Tragedy

Tomorrow/this morning bloggers and the local media are going to be awash with opinions about the CUPE No vote on July 15. Most opinions aired by our two local media conglomerates (Canwest and CTV Globemedia) will be negative and particularly distasteful: "...greedy civil servants with cushy jobs and job security...no one else has what they have...if I don't have it, why should they!"

I am disgusted by these comments. I can't put it more strongly, how revolted I am that there are people in our city who actually believe that if they don't have something, no one else should either. It's an unChristian view that destroys communities, it doesn't build or create commonalities. Why should we expect only the lowest common denominator in our collective lives? Government is US not THEM, whoever 'them' is. It's us collectively working together to provide what we could never be able to on our own. It's US creating ways of living together, 230,000 people in a relatively small area, rules for living that we can all abide by.

We now have 1,800 taxpayers off the job for nearly a third of a year. These people are the ones who provide early learning to our children, register our businesses, issue bingo licenses for charities, run our children's drop in centres, arts or sports programs, inspect buildings and playground equipment, pick up the trash and mow the parks and sports fields. Their income, which comes from tax dollars (ours and theirs), helps support local businesses - corner stores, retailers at the mall, supermarkets, downtown bars; and non-profits - children's sports clubs, cancer charities, club memberships, etc.

People are losing their homes - not just strikers, but the people who depend on the city workers for their business. When Chrysler announced they would be eliminating the third shift at the minivan plant (1,200 people), we were all sad, because we all know that for every job in the Big 3, there are 7 or 8 jobs that depend on the Big 3 money. The city strike has half again as many people out, but no one is talking about how many spinoff jobs CUPE wages support. I can tell you, civil servants consume just like the rest of us, buy gas and oil changes, buy knickknacks and trampolines at Costco, support fundraising drives for local charities and arts organizations, pay membership in hockey associations and baseball leagues. This has gone on long enough. This isn't a strike anymore - it's a tragedy for everyone involved.