More labour unrest is in the offing at college campuses over 28 issues including the instructors’ displeasure at being told how to teach. Public school system teachers are miffed at being told they have to sign a contract that freezes their wages for 2 years and stops them from banking any more vacation days to cash out at retirement. MPPs are headed back to work Monday to debate the bill. Employees at the Big Three are holding out for a share of profits now that things have turned around and there actually are profits they say should be shared.
The issues are more complicated than can be explained in one line, of course, and I’m not walking in their shoes. But at different times in my career I have been told my wage would stay frozen for 2 years, worked for a company whose fortunes turned around and I have been told repeatedly how to do my job. I believe my supervisor has that right. Turning the company around and making it profitable is part of why it has employers in the first place. And wage freezes sometimes occur in tougher times.
It will never make sense to me when someone feels they have the right to do “their” job any way they want. It’s only their job today. They don’t own it! The sense of entitlement is foreign to me.
Is it time to admit that in many cases, unions have outlived their usefulness? From my perspective they are not accomplishing what they set out to do all those years ago. Now we have HR departments and rights regulations that protect the worker in many cases. Yes, there are employers who have the soul of a snake with a sore throat. But when you look at the list of complaints, do you sometimes think, as I do, that the union was created for fairness, not to attempt to secure things the rest of the working population could never even hope to attain?
Unions have given us weekends, child labor laws, fair wages, and thousands of other ‘perks’, but as a union member, I don’t agree with many of the so-called demands presented by union representatives today. Some of these are throwaways, but make bad PR for the rest of us.
Concern yourselves with fairness to every employee, safety in the workplace, equality of pay for equal work, and several other more important issues.
I agree they have historically fought for and won many important things for workers. It brings to mind Sally Field in the movie Norma Rae. Those early organizers were bold, brave people who put themselves on the line for the common good. But my how things have changed. If my source is correct, CUPE leader Sid Ryan, for example, earns as much as a top corporate executive. I’m not saying he should take a vow of poverty, but that’s a lot of union dues.