You’ve put in the time and you’ve paid your dues. You successfully rose through the ranks of your workplace, where now you sit in the chair where real decisions are made.
You just secured a 10% raise. Hell, you’re even on the Sunshine List.
Life is looking pretty good.
But then your employer, and those senior to you, hand you an assignment that has all the appearances of a bag of shit.
This is the story of one Jannifer Lavallee, Executive Director of Community Living Renfrew County South. She’s just been given the task of doing the government’s dirty work, that being their point negotiator in a contract dispute with her employees, members of Local 472 of OPSEU.
And her first order of business is to flat-out ignore the people she’s spent all this time working with. The government says it’s an issue between the employer and the union, yet of the two parties to the issue, one refuses to come to the table. That would be Jennifer
The woman on the Sunshine List is refusing to meet, much less negotiate, with workers who make far less and are asking only for the 6.5% retro-active raise they’re entitled to as part of the Supreme Court decision to strike down Bill 124, the latest Tory attempt to remove collective bargaining rights from Ontario’s public sector unions.
Way to go, Jenn.
Now, please don’t get me wrong. There are plenty of other Jennifers out there doing the same dirty work. Government employees upon which the province has downloaded the nasty part of this business, leaving them to play the role of official assholes, something they’re prepared to do for the big (relatively) bucks they’re making and the powerful (relatively) chairs upon which they sit. To make matters worse for Jennifer and all the other Jennifers, the government has pretty much hog-tied these “executive-directors’ as to what they can do and say, which is essentially nothing and, well, nothing.
This Doug Fordian strategy has been around forever. The idea is that it insulates the government from political blowback when the next election rolls around. The hope is that the workers will forget all about the government’s intransigence, but will remember the role Jennifer played in the whole messy business. The government doesn’t want the bad look.
It’ll be Jennifer that wears the stains.
A picket line extending into its fifth week. And Jennifer has not seen fit to show even the modest respect of showing up at the table. Let them wither on the vine seems to be her approach, of course stage-managed by the premier’s office. I’d throw some shade at Michael Parsa, the Minister of Children, Community, and Social Services, but he’s just a hapless toady anyways, who also answers to the premier. An empty suit in a chair. Don’t expect him to display any integrity either, because doing so would lead to him being on the wrong side of the Cabinet Room door. Like Jennifer, he wants to keep his fancy chair too. And he’s willing to sacrifice his integrity to do that. Just like, seemingly anyways, Jennifer.
Unlike Jennifer, he’ll never have to look the people he victimized in the eye when all this is over.
So Jenn, which part of the concept behind good-faith bargaining is eluding you? If you want, I can come over and tutor you, maybe even bring along a light lunch. My goal would be to successfully drive home the point that good-faith is an essential aspect of good-faith bargaining.
Luckily for you, there will be no test at the end of the session. I’m not sure I’d like your chances.
Of course, this will never happen. Jennifer will never speak to me. I mean, what is she going to say? Imagine having to be the person to have to defend the government’s odious attempt to strip a small union local down to its studs? What defensible logic might she employ? What legitimate arguments could be put forward?
Jennifer will follow her orders. Keep her mouth shut and say nothing other than that bullshit about it being an issue between the employer and the union. Over and over again.
Rinse and repeat, ad nauseum.
In fairness, I don’t know Jennifer, so I have no idea what she’s like or how this may be impacting her. Being an unmitigated prick to the people you work with can mean a number of things. You could hold images of self-grandeur as you lord over your mini-empire. Maybe you’re a hard-ass trying to prove how goddammn tough you are, just like your boss the premier, another powder-puff posing as a tough guy to over-compensate for all the stuff he’s horribly self-conscious about. Nice hair though, both Jennifer and Doug both, so props where props are due.
Or maybe she’s caught in a tough place. Handed the poisoned chalice, with instructions to say nothing, but just hold it for the cameras. Maybe smile if you can manage.
It hasn’t really worked. Doug Ford was booed lustily at his own freaking Ford Nation picnic the other day, and Dougie doesn’t like that. It hurts his feelings. Makes him mad. And poor Jennifer will likely face new instructions to be even more of a disrespectful prick to the people she has to work with when all this is said and done.
I really don’t know how that could be possible, but Ford has a crack team of blue-chip AAA assholes working for him. Believe me, these guys will always find a way to go lower.
Jennifer, none of this would be said if you’d simply show up at the table and do what a negotiator is supposed to do, that being negotiate.
Or perhaps even just telling the truth that your hands are being tied by the government.
Instead, you’d rather sign on to a deliberate campaign of surveillance, intimidation, and the stonewalling of people just trying to attain what’s rightfully theirs, all of them at a salary point that is a percentage of yours.
Honest people trying to make an honest living doing the work of heroes with our most disadvantaged and vulnerable populations.
And you’re okay with disrespecting them, and keeping them down.
Jennifer, sometimes it must suck to be you. Uncle Doug wants you to do all the dirty work and take the hit for him too. And for you to keep sitting in that chair, you’ll do exactly that.
No doubt history will remember you warmly.
EDITOR’S NOTE:
it’s come to my attention that Jennifer Lavalee has, indeed, offered to sit down and talk to the Unit Local 472 to discuss “relevant” issues. But she has indicated that wages, seniority, working conditions, and the quality of the work environment are not issues that are deemed by her to be relevant, and therefore open to any discussion.
She has further maintained that the $0.35 raise the union got in 2024 represents their owed retro-active pay from the Bill 124 Supreme Court decision. Thirty-five Canadian pennies is supposed to represent a 6.5% wage increase?
I only added this note in fairness after labelling her as a no-show at the table. It seems she’s willing to show-up after all, so long as the union caves in to her demands.
So I stand by my point: this is not good-faith bargaining. It’s not good-faith anything. It’s deliberately sabotaging negotiations in advance. This is the advice she receives from the government-sponsored hacks who advise her on “negotiations.”
And advice she’s perfectly willing to execute on.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 