Why Unions Blow Chunks

If you’ve read my politically-inspired ramblings hereabouts, you’ve probably gathered my politics aren’t what you call “right-wing” or Conservative.  I think Harper’s politically acerbic, socially insensitive and ignorant of far too much for someone with his responsibilities – a view that many on the left side of the political spectrum would tend to share.  But that isn’t to say I’ve been the hugest fan of Jack Layton or even Stéphane Dion, although I think he did a better job than many in the media give him credit for.  But, until recently it would have been very hard for me to bring myself to vote for anyone in the NDP and although this is thanks to Harper, historically I’ve been more sympathetic to the Conservatives than anything the NDP stood for.  And for the first time in a long while, an event has occurred to illustrate this point: the OC Transpo strike.

As I understand it, bus drivers, mechanics and other personnel who serve the city’s transit service – called OC Transpo – walked off the job earlier this week due to, according to the union, a dispute over scheduling control.  For the past three years, bus drivers who can earn up to $70,000 / yr. have enjoyed the privilege of picking their own shifts with 1st selection going to those with greatest seniority.  This naturally led to a complicated scheduling scheme that was both difficult to manage and costly, and was blamed for numerous spending inefficiencies that had some of the best-paid drivers supposedly lounging about with little or nothing to do for hours yet leaving the system short of drivers for certain shifts.  Despite attempts to negotiate with the union for over 7 months, the union wouldn’t budge and decided to cause, in the words of the union local’s president “maximum disruption” just as the holiday season is at its busiest.

Add do this:

• picket lines downtown during afternoon rush hour that turn virtually all of downtown Ottawa (where I live) into a giant parking lot,
• a coordinated effort by the union to exclude a large segment of the eliible voting membership from participating in the election,
• threatened pickets on transitways and a refusal to allow other traffic on the transitways during the labour dispute,
• purposeful disruption of the upcoming World Junior Hockey Championships which were supposed to be allowed to have shuttle busses using the transitway to ferry teams from hotels in downtown Ottawa to Scotia Bank Place – the arena on the far west end of the city where the tournament is held
• with 20% more vehicle traffic on Ottawa streets due to the strike and such major traffic congestion, travel between hotels and the arena are now totally impractical threatening the event as a whole – the largest sporting event Ottawa has ever seen,

The union is also demanding a 5 –7% wage hike for its membership even though employees are already paid more than 24% more than equivalent positions in the private sector – this during the worst economic crisis the city has seen since the Great Depression and following years of property tax hikes averaging 6% annually.

The strike has left me almost completely stranded, of course.  Thanks to my unfailing “good” luck, my car up and decided to experience mechanical problems on Friday of last week – right before the strike and I’ve been unable to get it back on the road as of yet.  Although I’ve been working on restoring it to operation feverishly this week, in all likelihood it will be next week before I’ve got it running again.  I must visit a pharmacy for treatment daily and a clinic once a week for monitoring of a medical condition – alone this costs a $30 – $50 cab ride depending on the severity of downtown congestion.  It’s about the same for me to transit to work by cab under ideal circumstances – and that’s if I can actually find a cab.  As one might expect all cab companies are reporting pretty consistent 1 – 2 hour delays in dispatches.

And I’m not as badly off as some – thank God I’m not a senior citizen who lives in a suburb somewhere unable to drive or I’d simply end up a shut-in, as many now have thanks to the incompetence of city management coupled with the insensitive power-hungry union.  I can’t, for the life of me, imagine how the union expects to come out of this strike on top.  After today’s spectacle downtown blocking traffic for hours in every direction, the public is almost ready to crucify the transit local and plant the union president’s head atop the thin metal spike extending above the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill.

I’ve also been fortunate in that I work in a field where it’s possible to work from home at least, saving me from bankruptcy (at least for a short while).  Amazingly, no negotiations are planned and both sides appear more or less dug in for a long, protracted battle.  Right before Christmas no less!  I mean, I realize these overpaid bus drivers probably have stock portfolios that would make an investment banker blush, but you’d think it’s got to be at least a little uncomfortable for them to pull this kind of nonsense right before Christmas….

Either way, it’s going to be a long time before this city forgives union president Scrooge and his henchmen for this outrage.  Hopefully, Santa leaves every member of that union’s management a big lump of coal in the stocking this year!

UPDATE (11:51 PM EST, 11-Dec-2008)

And now looks like unions are behind this latest calamity – the defeat of the auto industry bailout package in the United States Senate!

Get ready for a rough ride on the markets tomorrow – but hopefully not too rough a ride; the economy’s already in the tank and there’s nowhere else for it to sink but completely down the drain….

Facebook’s Latest Invention (According to CNet, which dropped the ball this time)

Occasionally, one can’t help but get the idea the folks at CNet don’t like Microsoft very much.  And today’s latest example relates to a couple of stories they did concerning Facebook.com’s new authentication service offering.

