I think it's great that so many Canadians are against proroguing parliament. I think it's great that so many Canadians are telling their MPs to get back to work.
However, when CUPE tells anyone to get back to work I have to laugh.
Update: Just in case you are unfamiliar with CUPE. They are a large union. Why am I calling them a friend of irony? Well I guess one reason would be that the image on their about page is a picture of the three people on strike.
Comments
Irony
Isn't it ironic that you defend health care (unless you share the Sarah Pallin view on health care and would like the U.S. system here), and yet would have to pay through the nose for it if it wasn't for unions winning that right for you and all Canadians along with the CCF? Unionists had to work many unpaid hours and make many sacrafices in Canada to win things like health care and other important programs which you take for granted.
Now U.S. unions are mostly corrupt I agree and should not be operating in Canada, but that does not describe CUPE.
Really CUPE isn't corrupt
Really CUPE isn't corrupt when they announce a plan to boycott Israeli academics unless they denounce their government?
The great things that the unions have done for Canada were done generations ago. I'm sorry but after a few decades its fair to ask what have they done for me lately?
~ Dave Bagler
A very selfish position for a community-minded individual
What have unions done for YOU lately? Wow...what an incredibly short-sighted way of thinking about the capital-labour relationship which was evolved over time. What about your children? What kind of impact would the absence of organized labour have on your children, or theirs? As a fellow Green, I’m surprised that this sort of long-term thinking isn’t foremost on your brain.
The rights and real wealth of workers has been in decline since the 1970s, as a result of repeated efforts of governments in the pockets of special interests to tear away at the fabric of the capital-labour relationship. And by special interests, clearly I am referring to big business. Is it right that the majority of the wealth in the world is held by so few, and that so many suffer? Yes, big business is a very special minority interest indeed, but one with considerable clout. What’s available to offset this clout when your government is in bed with them?
There has been a stunningly, grossly growing disparity in wealth between those top earners and those at the bottom. I’m sure you’re familiar with the environmental hockey-stick graph regarding carbon dioxide emissions; you may even be familiar with the Hubbert bell-curve. What about if you extrapolate this growing wealth disparity over time, and see where it takes you. Some have suggested it will take you back to serfdom, to a feudal society where the majority have few options and fewer rights.
Look, our beloved democracy is coming apart. Yes, there are people like us trying to fix it, but the cards are stacked against us. Where will we be 50 years from now? Or one hundred and fifty?
As Greens, we believe in the need for a sustainable economy. How do you think we’re going to achieve that when our governments continue to take the rights of workers away (and not just unionized workers either). Is corporate feudalism sustainable?
Yes, organized labour is the flip-side of the capitalist coin, but I don’t see capitalism going away any time soon, not unless there is a complete and utter collapse of our society, which some suggest will happen. But since I didn’t think you were a doomer, Dave, I thought maybe instead you might be able to better understand the need for offsets in increasingly tilted relationship between capital and labour. Yes, we’re along way from a sustainable economy, and I have serious doubts that the marketplace is ever going to get us there, but the sorts of changes which will be required to move us away from a capitalist system will be generational; they will not happen overnight in a revolution. And if they do come about, the labour movement will have a huge role to play.
The question should never be "What have they done for me lately?". It should always be "What can we do together to better build our communities?" If the answer is "nothing", fine, move on and find something better. Right now, unions are doing a hell of a lot to help build better communities for all sorts of families. They are fighting battles which are necessary in the continuing struggle between capital and labour, whether it’s at the bargaining table or on the picket line. As a Green, I think you might want to try to better understand their contribution to the labour-capital dynamic.
Dave, you can't be serious about this, right?
Dave, I think you’ve got this one completely wrong. You seem to be suggesting that the support of CUPE, and presumably other unions, for the anti-prorogation movement which is sweeping the country is somehow laughable because unionized employees sometimes go on strike?!?! Am I reading this correctly? I hope that I’m in error, and I hope that you’ll explain yourself further, because an enhanced explanation of what you mean is needed.
Look, CUPE members are largely civil servants; they understand the importance of governance, and why and how things tend to fall apart if people don’t show up to work. If anything, the anti-prorogation movement should be embracing the support of the labour movement – and for the most part I’m convinced that this is happening.
Don’t diss organized labour because they sometimes are forced to strike. Trust me, I don’t know anyone in a union anywhere who would choose to walk a picket line for a couple of hundred bucks in strike pay a week (at best) over showing up to work and earning a dignified wage. Yes, sometimes unions strike and as a result they don’t show up to work. When CUPE strikes, local governments are often completely shut down.
