yes thats the point the corporation completely undermined the workers power and got exactly what they want because of the holidays
it was a calculated play the government fell for
Agreed but I think the union also misplayed it's hand. They recently turned down an offer to basically put the whole thing on hold till after the holidays and then slap an abitration deadline on the whole thing. They should have come back with yes to the hold, no to the deadline imo. A strike is playing politics, especially when you are a crown corporation. Take the pressure off the government to cave in and force you back to work and take up the fight afterwards. I think they got over-confident and thought that fucking up the holiday season would force management to come to the table faster and didn't take into account how the federal government would react.
Okay, except, Canada post already had literally since January to do anything. What, exactly, would stop them from just repeating that?
None of that is relevant though. You wanna shut down the mail during the holiday season you are asking to get legislated back to work and then you get nothing. Will management keep stalling? Maybe. But then you are just back at square one. If the back-to-work bill passes, you are at square less-then-one.
Way to go, making excuses for something that’s already been found to be unconstitutional once, I’m sure this will all work out fine.
It doesn't matter how wrong any of us think it is. It's an entirely expected move and the union should have planned for it. Because it was easy to see coming.
"The workers negotiated too hard" is the same line of logic that leads to the bullshit "I used to be left-leaning until someone said a mean thing and now I think trans people deserve to die" arguments, which are never convincing to me.
The union using its power at a time when it is strategically at its highest doesn't mean it's their fault if the government then decides to deal with it by being shitty and possibly illegal
But it wasn't. That's the entire point. Their position was fragile and they should have known that.
Like, your post here is pretty silly because you are assuming pointing out that the union misplayed it's hand here is the same as saying you think the government is right. They aren't. But whether they are right or not doesn't actually matter.
It's like international relations. It doesn't matter if we are right and the US is being a dick about some trade issue in violation of WTO rules. Being right doesn't get you anything when they have the power to fuck you regardless.
In that case, we might as well not have unions at all. If the options are a: only negotiate on the government's terms or b: fuck off, the government gets to do what it wants, then everything is broken well beyond what a union can fix.
Unless there is some insane overriding craziness, any back-to-work bill should be challenged and stricken down immediately by the courts.
And you don't start negotiating from the perspective of "Oh please great masters, if it's not too much trouble, could we please maybe if it doesn't inconvenience you negotiate with us?". You don't fold with a flush because your opponent has a gun.
You absolutely need to take reality into account.
Sometimes you are the small dog and need to accept that.
If you can't use your power, then you don't actually have power. Might as well take your chances with court cases, where there has been historical precedent for stopping government overreach like this. Otherwise, again, there's no point to even having unions.
Like, what's the benefit of just caving to the government? Hooray, now you have a shitty deal, the government knows that it can do whatever it wants, and everything is worse for everyone. At least this way there's a chance of changing something
Who said anything about caving to the government? What the heck are you even talking about? You are ranting about "Oh well, might as well not have unions" when literally no one is suggesting that.
The union is in a negotiation here and they need to have a better handle on what their leverage is going in it. They seem to have thought that they had the upper hand because of the christmas season and all the shipping going on but it's probably actually tilted against them because of that.
Only if the union doesn't take it to court in which case this has the potential to blow up in the governments face.
How long will that take though? And what's the downside for the government?
If you can force them back to work till the beginning of January the government (not management, but the government) wins cause that's all they care about.
Which is only an issue if they abide by the governments decision until the ruling is made.
Which if you believe the legislation is illegal you don't have to actually do.
So how does this blow up in the goernment's face exactly?
yes thats the point the corporation completely undermined the workers power and got exactly what they want because of the holidays
it was a calculated play the government fell for
Agreed but I think the union also misplayed it's hand. They recently turned down an offer to basically put the whole thing on hold till after the holidays and then slap an abitration deadline on the whole thing. They should have come back with yes to the hold, no to the deadline imo. A strike is playing politics, especially when you are a crown corporation. Take the pressure off the government to cave in and force you back to work and take up the fight afterwards. I think they got over-confident and thought that fucking up the holiday season would force management to come to the table faster and didn't take into account how the federal government would react.