• Facebook Connect: Scary but Good
• Video: Daily Debrief: Will Facebook be a game changer for social networking?

The service, called “Facebook Connect”, is one among a very few authentication services online – and the only one, according to the journalists crafting the stories in question, which holds the promise of becoming ubiquitous – even more so than the alleged leaders in this technological niche: OpenID, recently touted by Yahoo.

Did you guys ever hear of a little-known product called Microsoft Windows Live ID?

Why Live ID which has been the centrepiece of Microsoft’s online authentication offering for years (formerly Microsoft Passport and Passport.NET) and has been adopted by thousands of websites went unmentioned is unknown to me.  Were I to indulge in the same hyperbole and speculation CNet did in researching this story, I might just try to convince you Live ID is the only viable authentication option for web-facing applications.  Yay Microsoft!  Microsoft rules!  Ra ra ra!

But even I as an evangelist and enthusiast of Microsoft technologies would be ashamed to be so nakedly one-sided.  And so should CNet be, after letting these articles hit the web without edits introducing so much as a pretence of credible research and balanced reporting.

Canada’s “Crazy” Government

The Conservatives are in an uproar after today’s events on Parliament Hill.  Just to quickly recap:

• A formal coalition agreement to govern in Canada’s Parliament was signed by the 3 opposition parties today; including, the Liberal Party, the New Democratic Party and the separatist Bloc Québecois
• the agreement follows on the heels of a nation-wide federal election in which the Conservatives won 143 of a total 306 seats in the House of Commons (Parliament’s lower chamber, the seat of real power in Canada’s government)
• the agreement follows the governing Conservatives attempting to stifle the flow of money to opposition parties ($30 million), money used largely to finance research staff and public communications seen by them as key to providing an effective opposition
  • The Conservatives argued all political parties should fund themselves exclusively on donations
• the Conservatives have charged the move is “undemocratic”, “dangerous” and even “crazy”; adding a political crisis to an already troublesome economic crisis facing many nations in the world right now

Official election results, as summarized by CBC’s Election 2008 website.  Election Day itself was on October 14, 2008.

Today at work, I got pulled into (or felt compelled to participate in) a discussion about today’s events.  And a fellow that occupies a neighboring cubicle seemed very upset at this state of affairs, echoing the government’s charge that this was basically a political coup d’etat. Whatever you want to call this, a coup this is not.  This same individual seemed equally preoccupied that the Conservatives had “won the election” and thus had a mandate to govern, unable to conceive of how the opposition parties could possibly be allowed to take over.

At this I was a little amazed.  I respect this individual, but I can’t agree with his analysis at all, although I’m sympathetic to his notion of voting (as he clearly had) for the ‘winner’ of the election, and then having victory snatched away.  Nobody likes that. 

But Canada isn’t a country governed by the party that merely wins the most seats and treating the election result – a minority government as if minority status were simply a technicality is being very ignorant of how our system works, or, in my view, ought to.  Our government is an election of 306 members which happen to belong to variety of parties.  And if the members invest their confidence in a party other than that which won the most seats – then it is actually that party (or coalition of parties) which gets to form a government, with the leave of the Governor-General.

The only practical alternative in the end, one way or the other, is an election.  That’s our history.  That’s our convention. That’s Canadian democracy.

I admit, I didn’t vote Conservative.  Yet, I’m a fierce democrat (contrary to what your typical Conservative might think of us non-Conservatives) – and wouldn’t ever try to impose my views on my countrymen just because I thought I was more right or wiser than everyone else.  On election night, Canadians voted in only 143 Conservatives, which is not a majority.  That’s the bottom line.  To call this a ‘coup’ because democratically-elected members representing 65% of the popular vote is pure ideologically-motivated fiction.

Indeed, it’s ideology that’s at the heart of this “craziness”.  And inasmuch as we Canadians are supposedly aghast at the drama unfolding here in Ottawa, admonishing those whom we just sent to represent us as acting like “children”, we have a system we can be very sure will resolve the matter – ultimately, in another election if that’s what it comes to.  When that co-worker I’d cited earlier started talking about taking up arms to defend the government (somewhat tongue-in-cheek, I hope) simply because they were on the brink of losing a confidence vote is the real insanity here – and would set us down the road to setting Canada, a virtual utopia when compared with the environs of places like Mumbai, India, on a course to a kind of dysfunction it has and, God-willing, never will know.

There’s a place we dare not go, regardless of our own political differences.

So until someone comes forward with a better system that reconciles the varied possibilities inherent in a nation’s politics, I say people should reserve judgment and not think things have really got too “crazy”.  If the government gets too dysfunctional, there’s always an election around the corner that’ll allow everyone their say.  And even the specter of a coalition government propped up by a separatist party isn’t the worst thing that could happen politically.