BBQ SPEAKERS THROW SUPPORT BEHIND WORKERS

I went to a barbecue on Friday.

I caught wind that members of OPSEU Local 472 were having a get-together at the splash pad over at Ma-Te-Way. There was talk of a barbecue. This is the kind of thing, the prospect of free burgers, that has me coming over the neighbour’s fence every time.

And so I crashed the party.

And despite the fact that I’m largely unknown to these people, they had no problem with me milling about with them. Hell, they even fed me.

I had a bigger agenda than just free burgers and that free hot dog. I did arrive intent on speaking with some people. I was hoping I might be able to get some face time with people who have been impacted by this labour disruption. Particularly, I was hoping to hear from families with loved ones in the system as clients of the agency known as Community Living Renfrew County South.

I never did get any of those one-on-ones,. Primarily because I didn’t have to. As it turned out, the event was to have a schedule of speakers, ranging from OPSEU — Ontario Public Service Employees Union — representatives from different levels, Labour Council representatives, and other supporters representing other areas of organized labour. But also among the speakers were a number of families.

Murray McDonald, Huguette Shouldice, and Christine Gervais all spoke, and honestly, there are no words that I’m going to hammer out on a keyboard that would match the eloquence and heart-breaking reality that these people shared with the assembled audience. As I was able to set up my iPhone camera on a tripod, I just hit record and let they and my phone do all the heavy lifting. Those clips are available as support for this article.

Public speaking is an area that tends to scare most of us, and we all remember with fondness when our elementary teachers forced us to do that very same thing as part old a public speaking contest. Emotional therapists have been getting fat off the money they’ve made counselling the scores of people still carrying trauma from those grade six assignments.

These three parents stepped in front of the microphone Friday morning and delivered, all three of them, remarks that were made without notes, but also without flaw. I don’t know the level of experience any of these people would have addressing a relatively large group of others, but I suspect when you’re forced to advocate for your child over the course of many years, your ability to articulate your thoughts and feelings becomes more practiced. Added to that, though, is something even more important. The notion that, if you have something to say, and its important enough to you, then you’/re going to get it out no matter how frightened or intimidating soaking in public might be. Your thoughts become clear, and your ability to speak your truth and experience just comes to the forefront, mostly because it comes from the heart.

In other words, if it’s important enough to be said, a caring and devoted person will find a way to say it.

The three parents were fantastic, in terms of the stories they told, the experiences they’ve encountered, and the frustrations and challenges that seem to emanate on a regular basis from the management side of this dispute, both before and after this labour action got started. These are people who, for years. have struggled with a system that just can’t seem to get its act together. A system that involves the off-loading of critical government services to localized yet independent agencies. While funded, or rather under-funded by the provincial government, these are arm’s length organizations, and they pretty much chart their own course as much as determine how much of that government money actually trickles down into client care. With an executive director pulling down a salary of around $110,000/year after her own 10% raise, and a glut of managers to ostensibly assist with the running of the place, we can certainly assume the executive class in this story is being cared for. What we’re not sure of is how much is left over for the mission the money was intended to address or for the front-line workers tasked to execute it.

It’s like a huge financial fundraiser to raise money to feed children somewhere in Africa. The fundraiser is a huge success, all aspects of the community joining hands in common cause. Everyone congratulates themselves on being part of something that will make a difference in the lives of others. One day, several months later, a cargo plane appears over some location in Africa and the doors are opened. Somebody aboard the plane kicks out a box of Kraft Dinner, and the plane swings for home.

A box of Kraft Dinner is all that was left over for the children after everybody else up the food chain got their cut. And it probably wouldn’t even be the cool Kraft Dinner, the white stuff. Probably just a damned box of the legacy Kraft Dinner.

Another example of how the best intentions of some are capitalized upon by others.

The assembled striking workers were thanked by these parents with heart-felt appreciation for the work that they do with their children. They described the hardships these children are encountering as they struggle with replacement workers or reduced services. They speak of regression and they speak of depression. But it was clear that they were solidly and completely supportive of the workers. In fact, as the event past by, and as the speakers spoke, and as everyone hit up the barbecue afterwards, there were many — not several, not isolated — instances where I saw striking workers actually attending to these clients as they sat among them.

Because at the end of the day, no matter the context, these people are all family, workers and clients both. And when you care about people, you don’t simply stop caring for them just because you’re walking a picket line. In fact many clients show up on a regular basis to walk that same picket like, standing shoulder to shoulder with the people they view as family. People they want to see back at work. People they desperately want back in their lives.

It does, however, take two parties to negotiate, and one of those parties wishes to carry the mantle of being the villain in all this, management refusing g too come to the table and talk about anything.

That’s on the executive director and her enabling Board of Directors. The move here locally seems to be to freeze the workers out. After five weeks of disruption, that strategy is beginning to chafe at the broader public who pay taxes in this province, including the workers themselves who are witnessing their own tax dollars being used against them. Every single day this continues is another day of really bad optics for this board and its executive director.. It appears they seem intent on sleepwalking their way right to a full-on public relations disaster. And they do this by choice.

Because they think they’re so smart.

Finally, it’s been brought to mu attention that two clients served by the workers have died during this five-week disruption. I’m not suggesting these passings were directly the result of the work stoppage or because of any negligent act by the agency or any of its replacement workers. There was an information protocol where the executive-director would advise workers via email when a client of the agency passed. That email pipeline has been shuttered by the agency, locking out the employees. So nobody told the workers of these two passings of people they cared for and loved.

They found it out on the street.

I can articulate many mean-spirited actions and inactions that have been taken by this executive director with the support of that Board of Directors. But surely, a person has to be really scraping the bottom of what they’ve got when they reduce themselves to such pettiness.

Base, mean-spirited pettiness.

What a terrific look.

Murray McDonald encouraged the workers to continue their fight. He told them that sun will shine for them once again as this unfortunate situation reaches a conclusion, hopefully a just one.

That’s in contrast to the other side, the management side, where their own poor choices are leading them to a place where the sun don’t shine so good at all. Almost like they were the orchestra on the Titanic, playing merrily along as the ship sinks.

So many self-inflicted wounds will come back to haunt someone, or group of someones, when this is all over. It’s a situation that has not been handled well, not handled well at all. And at some point the pressure will get to where a change will be made.

A change in tactics, perhaps. A change in personnel? Almost certainly.

I await my invitation to the CLRCS executive picnic.