations.
Dorsey’s April report concluded that the major municipalities were determined to conduct their own direct bargaining but the smaller ones wanted more co-ordination.
The existing model would have to be torn down, Dorsey said, and a new structure created in its place by those municipalities that want co-ordination.
Dorsey’s report triggered weeks of controversy and confusion among the region’s elected officials.
When the dust began to settle, it was clear that most municipalities would opt for a so-called “autonomy model,” using the bureau for information and analysis while senior staff of each city co-ordinate informally behind the scenes.
Will the region’s unions be able to exploit the new “autonomy” to their advantage? I, for one, am doubtful. CUPE’s local unions guard their autonomy at least as jealously as their employers. Co-ordination is a big challenge on both sides of the table.
All that can be said for certain about the next round of bargaining – which is bound to begin in earnest as soon the civic elections end Nov. 19 – is that nothing is certain.

That’s where a joint technical committee of seni0r provincial, municipal and Translink bureaucrats are working on proposals for alternate funding sources that will take further property tax increases off the table.

If they can’t find a solution acceptable to all by early next year, property taxes will rise in 2013 once more to pay for transit. This is precisely the scenario predicted by Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan and Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie, both former Translink chairs, who Friday voted against the new funding formula for precisely this reason.

(Note to drivers: fares have already been raised the legal maximum and are scheduled to rise another 13 percent in 2013, meaning riders will still pay the largest share of the overhead.)

Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson has proposed an increase in the carbon tax on a regional basis to pay for transit.

Surrey Mayor Diane Watts added two more suggestions to the debate on Friday: an “area benefitting tax” that affects properties seeing values rise due to transit investment, and a regional bridge tolling scheme that would put crossings like Lions Gate Bridge and Ironworkers Bridge on an equal footing with tolled crossings like Port Mann and Golden Ears.

Most agree the final package could include “all of the above,” but achieving agreement will not be easy.

The case highlights the vulnerability of temporary foreign workers to exploitation and abuse. BC employs more than 60,000 TFWs and has recorded its own cases of extreme mistreatment. (The impact of the expanding TFW program on Vancouver has been a focus of the Mayor’s Working Group on Immigration.)

Gil MacGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, has been in the forefront of the provincial effort to ensure safety and dignity for temporary foreign workers in the province. He was instrumental in winning provincially-funded help centres for TFWs, a measure BC has refused to implement.

But MacGowan warned last month that the province’s failure, four years later, to prosecute anyone for the workplace death of the two workers was a warning sign of lack of provincial commitment to protect this growing workforce.

MacGowan argues the workers faced extra risks because they had not been trained in Canadian workplace safety standards and practices.

A total of 53 charges were laid in the 2007 incident, which killed two and injured four others. But nothing has resulted from the charges.

The Chinese workers were cheated of wages, as well as denied safe working conditions. In the course of the accident investigation, Alberta officials learned that workers on the project had not been paid more than $3 million in wages.

CNRL, the firm building the Horizon mine, transferred that sum to the Alberta government to pay the Chinese workers after they returned home. More than a year after the accident, Alberta officials were still trying to track the workers down in their home country.

“We cannot ignore or fail to enforce our rules just because these are foreign workers,” says MacGowan. ” The government must be more serious about its responsibility to inspect work sites and enforce its rules, or more workers will die or be hurt.”

Are there similar stories in BC? Hard to say. Unlike Alberta and Manitoba, our province has no program to provide protection to this growing group of residents, not even a phone number to call.