Public Anger at Workers is Misdirected
Jun 29, 2011
The public response to the recent labour disputes at Air Canada and Canada Post has been disconcerting, to put it mildly. A real air of hostility has emerged towards those public service employees to are striving to maintain (and hopefully improve) their working conditions.
Underlying this is the attitude that “I don’t have benefits/job security/x weeks of vacation, so why should they?” A recent Macleans editorial has made a similar argument, with talk of this new “economic reality” that seems to be code for the idea that we need to roll back workers’ rights and the progress that has been made over the last number of decades in order to pay for the sins of others.
Groups like the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives have been highlighting the growing wage gap between middle-class working Canadians and those at the upper end of the income scale. Canada’s middle class is shrinking. It’s understandable that people resent the fact that management and CEO salaries continue to skyrocket in times of recession while they have to watch their budgets and spending and hope for maybe a cost of living increase in their salary.
But for some reason this resentment isn’t directed at those at the top of the income scale. It’s instead focused on middle-class unionized workers and the achievements they’ve made over time. One would think that it would make more sense for people to look at the gains made by this segment of the workforce and aspire to having something similar one day, or to hope that their offspring have these opportunities in the future.
So it becomes a selfish argument, as outlined above, that is based on the odd rationale that, since these people don’t have the same particular benefits, no one else should either. It basically becomes a race to the bottom of the barrel rather than effort to strive for better conditions for everyone. Social progress becomes even more difficult than normal when we try to erode workplace gains rather than create examples of good policy and practice to which we all should hope to aspire. As a recent commentator put it, “if the founders of Medicare thought that establishing public health care would be unfair to those who grew up without it, where would we be today?”
Society has certainly become more narcissistic and entitled in general. Many think that if someone has something then they should have it too. And if they can’t get it, well, then screw everyone else. Union members that resist this “new economic reality” (which, by the way, they had no hand in orchestrating) are thus painted as obstructionist and out of touch with the fiscal times.
It’s okay – even good – to be angry. But the hostility is misplaced.
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Well Russ that button says it all. Unless our public school system, and we as parents and gradparents start implementing and teaching labour education, soon our young people will have no knowledge of where our social programs and medicare came from. They will be unable to relate to how hard our fathers/mothers and grandparents worked and fought towards making our working lives better. Many workers in the public sector (and/or uneducated union members) are also saying that if you work in private business/ industry you get perks and bonuses not available to union workplaces. But that is what is about in Canada, FREEDOM. Freedom of choice. Freedom of speech. Freedom of where to live, to work, where to be educated, where and how to bring up our children and freedom of religion and freedom of politics. So I agree our hostility is definitely misplaced. Today, CANADA DAY, we should realize and cherish our freedom and think about our education system and how we as "educated union members" can work together in all workplaces and how we can improve our labour education and our Canadian history in the classrooms of our children and grandchildren. We can start contacting our politicians and start asking them these questions, and start asking them now - when they call on the phone and at the door the next few months campaigning :). HAPPY CANADA DAY!
dnavitka - 2011-07-01 11:45