Okay, except, Canada post already had literally since January to do anything. What, exactly, would stop them from just repeating that?
None of that is relevant though. You wanna shut down the mail during the holiday season you are asking to get legislated back to work and then you get nothing. Will management keep stalling? Maybe. But then you are just back at square one. If the back-to-work bill passes, you are at square less-then-one.
Way to go, making excuses for something that’s already been found to be unconstitutional once, I’m sure this will all work out fine.
It doesn't matter how wrong any of us think it is. It's an entirely expected move and the union should have planned for it. Because it was easy to see coming.
"The workers negotiated too hard" is the same line of logic that leads to the bullshit "I used to be left-leaning until someone said a mean thing and now I think trans people deserve to die" arguments, which are never convincing to me.
The union using its power at a time when it is strategically at its highest doesn't mean it's their fault if the government then decides to deal with it by being shitty and possibly illegal
But it wasn't. That's the entire point. Their position was fragile and they should have known that.
Like, your post here is pretty silly because you are assuming pointing out that the union misplayed it's hand here is the same as saying you think the government is right. They aren't. But whether they are right or not doesn't actually matter.
It's like international relations. It doesn't matter if we are right and the US is being a dick about some trade issue in violation of WTO rules. Being right doesn't get you anything when they have the power to fuck you regardless.
In that case, we might as well not have unions at all. If the options are a: only negotiate on the government's terms or b: fuck off, the government gets to do what it wants, then everything is broken well beyond what a union can fix.
Unless there is some insane overriding craziness, any back-to-work bill should be challenged and stricken down immediately by the courts.
And you don't start negotiating from the perspective of "Oh please great masters, if it's not too much trouble, could we please maybe if it doesn't inconvenience you negotiate with us?". You don't fold with a flush because your opponent has a gun.
You absolutely need to take reality into account.
Sometimes you are the small dog and need to accept that.
If you can't use your power, then you don't actually have power. Might as well take your chances with court cases, where there has been historical precedent for stopping government overreach like this. Otherwise, again, there's no point to even having unions.
Like, what's the benefit of just caving to the government? Hooray, now you have a shitty deal, the government knows that it can do whatever it wants, and everything is worse for everyone. At least this way there's a chance of changing something
Who said anything about caving to the government? What the heck are you even talking about? You are ranting about "Oh well, might as well not have unions" when literally no one is suggesting that.
The union is in a negotiation here and they need to have a better handle on what their leverage is going in it. They seem to have thought that they had the upper hand because of the christmas season and all the shipping going on but it's probably actually tilted against them because of that.
Only if the union doesn't take it to court in which case this has the potential to blow up in the governments face.
How long will that take though? And what's the downside for the government?
If you can force them back to work till the beginning of January the government (not management, but the government) wins cause that's all they care about.
Which is only an issue if they abide by the governments decision until the ruling is made.
Which if you believe the legislation is illegal you don't have to actually do.
So how does this blow up in the goernment's face exactly?
You don't see how negotiating in bad faith and then trying to cover it by passing illegal legislation is a bad look for politicians?
yes thats the point the corporation completely undermined the workers power and got exactly what they want because of the holidays
it was a calculated play the government fell for
Agreed but I think the union also misplayed it's hand. They recently turned down an offer to basically put the whole thing on hold till after the holidays and then slap an abitration deadline on the whole thing. They should have come back with yes to the hold, no to the deadline imo. A strike is playing politics, especially when you are a crown corporation. Take the pressure off the government to cave in and force you back to work and take up the fight afterwards. I think they got over-confident and thought that fucking up the holiday season would force management to come to the table faster and didn't take into account how the federal government would react.
Okay, except, Canada post already had literally since January to do anything. What, exactly, would stop them from just repeating that?
None of that is relevant though. You wanna shut down the mail during the holiday season you are asking to get legislated back to work and then you get nothing. Will management keep stalling? Maybe. But then you are just back at square one. If the back-to-work bill passes, you are at square less-then-one.
Way to go, making excuses for something that’s already been found to be unconstitutional once, I’m sure this will all work out fine.