But suggesting that a strike is the same as proroguing parliament is just out to lunch, and frankly offensive to our brothers and sisters in unions throughout this great nation of ours. Instead of this anti-union attack, you should be approaching the anit-prorogation movement in solidarity with the labour movement. Green values and labour values are often coincidental. Social justice is high on the minds of both Greens and those in the labour movement. One of the things about Harper’s prorogation of parliament which really sticks in my craw is the fact that he has so little regard for the hard-working people who make up this great nation of ours, many of whom belong to and support unions.
I sincerely hope that I’ve misinterpreted your blog. Otherwise, this ugly smear against CUPE specifically and organized labour in general is really quite reprehensible, and as a Green, I’m extremely unimpressed to be reading this sort of thing on another Green’s blog.
Hmm... unions are sometimes
Hmm... unions are sometimes forced to strike? If they are forced to strike why is the image that CUPE displays on their about page of their website a photo of three employees on strike? Shouldn't it be of three employeers hapily at work? They are proud that they have the power to disrupt our lives to get what they want. Unemployment among people my age is still at or near a 30 year high and yet we're looking down the barrel of record deficits while public employees or going on strike to demand bigger and bigger pieces of the action.
College instructors are threatening to go on strike. This will be their second strike in a few years. The students are treated like pawns. They plan these strikes in the second semester so that they threaten to derail graduations. In Ontario if you are a College student you will probably end up a hostage of the union at one point or an other during your studies.
How about the OC Transpo drivers in Ottawa who when on strike because (even though many of the drivers make >$70,000/year) the senior drivers wanted to keep gaming the scheduling system so that they only worked 6hrs per day but were paid for 8hrs?
Or the York students who lost a semester?
How about CUPE having anti-Semite Sid Ryan in charge?
Or the fact that hardly anyone in my generation will have a company pension plan and yet I'm supposed to be OK with my tax dollars going to pay the pensions at GM?
Unions have gotten as greedy and as untrustworthy as management. I'm not saying CUPE shouldn't be against prorogation, they should be. Their choice of words however is ironic.
Also last time I checked Green's promoted local small businesses and strong local economies. It's the NDP who want trickle-down economics with organized labour at the top.
~ Dave Bagler
You don't have a clue what you're talking about
Wow. Just wow. Where the hell did that rant come from? You can't be that misinformed about organized labour, can you? So...your answer to the situation that you describe regarding "your" generation being deprived of a pension plan is...to bash the unions who are fighting for pension plans? The answer to York Students losing a semester is...to force educators to suck it up when faced with what they deem as unacceptable working conditions? Ditto the situation with the colleges. Don't you think that maybe there is some legitimacy to their grievances, or are you blinded by your anti-union rhetoric to even consider the possibility that there's more to the story than fat-cat unions always wanting more?
Perhaps instead of bashing unions in the workplace, maybe it's time to organize your workplace so that you might be able to negotiate things of importance to you with your employer...like a company pension plan maybe. Sure, you can try doing that on your own, and maybe if your employer is enlightened, you'll get somewhere. But organizing will probably get you further.
Sure, Greens promote local small businesses. That's one of the reasons I'm a Green. Here in Sudbury, we had a very vibrant mining supply sector...until Inco and Falconbridge were purchased by Brazilian and Swiss multi-national corporations, who brought in their own people to service the mines they left open, displacing local jobs. So much for the vibrant small businesses who serviced this sector of our economy. Over a 1,000 jobs lost in that sector alone, and that's just within the past year and few months.
With regards to the notorious Vale Inco, formerly CVRD of Brazil, they've treated their workers with such disdain that they won't even agree to bargain an end to the 7 month strike which has paralyzed my community. Trust me, USW would love to be at the table to negotiating rather than on the picket line, but the employer is hell-bent to destroy the gains the union has made piece-meal over the past 5 decades. I'm not sure how having 3,000 people on strike for 7 months is building a strong community.
Yet it sounds to me that you'd rather support the multi-nationals whom I might add our government is complicit in allowing the seizure of our resources, seeing revenues leave Canada's borders instead of being kept in the communities where they are created. Ya, that's real Green, Dave.
Strong local economies are built through a number of factors, including partnerships between labour and capital...but never are they built when capital exploits the workers. If you fail to understand this basic principle of social justice, what the hell are you doing here? Because to me it seems that with your over-the-top anti-union rant, you're succeeding only in making the Party look silly.
