To say that John Hanson is an interesting guy is to do a serious disservice to John Hanson.
He can talk with the best of them, and when he points that ladle at you to emphasis a point he’s making, you stand up and take note because you’re not entirely sure if he’s gonna smack you with it, and who the hell wants a ladle mark seared on their forehead going into the weekend?
John is a lot, and he’s a lot of things, but he showed up in Renfrew as the OPSEU Chair of Provincial Retirees and OPSEU Vice-Chair Provincial Retired Members Division 4. He came to town to back up OPSEU Local 472 in their dispute with CLRCS, something now entering its tenth week with absolutely no movement from the other side.
So he rolled into Ma-Te-Way on Friday morning in his shiny OPSEU van to fire up some pancakes and sausages for the local workers. Which worked out really nicely since 472 was about to embark on an episode of their own version of the Amazing Race. So spirits were high.
But I find that the spirit is always high with this group, something I find remarkable given the length of time they’ve been walking the bricks. It’s also something that’s unfortunately required when you know you have to eventually reach some sort of an agreement with another party that acts and speaks as if you’re not welcome or not wanted. Somebody who seems to want you feeling precarious in your employment, and maybe even more expendable than you thought you were.
It must make for a terrific working environment when you seem to encounter so much toxicity directed at you, and even perhaps at the clients you serve.
There’s no gold watch at a retirement party that will ever wash away the bad feelings engendered by management, or perhaps better stated, really poor management. Good leadership involves more than weilding a big stick and threatening everyone with it. In fact, good management means no big sticks need to be weilded at all. Good leaders engender trust, and even loyalty. That’s going to be hard to come by moving forward if this same management style continues.
John Hanson, though, is a leader, and he’ll even flip pancakes for you. But it’s easy for John because, well, he’s on the right side of things. He talks of things like care, compassion, fairness, equality, and justice. And he’s willing to throw down on anyone demonstrating a purposeful lack of care, lack of compassion, or lack of fairness. He’s going to be the type you can count on to stand up against inequality and injustice.
This is leadership, notwithstanding his unknown intentions with that ladle of his.
His message Friday was simple and on point.
Put political pressure on the government and on MPPs through a campaign of emails, letters, phone calls, voice mails and demonstrations. And don’t let anybody tell you this stuff doesn’t work, because it does. MPPs want to keep their jobs as much as anyone else does, so when they get feedback, especially negative feedback, they take notice. If that feedback is measured in the hundreds, or even thousands of intakes, they’ll begin to sweat just like anyone else would.
And that goes just as much for rookie MPPs from ridings that support Conservative candidates every singe time because, well they don’t know why, they just do. Because ridings flip. And I remember when this riding was solidly Liberal. So maybe Billy shouldn’t be getting too comfortable or too cocky in his new job. It’s not beyond the realm of possibilities that he could lose it.
Back to John. He’s a trade unionist through and through, a point of pride in a guy who has fought the good fight all over the province. And he’s just the tonic for a group who have dealt with a wide array of hardships over these past ten weeks. He was just what was needed, and when needed.
I’m just really happy that people like this are out there, and that they’re willing to ride to the support of their brothers and sisters when called upon to do so.
In closing, I just want to heap praise on OPSEU members in Northern Ontario who have collapsed their picket lines in an effort to help fight the raging fires in that part of the province. They put together packages of essentials for the firefighters to aid in the logistics chain. And they’re also providing support to displaced families. And in one of the most humane things I’ve ever heard tell of, they’re looking after all the stray dogs left stranded by the fires.
This is who these people are. Ready to drop everything and run towards the danger.
No wildfires currently rage in this part of Ontario, but I have no doubt we’d see something similar here if such an unfortunate circumstance were to ever come along. Watching these local workers at their barbecues, gatherings, and pancake breakfasts, I’m amazed at how they continue to interact with their clients, not out of a sense of optics, but out of a genuine sense of caring. I see this kind of thing time and again, and it’s heart-warming.
I wonder, do they do heart-warming over at Fort Lavallee?
NEWSMAGRENFREW 