It doesn't matter how wrong any of us think it is. It's an entirely expected move and the union should have planned for it. Because it was easy to see coming.
"The workers negotiated too hard" is the same line of logic that leads to the bullshit "I used to be left-leaning until someone said a mean thing and now I think trans people deserve to die" arguments, which are never convincing to me.
The union using its power at a time when it is strategically at its highest doesn't mean it's their fault if the government then decides to deal with it by being shitty and possibly illegal
But it wasn't. That's the entire point. Their position was fragile and they should have known that.
Like, your post here is pretty silly because you are assuming pointing out that the union misplayed it's hand here is the same as saying you think the government is right. They aren't. But whether they are right or not doesn't actually matter.
It's like international relations. It doesn't matter if we are right and the US is being a dick about some trade issue in violation of WTO rules. Being right doesn't get you anything when they have the power to fuck you regardless.
In that case, we might as well not have unions at all. If the options are a: only negotiate on the government's terms or b: fuck off, the government gets to do what it wants, then everything is broken well beyond what a union can fix.
Unless there is some insane overriding craziness, any back-to-work bill should be challenged and stricken down immediately by the courts.
And you don't start negotiating from the perspective of "Oh please great masters, if it's not too much trouble, could we please maybe if it doesn't inconvenience you negotiate with us?". You don't fold with a flush because your opponent has a gun.
You absolutely need to take reality into account.
Sometimes you are the small dog and need to accept that.
If you can't use your power, then you don't actually have power. Might as well take your chances with court cases, where there has been historical precedent for stopping government overreach like this. Otherwise, again, there's no point to even having unions.
Like, what's the benefit of just caving to the government? Hooray, now you have a shitty deal, the government knows that it can do whatever it wants, and everything is worse for everyone. At least this way there's a chance of changing something
Who said anything about caving to the government? What the heck are you even talking about? You are ranting about "Oh well, might as well not have unions" when literally no one is suggesting that.
The union is in a negotiation here and they need to have a better handle on what their leverage is going in it. They seem to have thought that they had the upper hand because of the christmas season and all the shipping going on but it's probably actually tilted against them because of that.
Only if the union doesn't take it to court in which case this has the potential to blow up in the governments face.
How long will that take though? And what's the downside for the government?
If you can force them back to work till the beginning of January the government (not management, but the government) wins cause that's all they care about.
Which is only an issue if they abide by the governments decision until the ruling is made.
Which if you believe the legislation is illegal you don't have to actually do.
So how does this blow up in the goernment's face exactly?
You don't see how negotiating in bad faith and then trying to cover it by passing illegal legislation is a bad look for politicians?
The government aren't the ones negotiating. It's a crown corp so the connection is kind of hands off.
I also seriously doubt that trying to make the mail work during the christmas season is going to be a bad look for parliament. That's not a PR battle you should have trouble winning.
yes thats the point the corporation completely undermined the workers power and got exactly what they want because of the holidays
it was a calculated play the government fell for
Agreed but I think the union also misplayed it's hand. They recently turned down an offer to basically put the whole thing on hold till after the holidays and then slap an abitration deadline on the whole thing. They should have come back with yes to the hold, no to the deadline imo. A strike is playing politics, especially when you are a crown corporation. Take the pressure off the government to cave in and force you back to work and take up the fight afterwards. I think they got over-confident and thought that fucking up the holiday season would force management to come to the table faster and didn't take into account how the federal government would react.
Okay, except, Canada post already had literally since January to do anything. What, exactly, would stop them from just repeating that?
None of that is relevant though. You wanna shut down the mail during the holiday season you are asking to get legislated back to work and then you get nothing. Will management keep stalling? Maybe. But then you are just back at square one. If the back-to-work bill passes, you are at square less-then-one.
Way to go, making excuses for something that’s already been found to be unconstitutional once, I’m sure this will all work out fine.
It doesn't matter how wrong any of us think it is. It's an entirely expected move and the union should have planned for it. Because it was easy to see coming.
