I’ve stated before the enormous cost incurred by somebody to pay replacement workers $4/hour more than striking workers while having their meals, lodging, and transportation all paid for, a situation entering its seventh week.
I’ve also pointed out the hiring of security guards and private investigators, another group having their wages, meals, lodging, and transportation costs all paid for.
The question I have is a simple one: Paid for by whom?
If someone is going to suggest to me that this money is coming exclusively out of the operating budget or any reserves held by Community Living Renfrew County South, then that would be an eyebrow raiser of the highest order. It would also have the optics of being the most mean-spirited and unfair approach to collective bargaining imaginable. Imagine the agency, CLRCS, insisting it’s so cash-strapped that it can’t afford to properly pay it workers only to turn around and throw precious cash and resources out the window so as to make a stand against a union local. Such a stance would represent the very worst of pettiness and outrageous waste of taxpayer dollars.
Not for a second do I believe any of that to be correct or accurate. Because I don’t think CLRCS or any other similar agency has that kind of cash to throw around in the first place, let alone the organizational chops to plan such an effort at such scale and on a local level. The simple fact that this very same thing is happening in other jurisdictions also suggests a coordinated effort managed and executed by an entity of greater stature and resources than a small local agency, here or elsewhere.
The only entity with this kind of muscle, outside of a multi-billion dollar corporation, is the government itself, in this case the PC government led by Doug Ford.
This is the sneaky — not so sneaky — way the government can attempt to keep its hands clean of any of the unsavoury optics involved with attempting to wrestle a legitimate union local to the ground. It allows the government t to shrug their shoulders in public and claim they’re not involved, thereby hoping to escape any potential political damage that may accrue to them had they been more obviously and visibly involved.
Smoke, mirrors, and what appears to be intentional misrepresentation of the facts, that’s what I think. There are other, better and more easily-understood words that can be used to describe this approach, but I’ll settle for deliberate misrepresentation.
The government’s case, or rationale, for claiming non-involvement boils down to a couple of arguments that they’d make to back up their position. First, they’re going to say that they’re — the government — not the “employer of record.” That’s technically true but not accurate in any real sense, but that’s the stick they’re going to lean on. The government will claim that it’s not a signatory of any collective agreement, also true, but again spurious in a practical and logical sense. They will say that they don’t sit at the bargaining table, also true to a degree, but the shadow of government looms over that very same table, so again, some weak logic.
Actually, the government determines the overall funding envelope available to the agencies in the first place and establishes funding priorities and program requirements as part of this funding. They could, if they wished, provide further funding for places like Community Living. They could also, if they chose to, intervene in the situation with legislation, or they could offer legitimate third party mediation services.
As to those mediation services, in-house provincial government mediation smacks of one party having the advantage of being at the bargaining table with a mediator paid for by the same shadowy entity that pays their own executive salaries. That’s a baked-in conflict of interest in my view.
If the provincial government wanted this strike to end it could do so in days through legislation, except Ford and the boys and girls are on the summer barbecue circuit. The legislature would have to be recalled from its lengthy summer recess to do something like that, and that would upset Tory MPPs who would have to leave their summer homes in the Muskokas to come back to Toronto to vote, and that’s not something any Tory wants to do. Plus, in my view, the Tories aren’t exactly a group that’s going to come running to the rescue if the folks who need rescuing are a bunch of union types.
The government wants all the advantages of these arm’s-length agencies. All they need to do its continue to underfund them and let the people in charge of these local agencies deal with the seamier side of collective bargaining, stuff like attempting to look fair. It’s my opinion that this stand-off approach to agency funding is a convenient barrier against the government getting side-swiped by negative public opinion.
But criticism needs to be directed towards where it’s earned, and that puts the government of Ontario in my spotlight.
And the only thing that’s going to influence them one way or another is the application of concentrated political pressure on their elected members. In our case, that would Conservative MPP Billy Denault, aka Billy the Kid.
I don’t give three figs about his statement that the government is not a party to negotiations because I think that’s wrong and worse, disingenuous.
I would put pressure on him, or any other Conservative MPP who won a close race in their respective riding in the last election.
What would be even better? That this pressure were to be applied by people not belonging to OPSEU 472, but rather concerned community members, people who are every bit as upstanding as the Executive-Director says her Board of Directors are.
Imagine. Upstanding people disagreeing with other upstanding people. Standing up to other upstanding people. The optics are fabulous.
It’s not like anybody gave them a monopoly on upstanding people.
Call Billy’s office. Fill up his email inbox. Gather in front of his constituency office. Protest in front of CLRCS on a day where the union won’t be present, so as to remove the obvious complaints and accusation that the two groups were working in concert.
Instead of giving the symbolic finger to OPSEU 472, the government would be facing regular and non-affiliated community members, moms and dads, brothers and sisters. Simple, decent, caring, concerned, yet ordinary people.
People who vote.
One such event appears to be planned for a Thursday later this month at Low Square here in Renfrew, and I think that’s great. My only thing is that when this event is held, on the 23rd of July, that would mean these workers would have been on the picket lines for a full three weeks more than they already have with still no resolution in front of them. But things such as these are not easy to plan, and it takes time to put efforts like this together. Nevertheless, it’s absolutely the kind of thing that needs to happen if we, the tax-paying public, are going to weigh in on this for the public good. I will say, though, that the poster for the event indicates the presence of OPSEU personnel.
What I’m hoping for is well-meaning members of the community coming together independently of the union, the greater the distance the greater the credibility.
The government is watching. Their poll numbers are sliding and they’re becoming increasingly politically vulnerable. And they have such thin skins and low tolerance for criticism.
Put pressure on them, real pressure, earnest pressure, and apply that pressure on their most sensitive spots, those being their elected MPPs. Some of those guys are starting to wonder if they’re going to be able to hang on to their seats the next time around. And please don’t tell me that such a campaign isn’t worth the effort in a riding like ours where a 25 year-old kid gets elected simply because he’s a Conservative.
Any effort to do the right thing is an effort worth making. And he, and they, won’t like it, and you can take my word on that.
Tell these people that you’re getting tired of your tax dollars being abused for the purposes of scoring a political vengeance victory over organized labour. Tell them to get their “side” to the table to bargain in good faith. And when Billy tells you he’s got nothing to do with it, tell him you don’t care and to go do it anyways.
For the public good.
You’d be surprised what political pressure, as exercised in the pursuit of justice, can do.
And how things that “can’t be done” can suddenly, and magically, get done.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 