WestJet Airlines Ltd. is warning furloughed workers their pay will be cut by up to 53 per cent starting Sunday due to changes in the extended federal wage subsidy, prompting flight crews to call on Ottawa for action.
The maximum weekly payment for more than 3,200 employees on furlough ― a mandatory leave of absence _ who rely on the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) will drop to $400, down from $847, according to a WestJet memo sent out Wednesday.
In his message, vice-president Mark Porter attributed the decision to changes by the federal government to the newly extended subsidy program.
“With the (Canada Emergency Response Benefit) program coming to a close at the end of September, the objective now is to ease the transition off of the CEWS program by aligning CEWS benefits with those offered specifically by an expanded EI program,″ the memo reads.
“We understand that the significance and irregularity of changes to these programs has been incredibly difficult for WestJetters.″
WATCH: United Airlines and Lufthansa will offer rapid COVID-19 tests to passengers. Story continues below.
Affected flight attendants called on the government to clarify when and how much money will arrive in company coffers via the federal subsidy in order determine whether wages can return to current levels.
“WestJet can’t float our wages until Ottawa fills in the blanks, so our members are seeing their cheques cut in half,″ said Chris Rauenbusch, who represents about 4,000 WestJet flight attendants ― 2,500 are furloughed ― with the Canadian Union of Public Employees.
“It is so frustrating to see the government touting CEWS while bureaucratic bumbling and ever-changing rules leave us wondering what to expect next,″ he said in a release.
“Many employees have called me in tears at the prospect they might not make rent.″
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Effective Sept. 27, the pay cut applies to all furloughed cabin crew, corporate employees and 700 pilots.
“A lot of these pilots are the primary wage earners in their family, and any reduction in the take-home pay is very worrisome to us,″ said Capt. Dave Colquhoun, who chairs the Air Line Pilots Association’s WestJet contingent.
The union called on the Trudeau government this week to come forward with targeted financial support for the aviation sector.
“We see that other sectors of the economy are in recovery, but the airline industry is not,″ Colquhoun said.
“That uncertainty wears on people that are sitting at home. It’s tough.″
The federal finance department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The WestJet memo came days after the Liberal government pledged to extended the wage subsidy into next summer.
The program currently covers 75 per cent of a worker’s normal hourly wages, up to $847 per week. For airlines, the vast majority of employees remain furloughed or laid off, as passenger levels remain below 10 per cent of pre-pandemic levels.
Unlike WestJet, Air Canada opted not to administer the wage subsidy to the bulk of its 38,000 employees, more than half of whom were laid off in June.
“No one inactive is on it, meaning members are either flying (so the company would be able to collect CEWS for these members) or they are laid off, and not CEWS applicable,″ said Wesley Lesosky, who heads Air Canada’s CUPE component.
“We have raised the recent announcement of an extension to CEWS with the employer yesterday and are hoping for further discussions on this early next week.″
As dozens of people with disabilities flooded the U.S. Senate building on Monday to protest the Graham-Cassidy proposal, the Republicans’ latest attempt to dismantle the national healthcare system, a coalition of more than 200 organizations sent a letter to senators opposing the bill.
“This proposal will eliminate affordable quality healthcare for millions of Americans by gutting the Affordable Care Act (ACA); slash federal funding and destroy Medicaid by turning its funding into per capita caps; eliminate the Medicaid expansion; and defund Planned Parenthood health centers,” the letter reads.
“We urge you to oppose passage of the Graham-Cassidy bill,” it continues, “and instead focus on moving forward with bipartisan efforts on market stabilization and other critical issues to improve access to affordable healthcare for all people in the United States.”
The Senate is currently considering the legislation, and is scheduled to vote on it this week, before the rules allowing passage by a simple majority expire. However, stated opposition from key Republican senators has led to speculation that the measure may not be put to a vote. Even so, opponents have remained committed to raising alarms about the proposal.
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The letter, signed by 237 organizations, details the coalition’s concerns with several of the bill’s provisions and highlights the ways the proposed law would impact individuals and families living in poverty, people of color, women, immigrants, LGBTQ individuals, individuals with disabilities, seniors, and individuals with limited English proficiency—in other words, “America’s traditionally underserved communities, which our organizations represent.”
