Over to You, Larry Hubich

Saskatchewan Federation of Labour President Larry Hubich likes Brigette DePape. He also seems to like Michael Moore.

So it seems entirely fair to wonder what he would think of Moore's job offer to DePape, considering his record as a bad boss.

As reported by -- of all outlets -- The New Yorker and Mother Jones:

"...as the staff of Mother Jones [a magazine that had fired Moore for being toxic in the office] had discovered, Moore wasn’t the ideal boss. Little by little, he began to alienate people. He disliked sharing credit with his writers. He would often come in late. He didn’t yell at people: if someone said something he didn’t like, he wouldn’t argue; he would simply not invite that person to the next meeting, or the person would be fired. … One day during production on the first season of the show, Moore called two of his writers into his office. It was, for both of them, their first job in television, and they had been hired with the title of associate producer. They were not members of the Writers’ Guild, the powerful union for writers in movies and TV, and thus were not receiving health benefits, and would not qualify later for a percentage of video and rerun sales. 'Michael said, ‘I’m getting a lot of heat from the union to call you guys writers and pay you under the union rules,’' Eric Zicklin, one of the associate producers, says. ‘I don’t have the budget for that. But if they keep coming down on me that’ll mean I’ll only be able to afford one of you and the other one’s gotta go.’

… One by one, his employees stopped believing in the Cause. The job became just a job, and Moore became just another boss in a business that had an almost limitless tolerance for bad behavior. But, because they had once believed in him, their disappointment was painful."

Particularly intriguing is Moore's speculation that he would have to fire one of his associate producers if he had to pay them Writers' Guild-mandated wages.

This becomes especially interesting when one considers Hubich's astoundingly-dishonest take on comments by Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, whom he does not like.

Wall publicly speculated that, if Saskatchewan agreed to a contract with its teachers' union similiar to the one Alberta teachers have, his government would liklely be forced to lay teachers off, as has been happening in Alberta.

Hubich had a different take. He claimed -- quite falsely -- that Wall had threatened to fire teachers over negotiations.

Judged according to Hubich's rhetorical standard, Michael Moore's threat to his associate producers is very different. They weren't involved in any kind of negotiations with Moore (one can only imagine how Moore would have reacted if they'd even mused about unionizing). Moore's "threat" -- according to the Hubich standard -- was that one of the associate producers would be fired if the Writers' Guild (of which neither was a member) didn't get off his back.

Yet Larry Hubich seems to rather like Michael Moore, but dislikes Brad Wall to a rather comical degree, despite the fact that the people of Saskatchewan simply do not agree with him.

But Wall's 59% approval rating -- which Hubich seems to be having a hard time coping with -- is besides the point. Perhaps he could be troubled to tell Canadians how he feels about the prospect of Brigette DePape being offered employment by such a notoriously horrible boss.

After all, he threatened to fire his associate producers. By the Hubich standard, that is.

Saskatchewan Party Not Doing Enough to Address Labour Law Violations...

...In the eyes of the hopelessly partisan

Brad Wall and the Saskatchewan Party have rightly been proud of their record pursuing the perpetrators of labour law violations, and prosecuting them.

And while some twits insist on toeing an ideological line on the issue, they customarily say very little about it. There's good reason for this -- because when they do attempt to say something about it, they make themselves look extremely foolish.

During 2009, the government of Saskatchewan prosecuted eleven businesses for violations of labour law -- the most in 20 years.

"We're paying more attention to this activity. We're having the Ministry of Justice more engaged in helping us out in prosecuting," explained Laverne Moskal.

But Saskatchewan Federation of Labour President Larry Hubich said the Saskatchewan Party's record in pursuing labour law violations is actually no big deal, and certainly isn't worthy of applause.

"Eleven prosecutions in this province aren't something they should be bragging about," Hubich insisted. "It's hardly scratching the surface."

But, then again, Hubich has an excessively poor record in dealing with stories that aren't beneficial to his particular ideological camp.

For example, Hubich responded to the allegations -- which quickly became evidently factual -- circling around ACORN very poorly.

Considering that Hubich is widely known as a schill for the NDP, and is a fixture at their conventions, it's not shocking to find that the Wall government would be denied credit where credit is clearly due.

After all, perhaps there should be more than eleven prosecutions for labour law violations in Saskatchewan. But, at the same time, if the eleven secured this year is more than in any year of the past 20 in Saskatchewan, then that would mean that the Wall government has outperformed Hubich's NDP on this particular issue.

But that -- just as with the scope of the fraud being perpetrated by ACORN -- would be just another inconvenient detail for Larry Hubich, and those who choose to echo him.