"The workers negotiated too hard" is the same line of logic that leads to the bullshit "I used to be left-leaning until someone said a mean thing and now I think trans people deserve to die" arguments, which are never convincing to me.
The union using its power at a time when it is strategically at its highest doesn't mean it's their fault if the government then decides to deal with it by being shitty and possibly illegal
But it wasn't. That's the entire point. Their position was fragile and they should have known that.
Like, your post here is pretty silly because you are assuming pointing out that the union misplayed it's hand here is the same as saying you think the government is right. They aren't. But whether they are right or not doesn't actually matter.
It's like international relations. It doesn't matter if we are right and the US is being a dick about some trade issue in violation of WTO rules. Being right doesn't get you anything when they have the power to fuck you regardless.
In that case, we might as well not have unions at all. If the options are a: only negotiate on the government's terms or b: fuck off, the government gets to do what it wants, then everything is broken well beyond what a union can fix.
Unless there is some insane overriding craziness, any back-to-work bill should be challenged and stricken down immediately by the courts.
And you don't start negotiating from the perspective of "Oh please great masters, if it's not too much trouble, could we please maybe if it doesn't inconvenience you negotiate with us?". You don't fold with a flush because your opponent has a gun.
You absolutely need to take reality into account.
Sometimes you are the small dog and need to accept that.
If you can't use your power, then you don't actually have power. Might as well take your chances with court cases, where there has been historical precedent for stopping government overreach like this. Otherwise, again, there's no point to even having unions.
Like, what's the benefit of just caving to the government? Hooray, now you have a shitty deal, the government knows that it can do whatever it wants, and everything is worse for everyone. At least this way there's a chance of changing something
Who said anything about caving to the government? What the heck are you even talking about? You are ranting about "Oh well, might as well not have unions" when literally no one is suggesting that.
The union is in a negotiation here and they need to have a better handle on what their leverage is going in it. They seem to have thought that they had the upper hand because of the christmas season and all the shipping going on but it's probably actually tilted against them because of that.
Only if the union doesn't take it to court in which case this has the potential to blow up in the governments face.
How long will that take though? And what's the downside for the government?
If you can force them back to work till the beginning of January the government (not management, but the government) wins cause that's all they care about.
Which is only an issue if they abide by the governments decision until the ruling is made.
Which if you believe the legislation is illegal you don't have to actually do.
So how does this blow up in the goernment's face exactly?
You don't see how negotiating in bad faith and then trying to cover it by passing illegal legislation is a bad look for politicians?
The government aren't the ones negotiating. It's a crown corp so the connection is kind of hands off.
I also seriously doubt that trying to make the mail work during the christmas season is going to be a bad look for parliament. That's not a PR battle you should have trouble winning.
Passing legislation that is illegal is a bad look at any time under any circumstances.
Of course, if they wanted to make sure that the mail got out in a timely fashion, they could order canada post to settle immediately because again: they had a full year to settle this and chose not to.
yes thats the point the corporation completely undermined the workers power and got exactly what they want because of the holidays
it was a calculated play the government fell for
Agreed but I think the union also misplayed it's hand. They recently turned down an offer to basically put the whole thing on hold till after the holidays and then slap an abitration deadline on the whole thing. They should have come back with yes to the hold, no to the deadline imo. A strike is playing politics, especially when you are a crown corporation. Take the pressure off the government to cave in and force you back to work and take up the fight afterwards. I think they got over-confident and thought that fucking up the holiday season would force management to come to the table faster and didn't take into account how the federal government would react.
Okay, except, Canada post already had literally since January to do anything. What, exactly, would stop them from just repeating that?
None of that is relevant though. You wanna shut down the mail during the holiday season you are asking to get legislated back to work and then you get nothing. Will management keep stalling? Maybe. But then you are just back at square one. If the back-to-work bill passes, you are at square less-then-one.
Way to go, making excuses for something that’s already been found to be unconstitutional once, I’m sure this will all work out fine.
It doesn't matter how wrong any of us think it is. It's an entirely expected move and the union should have planned for it. Because it was easy to see coming.
