Say what you want, but from where I’m standing, it sure looks like that Jennifer Lavallee person has herself a great gig.
Jennifer, of course, is the Executive-Director of Community Living Renfrew County South, and she’s currently in the midst of a magic carpet ride.
Her empire continues to hum along, albeit with reduced or compromised services, but that’s no real impediment, so long as the money keeps flowing in.
She doesn’t have the hassle of dealing with a troublesome union always nagging at her about their supposed rights, whatever those are. Inconveniences to running a tight ship, I guess.
She even has her own security force, of at least two guys anyways, but that’s two guys more than she had before, right? So that’s pretty cool. The money’s there for that too, I guess.
Professionally speaking, Jennifer appears to be living the dream.
At this rate, she’d probably prefer this labour dispute goes on indefinitely. I mean why wreck a good thing, right? No time to be upsetting the proverbial apple cart.
And she doesn’t even have to leave the confines of her own home.
Maybe, with a little luck, she can put the kibosh on that pesky Day Program that seems to bother her mightily, maybe pull the plug on it like she apparently did in Pembroke during a previous stint there as a decision-maker extraordinaire.
Simply put, there appears to be no motivation whatsoever to do anything to help bring this dispute to a resolution. I mean, why would she want to wreck such a good deal?
A good deal for Jennifer is not a good deal for anyone else unless you’re someone inextricably attached to her coattails. For the developmentally-challenged adult clientele, this new status-quo is a period of bleak difficulty, of hardship, of loneliness, and of despair. With the shuttering of Day Program services, clients are more or less confined to quarters, meaning they often don’t see the outside of their own rooms, whether they be in a home or at home. There is nowhere to go, or more specifically, nobody ton take them. They live ostensibly alone, separated from their friends, divorced from many of the rich relationships and experiences they once enjoyed.
Under Jennifer’s good deal, their homes have become their prisons. And it seems she’d like to make that a permanent arrangement.
Let’s face it, the money tap is wide open right now when before it was so constricted that not enough flowed out to do things like give workers a fair raise. When it comes to workers and clients, Jennifer says there’s no money, and that we should take up our complaint with the “funder.” Yet when it comes to putting the screws to those very same workers and clients, the money truck makes regular deliveries.
All paid for by that same “funder,” the one that’s not involved. The one that won’t talk or take any ownership over how this whole mess got started and what they could do to bring it to a just and fair resolution. They are reticent and reluctant to get involved because they have no interest in just and fair anything. They serve interest groups who seek advantage, not groups at a disadvantage.
Replacement workers don’t whine about seniority. They don’t require a 6% Bill 124 retro-active payout. They don’t ask for raises, since they don’t have to, they already make $4 more an hour than the unionized workers they’re replacing. The y don’t have issues with working conditions since they’re conditioned to do pretty much what they’re told. And they’re easily replaceable since their employment can be terminated at the drop of a hat. To folks like Jennifer, there are plenty more where they came from.
So the empire keeps humming along. It’s not necessary the the empire function efficiently or fidelity to its mission statement, it’s just important that it be her empire, warts and all.
So here we are as Ontario taxpayers paying more money for a degraded system and product, when we could pay less for a better product just by giving the unionized workers a fair deal.
Tell me there’s no politics involved here.
And honestly, what does the the presence and expense of security guards and private investigators have to do with client care? How do they enhance or contribute to the well-being of clients in any way?
Short answer: they don’t. It’s a waste of our money.
Replace unionized workers with people making more money but with the additional expense of food, lodging and transportation. We never had to pay those expenses to the unionized workers, but we’re paying for them now with the stand-ins.
And we never had to pay for a security detail that essentially protects nothing.
And now we have an Executive-Director who essentially gave herself a 10% raise when money was supposedly tight. Some would say the Board of Directors gave her that raise. Others would say same difference.
How long are we going to sit around as taxpayers and put up with this sham? It shouldn’t matter what your thoughts on unions might be. One way or another, this is a colossal waste of our tax dollars perpetrated by people who swear up and down that they’re the ones who are here to protect our tax dollars from the so-called “gravy train.”
What they didn’t tell us is that they’re the same guys driving their own version of a gravy train, and we can see perfect evidence of that with Community Living Renfrew County South.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 