The groups, led by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the National Health Law Program, the National Partnership for Women & Families, are specifically concerned that:
Underserved individuals and communities that have gained healthcare coverage through the ACA will lose it under this bill;
Medicaid recipients—including “one of every five individuals in the United States, including one of every three children, 10 million people with disabilities, and nearly two-thirds of people in nursing homes”—will suffer because the bill halts Medicaid expansion and overhauls how the federal government distributes funding to the states;
“The ‘defunding’ of Planned Parenthood would prevent more than half of its patients from getting affordable preventive care, including birth control, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, breast and cervical cancer screenings, and well-women exams at Planned Parenthood health centers, often the only care option in their area;”
Because the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) was unable to fully score the bill in time for the pending vote this week, “we do not yet have a complete understanding of the full devastation that Graham-Cassidy would bring.”
“It is unconscionable to even contemplate dramatically altering one-sixth of the U.S. economy and taking away healthcare from millions of people without a full CBO score in hand,” the letter reads.
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Despite the lack of a full CBO score, “the analysis that is already available provides a stark picture,” the letter notes—”one in which Graham-Cassidy would decimate the Medicaid program as we know it, end the Medicaid expansion, defund Planned Parenthood health centers, and rescind tax credits and cost-sharing reductions currently available to low-income individuals to purchase private coverage.”
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Though President Donald Trump’s top economic advisor Gary Cohn previously said he felt “enormous pressure” to resign his position from the administration after the president’s disastrous equivocating on white supremacy and racism in the wake of a violent protest by neo-nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia earlier this year, he made clear at a Thursday press conference why he ultimately opted to stay for a very specific purpose: a chance to give massive tax cuts to the nation’s corporations and wealthy.
“Why am I here?” Cohn said in response to a question by the New York Times’ Jeff Zeleny. “I am here just for this reason. Think about the opportunity I’m involved in with President Trump, being able to rewrite the tax code – something that hasn’t been done in thirty-one years… This is a once in a lifetime opportunity and I would never miss this.”
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As analysis after analysis has shown, the outline of the tax reform put forth by the White House is undeniably and specifically geared toward giving the nation’s wealthiest corporations and families tax cuts at the expense of social service programs that will inevitably be targeted in the face of dwindling revenues those giveways will create in the years and decades ahead.
And though Cohn himself said he struggled in the wake of Charlottesville—and reports indicated he even drafted a resignation letter—his comments on Thursday make it pretty clear that nothing remains more important to him than the chance to give massive tax relief to the Americans who deserve and need it least: the filthy rich like his former colleagues at Goldman Sachs and his new billionaire boss at the White House.
Amid reports that President Donald Trump is planning to decertify the Iran nuclear accord sometime this coming week, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani warned Saturday that any attempt to undermine the deal will earn the United States condemnation from “the entire world.”
“If one seeks war, Trump’s decision makes sense. If he doesn’t want war, then killing the deal makes no sense.” —Trita Parsi, National Iranian American Council
“We have achieved benefits that are irreversible. Nobody can roll them back, neither Trump, nor 10 other Trumps,” Rouhani said in an address to students at Tehran University. “If the United States violates [the nuclear deal], the entire world will condemn America, not Iran.”
Right-wing hawks within and outside of the Trump administration have for months urged the president to scrap the accord, which he repeatedly slammed on the campaign trail.
Critics have argued that withdrawing from the deal would represent an embrace of “war over peace.”
“If one seeks war, Trump’s decision makes sense,” argued Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council. “Failure will lead to war. If he doesn’t want war, then killing the deal makes no sense.”
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On Sunday, tensions between Iran and the U.S. appeared to escalate further ahead of Trump’s expected policy speech on Iran later this week.
Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, ripped Trump’s “stupid behavior” regarding the nuclear accord and issued a stark warning against any new sanctions.
“As we’ve announced in the past, if America’s new law for sanctions is passed, this country will have to move their regional bases outside the 2,000 km range of Iran’s missiles,” Jafari said.
Jafari also denounced reports that Trump is planning to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a “terrorist group.”
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U.S. senators and former presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders will square off next week to debate President Donald Trump’s tax plan.
Sanders, along with progressive organizations and Democrats, has sharply criticized the plan, calling it “morally repugnant and bad economic policy.”
“The last thing we should be doing right now is providing hundreds of billions in tax breaks to the wealthiest people and most profitable corporations in this country,” the Vermont Independent said following the roll-out of the plan two weeks ago.
Cruz (R-Texas), who’s pushed his own tax plan and has called for pursuing “unapologetic tax cuts,” deemed Trump’s proposal “incredibly encouraging.” He also said it has “numerous positive elements,” including its repeal of the estate tax. That proposal would offer a tax break to the wealthiest Americans and was named (pdf) by one progressive group as one of the six worst elements of the proposal.