"The workers negotiated too hard" is the same line of logic that leads to the bullshit "I used to be left-leaning until someone said a mean thing and now I think trans people deserve to die" arguments, which are never convincing to me.
The union using its power at a time when it is strategically at its highest doesn't mean it's their fault if the government then decides to deal with it by being shitty and possibly illegal
But it wasn't. That's the entire point. Their position was fragile and they should have known that.
Like, your post here is pretty silly because you are assuming pointing out that the union misplayed it's hand here is the same as saying you think the government is right. They aren't. But whether they are right or not doesn't actually matter.
It's like international relations. It doesn't matter if we are right and the US is being a dick about some trade issue in violation of WTO rules. Being right doesn't get you anything when they have the power to fuck you regardless.
In that case, we might as well not have unions at all. If the options are a: only negotiate on the government's terms or b: fuck off, the government gets to do what it wants, then everything is broken well beyond what a union can fix.
Unless there is some insane overriding craziness, any back-to-work bill should be challenged and stricken down immediately by the courts.
And you don't start negotiating from the perspective of "Oh please great masters, if it's not too much trouble, could we please maybe if it doesn't inconvenience you negotiate with us?". You don't fold with a flush because your opponent has a gun.
You absolutely need to take reality into account.
Sometimes you are the small dog and need to accept that.
If you can't use your power, then you don't actually have power. Might as well take your chances with court cases, where there has been historical precedent for stopping government overreach like this. Otherwise, again, there's no point to even having unions.
Like, what's the benefit of just caving to the government? Hooray, now you have a shitty deal, the government knows that it can do whatever it wants, and everything is worse for everyone. At least this way there's a chance of changing something
Who said anything about caving to the government? What the heck are you even talking about? You are ranting about "Oh well, might as well not have unions" when literally no one is suggesting that.
The union is in a negotiation here and they need to have a better handle on what their leverage is going in it. They seem to have thought that they had the upper hand because of the christmas season and all the shipping going on but it's probably actually tilted against them because of that.
Only if the union doesn't take it to court in which case this has the potential to blow up in the governments face.
How long will that take though? And what's the downside for the government?
If you can force them back to work till the beginning of January the government (not management, but the government) wins cause that's all they care about.
Which is only an issue if they abide by the governments decision until the ruling is made.
Which if you believe the legislation is illegal you don't have to actually do.
So how does this blow up in the goernment's face exactly?
You don't see how negotiating in bad faith and then trying to cover it by passing illegal legislation is a bad look for politicians?
The government aren't the ones negotiating. It's a crown corp so the connection is kind of hands off.
I also seriously doubt that trying to make the mail work during the christmas season is going to be a bad look for parliament. That's not a PR battle you should have trouble winning.
Passing legislation that is illegal is a bad look at any time under any circumstances.
Of course, if they wanted to make sure that the mail got out in a timely fashion, they could order canada post to settle immediately because again: they had a full year to settle this and chose not to.
Oh please. This isn't even remotely true. There's plenty of things the government can do that can be popular or at least good PR, but are illegal or just bad legislation in general.
The government could do a lot of things. But they were predictably only really going to do this to resolve the situation.
yes thats the point the corporation completely undermined the workers power and got exactly what they want because of the holidays
it was a calculated play the government fell for
Agreed but I think the union also misplayed it's hand. They recently turned down an offer to basically put the whole thing on hold till after the holidays and then slap an abitration deadline on the whole thing. They should have come back with yes to the hold, no to the deadline imo. A strike is playing politics, especially when you are a crown corporation. Take the pressure off the government to cave in and force you back to work and take up the fight afterwards. I think they got over-confident and thought that fucking up the holiday season would force management to come to the table faster and didn't take into account how the federal government would react.
Okay, except, Canada post already had literally since January to do anything. What, exactly, would stop them from just repeating that?
None of that is relevant though. You wanna shut down the mail during the holiday season you are asking to get legislated back to work and then you get nothing. Will management keep stalling? Maybe. But then you are just back at square one. If the back-to-work bill passes, you are at square less-then-one.
Way to go, making excuses for something that’s already been found to be unconstitutional once, I’m sure this will all work out fine.