Finally, if you really think for a minute that public sector workers are going on strike for increasingly bigger pieces of the action, buddy you clearly don't work in the public service, where unionized employees have seen real wages fall over the past 20 years, and have seen benefits stripped at every opportunity. If you think public service unions like CUPE are fighting for more More MORE, man, open your eyes. Fights, where they happen, are because the unions are just trying to hold onto to what they have. You can't just look at raises over a certain number of years to make this conclusion (and even when you do, please factor in inflation and increased costs for everything from fuel to food), you need to look at the whole package...what was given up.
Small businesses generally understand that it's important to give their workers a living wage. Sometimes, though, it's necessary to organize, especially if your employer isn't a small business, but a much bigger one such as a municipal government or a multinational corporation. That's the reality of our society. If, as a Green, you only want to receive the support of community-minded small business leaders, your focus is too narrow and does nothing to help build the Party.
The NDP doesn't own organized labour. Members of unions vote for all of the political parties. Don't write off unions, because it's bad for the Green Party.
Wrong.
Now, I'm not a member of any political party in Canada, I'm a voter without party affiliations, I don't care what's good or bad for one party or another, I care about my country independently without party-platform-oriented biases. That said, as someone who has been directly affected by strikes as both a high-school and college student, as someone who has been directly affected by a strike within the last year as a resident of Toronto, and as someone who has been a member of CUPE, I have to agree with some of Dave's assertions. For starters, every strike that's ever touched me has had wages as a central issue. In several of these cases, it was the wage paid to individuals without any real specialized skill sets, without extensive education or training, who were in several cases being paid salaries within 1 tax bracket of dental hygienists. And in every education-related case, these strikes were intentionally timed to hurt the students as much as possible. Lets take a look at that for a minute:
-You're going into debt (presumably - specific to post-secondary) to educate yourself in order to better your future and contribute to your community
-During the strike you maintain the same living expenses as while attending school
-If you're working as well as attending school, there's absolutely no guarantee that you can take on additional work hours to bolster your income while waiting for the strike to end
-(a)You lose class hours that you've already paid for or else (b)your semester is extended
--a) You will receive absolutely no compensation for lost instructional time, whatever you were supposed to learn during that portion of the semester is lost, and you've essentially paid for X weeks of instruction and living expense unnecessarily. Your teachers/support staff/etc get a substantial raise over the next several years.
--b) You were planning on going home to stay with your parents for the summer, but instead get to stay longer and pay additional living expenses. Again, no compensation will be provided. If you were graduating, you're late to the job market compared to graduates from other provinces. Your teachers/support staff/etc get a substantial raise over the next several year.
Now lets note, York University offered a 9.25% raise over 3 years (these were already the highest-paid T.A.s in the country, earning about $20k/year for part-time, cited by the T.O. Star as 10hrs/week work while attending school) and the union baulked at it because it wasn't enough. This was in a time of economic crisis.
I'll sum up to say simply that in my experience unions, while at times necessary to right wrongs, have become twisted into a largely detrimental entity that is really only lauded by those who benefit directly from the wage increases and often unwarranted job-security (those with seniority no-longer have real accountability, I've seen it in practice with both profs and high school teachers), and those who have little-to-no experience with unions. Conceptually they are noble, in reality they largely aren't.
Honk if you love cookies
Interesting thought. This talk of strike makes be think maybe the MPs should picket outside the GG's office. Or the PM's office... or his house... or his favorite pub, I don't care, but I'm feeling like the majority of them aren't being insistent enough on this issue. I mean certainly there are a handful of very visible MPs speaking up. Speaking up in Parliament is one thing, but maybe sparking some very visible public outcry would help on this issue.
Or maybe there's a certain amount of apathy on the issue. I can remember as a naive youth hoping for an OSSTF strike so that I could have a "vacation" from school. MPs still get paid during the time parliament is prorogued, don't they? Even though they aren't doing business? What about the PM? If the CUPE governed employees (or any other union for that matter) were paid a full age when they were on strike (i.e. were "voluntarily" - which is really too strong a word since a strike vote is often a pretty small majority and sometimes questionable at that.. I digress - "voluntarily" not working in order to force a renegotiation (i.e. higher wages.. more control.. buying time before a confidenc-- digressing again)... okay.. to the point, if they were paid in full while on strike, would the strikes a) occur more often - like every time the contract was up for renewal, and b) last much longer? I think so.
I believe I lost my actual comment somewhere in this mess of digital alphabet soup, but I hope it's thought-provoking if anyone finds it.
*HONK*
Look I'll admit at some point I lost you in there (and then found your point again) but I really do like the idea of having people picket.
~ Dave Bagler
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