Trump, for his part, will spend part of Wednesday in Pennsylvania to pitch his tax proposal. Protests have already begun.
The town hall-style event airs Oct. 18 at 9pm ET, and will be moderated by CNN‘s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. It won’t be the first such event for the senators, as they took part in a CNN town hall debate in February on Obamacare.
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While media outlets and television talking heads were quick to applaud former President George W. Bush’s implicit rebuke of Trumpism in a rare political address delivered in New York on Thursday, many critics dissented from the chorus of applause, calling the speech “hypocritical bullshit” and highlighting Bush’s long list of offenses that includes wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Patriot Act, an overseas torture regime, and “heinous” treatment of Muslims at home and abroad.
“Never forget the most consequential conspiracy theory in U.S. history—that Iraq was behind 9/11—was pushed by Bush administration and mainstream U.S. media.” —Adam Johnson, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting Bush delivered his remarks before a conference hosted by his foundation, which he convened “to support democracy,” in the words of the New York Times.
During the course of his 16-minute address, the former president lamented that “our discourse” has been “degraded by casual cruelty,” and that “we’ve seen nationalism distorted into nativism.”
Bush also turned his attention to foreign affairs, noting: “We’ve seen the return of isolationist sentiments, forgetting that American security is directly threatened by the chaos and despair of distant places.”
“Bullying and prejudice in our public life sets a national tone and provides permission for cruelty and bigotry,” Bush said. “The only way to pass along civic values is to first live up to them.”
The former president’s remarks were largely greeted with positive press, and many echoed pundit Chris Cilizza’s celebration of the Bush’s “major smackdown” of Trumpism.
Others, however, saw Bush’s speech as nothing more than “hollow words,” given his long record of human rights abuses.
In a piece for Vice News, Eve Peyser argued that the “racist and authoritarian” policies of the Bush administration paved the way for Donald Trump’s ascent to the White House.
While “Bush never verbalized his Islamophobia,” Peyser notes, his “administration detained more than 1,200 people—most of whom were Muslims or of Middle Eastern descent—without charge, instead holding them as ‘material witnesses.'”
“The Iraq War was worse than anything Donald Trump has done (so far).” —Chris Hayes, MSNBC
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Bush may now be denouncing the “conspiracy theories and outright fabrication” of the present moment, but “the war in Iraq, which destabilized the region, killed hundreds of thousands, and helped give rise to ISIS was predicted on intelligence that Bush’s administration misrepresented to the American people,” Peyser observes.
The Trump administration is now simply building upon the bigoted policies put into place by the Bush White House and ignoring the former president’s “platitudes,” Peyser concluded.
Others similarly criticized the media’s largely positive treatment of Bush’s brief emergence from retirement, arguing that such favorable press amounts to “rehabilitation” of a “war criminal” who helped intensify the bigotry and war-mongering he now claims to oppose.
Some commentators from major networks also sounded off.
MSNBC‘s Chris Hayes concluded simply: “The Iraq War was worse than anything Donald Trump has done (so far).”
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Climate change impacts are already costing the federal government billions, and these costs are expected to increase, according to a new report released Tuesday by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).
While this may not be news to scientists and environmentalists, the federal watchdog’s report serves as an indictment of the Trump administration’s slow and limited response to the looming threats from climate change, with the expressed goal of helping government guide efforts to improve its response and save money by limiting future damage.
“Over the last decade, extreme weather and fire events have cost the federal government over $350 billion”—excluding recent hurricanes and wildfires—and “these costs will likely rise as the climate changes,” the GAO report (pdf) notes, citing data from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the U.S. Global Change Research Program.
“Our past work and the work of others have reported that climate change impacts and their economic effects have already cost the federal government money and pose future risks that could lead to increased federal fiscal exposure,” the report continues, outlining conclusions from past publications prompted partly by the government spending billions of dollars on disaster relief.
In an apparent challenge to President Donald Trump’s well documented climate change denialism and his administration’s willingness to cater to demands from industries that are largely responsible for U.S. emissions, the summary of past reports is followed by a clear reprimand for current lack of planning coupled with a call to action:
Among the report’s most notable findings is that “the economic effects of climate change across U.S. sectors suggested that potential economic effects could be significant and unevenly distributed across sectors and regions.”