It doesn't matter how wrong any of us think it is. It's an entirely expected move and the union should have planned for it. Because it was easy to see coming.
"The workers negotiated too hard" is the same line of logic that leads to the bullshit "I used to be left-leaning until someone said a mean thing and now I think trans people deserve to die" arguments, which are never convincing to me.
The union using its power at a time when it is strategically at its highest doesn't mean it's their fault if the government then decides to deal with it by being shitty and possibly illegal
But it wasn't. That's the entire point. Their position was fragile and they should have known that.
Like, your post here is pretty silly because you are assuming pointing out that the union misplayed it's hand here is the same as saying you think the government is right. They aren't. But whether they are right or not doesn't actually matter.
It's like international relations. It doesn't matter if we are right and the US is being a dick about some trade issue in violation of WTO rules. Being right doesn't get you anything when they have the power to fuck you regardless.
In that case, we might as well not have unions at all. If the options are a: only negotiate on the government's terms or b: fuck off, the government gets to do what it wants, then everything is broken well beyond what a union can fix.
Unless there is some insane overriding craziness, any back-to-work bill should be challenged and stricken down immediately by the courts.
And you don't start negotiating from the perspective of "Oh please great masters, if it's not too much trouble, could we please maybe if it doesn't inconvenience you negotiate with us?". You don't fold with a flush because your opponent has a gun.
You absolutely need to take reality into account.
Sometimes you are the small dog and need to accept that.
If you can't use your power, then you don't actually have power. Might as well take your chances with court cases, where there has been historical precedent for stopping government overreach like this. Otherwise, again, there's no point to even having unions.
Like, what's the benefit of just caving to the government? Hooray, now you have a shitty deal, the government knows that it can do whatever it wants, and everything is worse for everyone. At least this way there's a chance of changing something
Who said anything about caving to the government? What the heck are you even talking about? You are ranting about "Oh well, might as well not have unions" when literally no one is suggesting that.
The union is in a negotiation here and they need to have a better handle on what their leverage is going in it. They seem to have thought that they had the upper hand because of the christmas season and all the shipping going on but it's probably actually tilted against them because of that.
What do you think unions or strikes do?
The whole point of unions is recognizing that they are the smaller dog, and as individual workers, they don't have any power to actually negotiate. But as a group, they can collectively have power, because there's always the threat of collective action. The ultimate form of that collective action is a strike.
Nope. You entirely missed the point. I didn't talk about "a worker", I talked about "the union". The workers collectively are in the weaker position here. Exactly because the government can legislate them back to work. This is an entirely expected outcome they should have planned for. It is leverage that management has on them.
The point of a strike is that the employer (government in this case) will be under pressure to get the workers back to work. If the government is going to do that by passing bills, then that's supper shitty, it looks super shitty, and it's probably unconstitutional.
You're saying that the problem with what the union did is that it put too much pressure on the government to get the workers back to work, so of course the government was going to pass the bill instead of actually negotiating.
But if the government is prepared to get the strikers back to work by just passing a bill, then there's nothing that can actually be gained from striking or negotiating at that point. If they strike when there's no pressure on the government to negotiate to get them back to work, then the strike isn't actually going to accomplish anything because nobody cares. If they strike when there is pressure on the government to negotiate, and the government will just pass a bill instead, then we're back here.
So then what power does the union have? What's the point of the union after that? What's to stop the government from deciding that postal workers don't get any pay or benefits or breaks anymore? And how is the union supposed to negotiate with the government when the end-game is "The government passes a bill anyways, so let's 'take reality into account'"? How are they supposed to continue to negotiate without caving to the government when they know that if the government wants to, they'll just bulldoze the negotiations and order them back to work anyways?
That's why I'm saying "might as well not have unions" and talking about "caving to the government". Because if there's nothing to stop the government from getting around the strike by passing bills, then there's nothing to stop the government from getting around disputes by passing bills. The biggest gun that a union has is the strike. If that gun can be taken away at a whim, then anything else is just theatre.
