Solidarity for a few weeks

[forthright]

So, yesterday was the one-year anniversary of our closing date (it will never be hard to remember, since our mortgage payments always come out on the 13th) and our leap into homeownership as Windsorites. I have to say that although Windsor has every amenity one might reasonably want, it's not exactly home (any of our friends from Montreal want to

Comments

[owlfish]

I knew we'd bought around the same time, but it hadn't registered just how close. Our one-year anniversary of house-buying was on the 12th.

[forthright]

Happy house-i-versary!

[owlfish]

And to you!

[velvetpage]

I hate the way an economic downturn is used to shaft workers who are not really in one, basically by saying, "Be grateful you have a job - and we'll make sure you get no public support whatsoever."

I'd be far more annoyed with the City than with the workers - management usually has more resources than the workers, and if the City isn't willing to go to arbitration, that means they think they'd lose.

[forthright]

Yeah, absolutely, they think they'd lose, or at least, they think they might get all sorts of short-term measures (like a pay freeze) but nothing too serious. The problem is that there are enough strikers who are getting very belligerent in very public ways that the sympathy is largely on the city's side.

[velvetpage]

The strikers are fully aware that they have nothing to lose, probably; they lost public sympathy weeks ago, if they ever had it, and they see no reason to attempt to convince people who think they should be legislated back to work or some such.

Or at least, that was the general consensus when it looked like we might strike - worrying about public opinion during a teacher strike is like trying to stop the faucet from leaking before you've dealt with the burst pipe.

[rabidsamfan]

In Boston, the mayor asked the unions to accept a freeze in wages which had already been negotiated to increase this year. But he didn't get the concession until he froze his own wages (and the other managers.) Hasn't stopped them from hiring new managers though.

[forthright]

I would have absolutely no sympathy for the strikers if this were mostly about a one-time pay freeze or even a small cut. But the city's demanding to reduce benefits only for workers they haven't even hired yet and aren't likely to hire in any significant numbers in the next couple of years. Therefore, the immediate savings to the city is virtually nil, and thus it has nothing to do with the recession.

[rabidsamfan]

The nasty thing about that kind of strategy is that it intentionally creates unequal treatment even within the union. Which, of course, undermines the reason the union exists. My brother-in-law's union fell for it a few years ago, and now they are having trouble gaining support even among the membership for the current contract negotiations.