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Agency researchers mapped examples of potential costs by the beginning of the next century, highlighting threats posed by increased coastal infrastructure damage and wildfires, topics that have gained national attention recently as communities in California and along Texas’ Gulf Coast—home to multiple refineries and chemical plants—attempt to recover from fatal fires and unprecedented flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey.
The report also points to a November 2016 assessment by OMB and the Council of Economic Advisers that estimated recurring costs from climate change “could increase by $12 billion to $35 billion per year by mid-century, and by $34 billion to $112 billion per year by late-century, the equivalent of $9 billion to $28 billion per year in today’s economy.”
For the report, researchers interviewed more than two dozen experts and reviewed 30 government and academic studies that analyzed and predicted impacts of climate change on various scales. The research was conducted at the request of Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which has legislative jurisdiction over national energy policy and public lands.
“My colleagues no longer have to take it from me,” Cantwell said in a statement, “the Government Accountability Office tells us climate change will cost taxpayers more than a half a trillion dollars this decade, and trillions more in the future unless we mitigate the impacts.”
“The chief bean counter,” Cantwell told the New York Times, “is basically telling us that this is costing us a lot of money…. We need to understand that as stewards of the taxpayer that climate is a fiscal issue, and the fact that it’s having this big a fiscal impact on our federal budget needs to be dealt with.”
Trevor Houser, a partner at the Rhodium Group, which led the American Climate Prospectus study, told the Times the GAO’s estimated costs were perhaps too conservative, and echoed the report’s call to action.
“Climate change is clear and present danger to the U.S. economy and the fiscal health of the U.S. government, and that risk is really unevenly spread,” Houser said. “It needs to be actively managed by the federal government.”
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As the COP23 climate talks in Bonn, Germany come to a close, more than 50 groups and and high-profile climate advocates, including journalist Naomi Klein, are demanding a Climate Damages Tax to levy on companies that extract coal, oil, and natural gas “to pay for the damage and costs caused by climate change when these products are burnt, implemented nationally, regionally, or internationally.”
“If the Pacific Islands are to survive, fossil fuels must be replaced with renewables. Even if we did this tomorrow, the Pacific will still face extreme impacts from climate change. The Pacific do not deserve to pay for this damage—the fossil fuel industry who have caused the problem should pay.” —Francois Martel, Pacific Islands Development Forum
The Climate Damages Declaration, which outlines the rationale behind implementing a global climate damages tax, points to “the ever growing numbers of people whose homes are lost, lives disrupted, critical ecosystems imperiled, and livelihoods ruined” due to anthropogenic climate change, emphasizing that “the countries and communities most deeply affected by irreversible climate change did not create these conditions.”
Bangladesh, for example, “has a climate action plan, has implemented hundreds of climate projects on the ground, and we have invested taxpayers money into a climate change trust fund—all for a problem that we didn’t create,” said Saleemul Huq, director of the International Center for Climate Change and Development in Bangladesh.
The island of Seychelles, along with coastal communities worldwide, is “on the front line of sea level rise,” said Ronny Jumeau, a signatory to the declaration and Seychelles’ ambassador to the United Nations and United States.
“A key part of the solution is loss and damage finance—we need new sources of finance to cope with the impacts,” Jumeau added. “A climate damages tax could provide a new source of finance, at scale, and in a fair way.”
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“A climate damages tax on the fossil fuel industry is one way to reverse the injustice of climate change, and ensure the fossil fuel industry pays for its damage—not poor people,” said Julie-Anne Richards, international policy manager for the Climate Justice Program, which is also a signatory to the declaration.
Richards also lamented that “at COP23, rich countries have done everything they can to stymie discussion on ways to fund the poorest people on the front line of climate impacts,” including the U.S. questioning climate impacts and promoting the fossil fuel industry—”the very industry making trillions of dollars of profits whilst it causes climate change.”
Noting that the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement officially recognized “loss and damage,” the declaration demands “the establishment of an initiative for loss and damage finance with a two year work plan identifying sources of revenue adequate to the scale of the problem in a predictable and fair way.”
The declaration calls for the funds from the climate damages tax “to be allocated through the appropriate U.N. body, such as the Green Climate Fund or similar financial mechanism,” and “the urgent replacement of fossil fuels, by mid-century at the latest,” in favor of renewable sources of energy.
“If the Pacific Islands are to survive, fossil fuels must be replaced with renewables. Even if we did this tomorrow, the Pacific will still face extreme impacts from climate change,” said Francois Martel, secretary general of the Pacific Islands Development Forum, another signatory. “The Pacific do not deserve to pay for this damage—the fossil fuel industry who have caused the problem should pay.”
