I hope for the best, but regrettably, I also feel a certain fear for the worst.
Cynicism will do that to a person.
Today at noon marks the deadline for a potential CLRCS response to OPSEU 472’s invitation to join them in mediated bargaining talks beginning this coming Monday.
The hope comes from the fact that I view the union’s invitation to be a legitimate and positive step towards moving this labour dispute along the road to possible resolution and reconciliation. It’s an attempt to break the impasse.
The fear comes from an acquired cynicism that I’ve developed over the years towards managerial tactics in collective bargaining situations. There’s also a deeply-held and legitimately-earned suspicion of government intentions around this whole issue.
The OPSEU invitation specifically mentions the need for the “funder” to be a party at the negotiating table. The funder is the provincial government, the body that sets agency funding levels and also pays for all of the anti-worker measures being employed across the province.
This government would likely consider its participation as a a direct party as an extraordinary loss of face, mostly because, as always, they’ve managed to paint themselves into a corner. The trick is how to walk back your disingenuousness and your stunning vituperativeness towards public sector unions without making yourself look and sound stupid.
Make no mistake, the government have put themselves in this position by their own hand, choosing to take this aggressive and vengeful stand against its own people, its own workers, and its own taxpayers and voters. While climbing down from that position would be constructively awesome, we have to remember that these are humans who carry on their shoulders grudges with scores to settle with entities they view as political enemies. So back-tracking on previously-held positions, even if those positions are untenable and hard-hearted, is going to be a tough thing for them to do. It will outrage their so-called political base, and I can already hear the angry chatter as all the old boys sitting at Tim Hortons every afternoon howl in protest.
But that’s their problem, not ours. They made the mess in the first place with horrendously inadequate funding. So they can damned-well be part of fixing that mess. Hell, knowing them, they’ll likely take credit for swooping in as the saviour. Literally taking the credit for solving a crisis of their own making and engineering.
Whatever floats your boat. I don’t think at the end of all this that songs and poems will be written heaping accolades on anybody. This has been a grinding seven week ordeal. Management still collects their inflated paycheques while unionized workers get by on subsidies and the honks of passing motorists. This is not a level playing field, not by a long shot.
If the government wants to perform an about-face and sit down at the table, and that participation leads to a fair agreement ending all of this, then as far as I’m concerned, they can take all the credit they want for being the heroes who came out of the sky to save the day. If that’s how they need to spin it, then spin away.
There is great risk for Community Living Renfrew County South — CLRCS — if they decide not to accept this offer. Both sides, over time, have made claims that the other doesn’t want to talk. But this is a very public and very recent invitation by OPSEU, and good-faith invitations appear to be what the public wants to see.
Should the head honchos over at Fort Lavallee decline this invitation, the optics of that would be terrible for them, and by extension the government at large. The ever-increasingly concerned public will be sorely tempted to not receive that decision very well, and are more than likely to then assign the preponderance of blame for the impasse to the agency and its leadership.
And that same concerned citizenry might be inclined to intervene with words and actions of their own. They are, after all, taxpayers. They’re the ones paying for all of this.
It appears the government has hung these executive leaders out to dry this whole time, leaving them with little or no room to manoeuvre. But that said, there’s always room to manoeuvre for anyone truly willing to do the right thing. When somebody says “we can’t do that” it simply means that they don’t want to or are afraid to because the action in question may ruffle the feathers of some rather important birds. The kind of birds that’ll return to take a dump on your head if you piss them off.
It’s like saying that you can’t get there from here, or here from there. It just makes no realistic sense.
We’ve all heard the maxim that says that where there’s a will there’s also a way.
Today marks an important opportunity for CLRCS to demonstrate that they, indeed, have the will to find the way.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 