So if the end-game of the escalation game is "fuck you", then why bother with the other steps? Why not just admit at that point that the union can't negotiate anymore?
At least doing it this way makes the government show their hand and has the likelihood of winning in the courts. Deciding not to strike when it would actually do its job is just dying a slow death.
Except your argument is silly here because you seem incapable of accounting for nuance. There are tons of positions between "no strike at all" and "get legislated back to work". We were living in one of them for quite awhile. The whole point is that you have to acknowledge the reality that parliament is there and will legislate you back to work if they think the situation is getting bad enough. That you have to play within the bounds of what parliament will overlook. And there's plenty of room there. But it has limits. You don't have to like that those limits exist but they are there regardless.
The fact that you have "get legislated back to work" as though it's something that the union is doing is showing exactly why you're not thinking about it right. The government is legislating them back to work. They are striking when it has the most impact. The government is not a passive bystander in this.
yes thats the point the corporation completely undermined the workers power and got exactly what they want because of the holidays
it was a calculated play the government fell for
Agreed but I think the union also misplayed it's hand. They recently turned down an offer to basically put the whole thing on hold till after the holidays and then slap an abitration deadline on the whole thing. They should have come back with yes to the hold, no to the deadline imo. A strike is playing politics, especially when you are a crown corporation. Take the pressure off the government to cave in and force you back to work and take up the fight afterwards. I think they got over-confident and thought that fucking up the holiday season would force management to come to the table faster and didn't take into account how the federal government would react.
Okay, except, Canada post already had literally since January to do anything. What, exactly, would stop them from just repeating that?
None of that is relevant though. You wanna shut down the mail during the holiday season you are asking to get legislated back to work and then you get nothing. Will management keep stalling? Maybe. But then you are just back at square one. If the back-to-work bill passes, you are at square less-then-one.
Way to go, making excuses for something that’s already been found to be unconstitutional once, I’m sure this will all work out fine.
It doesn't matter how wrong any of us think it is. It's an entirely expected move and the union should have planned for it. Because it was easy to see coming.
"The workers negotiated too hard" is the same line of logic that leads to the bullshit "I used to be left-leaning until someone said a mean thing and now I think trans people deserve to die" arguments, which are never convincing to me.
The union using its power at a time when it is strategically at its highest doesn't mean it's their fault if the government then decides to deal with it by being shitty and possibly illegal
But it wasn't. That's the entire point. Their position was fragile and they should have known that.
Like, your post here is pretty silly because you are assuming pointing out that the union misplayed it's hand here is the same as saying you think the government is right. They aren't. But whether they are right or not doesn't actually matter.
It's like international relations. It doesn't matter if we are right and the US is being a dick about some trade issue in violation of WTO rules. Being right doesn't get you anything when they have the power to fuck you regardless.
In that case, we might as well not have unions at all. If the options are a: only negotiate on the government's terms or b: fuck off, the government gets to do what it wants, then everything is broken well beyond what a union can fix.
Unless there is some insane overriding craziness, any back-to-work bill should be challenged and stricken down immediately by the courts.
And you don't start negotiating from the perspective of "Oh please great masters, if it's not too much trouble, could we please maybe if it doesn't inconvenience you negotiate with us?". You don't fold with a flush because your opponent has a gun.
You absolutely need to take reality into account.
Sometimes you are the small dog and need to accept that.
If you can't use your power, then you don't actually have power. Might as well take your chances with court cases, where there has been historical precedent for stopping government overreach like this. Otherwise, again, there's no point to even having unions.
Like, what's the benefit of just caving to the government? Hooray, now you have a shitty deal, the government knows that it can do whatever it wants, and everything is worse for everyone. At least this way there's a chance of changing something
Who said anything about caving to the government? What the heck are you even talking about? You are ranting about "Oh well, might as well not have unions" when literally no one is suggesting that.
The union is in a negotiation here and they need to have a better handle on what their leverage is going in it. They seem to have thought that they had the upper hand because of the christmas season and all the shipping going on but it's probably actually tilted against them because of that.
What do you think unions or strikes do?