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As support grew last week for a ban on killer robots during the first formal United Nations talks about imposing limits on lethal autonomous weapons systems, artificial intelligence experts and advocacy groups released a viral video depicting what a future could look like with small and affordable drones that murder targets without any meaningful human control.
“This short film is more than just speculation; it shows the results of integrating and miniaturizing technologies that we already have,” warns Stuart Russell, a computer science professor at UC Berkeley, near the end of the video.
AI’s “potential to benefit humanity is enormous, even in defense, but allowing machines to choose to kill humans will be devastating to our security and freedom. Thousands of my fellow researchers agree,” Russell continues. “But the window to act is closing fast.”
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The film was created to raise support for a global ban on killer robots, which has developed out of urgent warnings from human rights organizations, advocacy groups, military leaders, lawmakers, tech experts, and engineers, including Stephen Hawking and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Russell and the Future of Life Institute screened the video in Geneva, Switzerland last week at an event hosted by the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, in an effort to increase pressure on the group of governmental experts on lethal autonomous weapons systems who were gathered for a week-long meeting organized by the U.N. Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW).
When the talks concluded Friday, representatives established a final report calling for future discussions about the mounting threat of killer robots. Campaign for Killer Robots expressed disappointment with the report, but celebrated new support for banning these types of weapons. During the talks, three countries—Brazil, Iraq, and Uganda—joined the list (pdf) of 22 nations that are demanding an outright ban.
The Trump administration signed another love note to extractive industries on Thursday when it announced it was withdrawing the U.S. from a global program aimed at increasing transparency and accountability for oil, gas, and mineral companies and their payments to governments.
“This is a disappointing, backwards step,” said Fredrik Reinfeldt, chair of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI).
A diverse group of voices reacted by saying the administration’s stated basis for backing out of the effort is false.
Reuters explains that the
As such, said Chase Huntley, senior energy and climate director at The Wilderness Society, the back-out “is further evidence of the administration’s flabbergasting disregard for the public’s right to know how their energy assets are being managed.”
The State Department webpage on the EITI, still available as of this writing, touts the effort, stating the “U.S. Government has been a strong supporter of EITI since its founding in 2003, recognizing that transparency is a critical component of sound governance in countries’ extractive sectors.” It adds: “In September 2011 the United States’ announcement that it would implement the EITI domestically underscored the United States’ view that this initiative benefits countries in all regions and all levels of development.”
The move to back out of the program, as Bloomberg notes,
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In his letter (pdf) to Reinfeldt announcing the decision, Gregory Gould, director of the Interior Department’s Office of Natural Resources Revenue, writes, “it is clear that domestic implementation of EITI does not fully account for the U.S. legal framework.”
But U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and former U.S. Senator Dick Lugar (R-Ind.), challenge that assertion.
The senators, who helped push the U.S. to become an implementing country of the EITI, said in a joint statement, “The Department’s justification for withdrawing from EITI—because the initiative contravenes the U.S. legal framework—is a front meant to mask Big Oil and Gas’ money and influence, the real reason fueling this sad day in the movement toward greater global sunlight and transparency in extractive industries.”
“There is no U.S. law that prevents oil, gas, or mining companies from voluntarily disclosing their federal tax payments to the American people. The Trump Administration’s move today is a painful abdication of American leadership on transparency and good governance,” Cardin and Lugar added.
Echoing the senators’ argument, Corinna Gilfillan, head of the U.S. Office at Global Witness, said her anti-corruption group “dispute[s] the U.S. government’s claim that U.S. laws prevent compliance with the EITI standard when it is Exxon and Chevron’s preference for secrecy that made it impossible for the U.S. to comply.” She added: “When major Russian and Chinese oil companies are disclosing more information about their deals around the world than their U.S. counterparts, you have got to ask: what are Exxon and Chevron so desperate to hide?”
Watchdog group Project On Government Oversight similarly a raised a flag about the basis for the decision.
According to Danielle Brian, executive director of POGO and the civil society chair of USEITI, a mulit-stakeholder group which oversees U.S. implementation, “The government is suggesting that U.S. laws restrict companies from revealing information, including taxes, but this is not the truth. The government is perpetuating a false narrative created by the oil and gas industries that protect themselves and not the American people.”
The move “will result in the public not knowing if they are getting every dollar due to them from the extraction of public resources,” she continued. “Instead, it’s another example of how this administration is taking deliberate actions to give industry an out of proportion voice in the policy decisions being made.”
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