The whole point of unions is recognizing that they are the smaller dog, and as individual workers, they don't have any power to actually negotiate. But as a group, they can collectively have power, because there's always the threat of collective action. The ultimate form of that collective action is a strike.
Nope. You entirely missed the point. I didn't talk about "a worker", I talked about "the union". The workers collectively are in the weaker position here. Exactly because the government can legislate them back to work. This is an entirely expected outcome they should have planned for. It is leverage that management has on them.
The point of a strike is that the employer (government in this case) will be under pressure to get the workers back to work. If the government is going to do that by passing bills, then that's supper shitty, it looks super shitty, and it's probably unconstitutional.
You're saying that the problem with what the union did is that it put too much pressure on the government to get the workers back to work, so of course the government was going to pass the bill instead of actually negotiating.
But if the government is prepared to get the strikers back to work by just passing a bill, then there's nothing that can actually be gained from striking or negotiating at that point. If they strike when there's no pressure on the government to negotiate to get them back to work, then the strike isn't actually going to accomplish anything because nobody cares. If they strike when there is pressure on the government to negotiate, and the government will just pass a bill instead, then we're back here.
So then what power does the union have? What's the point of the union after that? What's to stop the government from deciding that postal workers don't get any pay or benefits or breaks anymore? And how is the union supposed to negotiate with the government when the end-game is "The government passes a bill anyways, so let's 'take reality into account'"? How are they supposed to continue to negotiate without caving to the government when they know that if the government wants to, they'll just bulldoze the negotiations and order them back to work anyways?
That's why I'm saying "might as well not have unions" and talking about "caving to the government". Because if there's nothing to stop the government from getting around the strike by passing bills, then there's nothing to stop the government from getting around disputes by passing bills. The biggest gun that a union has is the strike. If that gun can be taken away at a whim, then anything else is just theatre.
So if the end-game of the escalation game is "fuck you", then why bother with the other steps? Why not just admit at that point that the union can't negotiate anymore?
At least doing it this way makes the government show their hand and has the likelihood of winning in the courts. Deciding not to strike when it would actually do its job is just dying a slow death.
Except your argument is silly here because you seem incapable of accounting for nuance. There are tons of positions between "no strike at all" and "get legislated back to work". We were living in one of them for quite awhile. The whole point is that you have to acknowledge the reality that parliament is there and will legislate you back to work if they think the situation is getting bad enough. That you have to play within the bounds of what parliament will overlook. And there's plenty of room there. But it has limits. You don't have to like that those limits exist but they are there regardless.
The fact that you have "get legislated back to work" as though it's something that the union is doing is showing exactly why you're not thinking about it right. The government is legislating them back to work. They are striking when it has the most impact. The government is not a passive bystander in this.
But I didn't say it was something the union was going. Nor did I call the government a passive bystander. WTF are you talking about? You arguments are full of these kind of weird and random assumptions.
I said the government legislating them back to work was a very obvious thing that would happen and that should have been taken into account in their strategy.
This seems a lot like victim blaming, honestly. Like... the government wants to fuck you, workers, so you should know that and avoid being fucked involuntarily in this manner, by instead volunteering to be fucked in this other manner.
Way to "overplay your hand" by not just taking the dicking people in power want to give you.
Is there anything specific in particular about their strategy that should have been corrected? Is there any specific concession that they should have given in? Absent any actual specific corrections/changes proposed, this is just Monday morning quarterbacking someone for choosing a particular track in a poorly formulated trolley problem. They should have gone to binding arbitration! Kinda like what's basically happening now anyways with a jointly chosen mediator! OBVIOUSLY, they should have chosen the OTHER track!
When the government's willing to pass possibly unconstitutional legislation to stop you... it's like... I dunno man, is that the "reality" you really want people to acquiesce too? That's like a thread's width away from just giving in to whatever injustice people who are more powerful than you want to perpetrate. You should just know beforehand that people will violate the law to abuse you, so, you know, transgendered Ontarians should just go right back in the closet rather than risk Ford's wrath; after all, why fight for their human rights when they know about the Notwithstanding Clause?
Voters want their shit delivered during Christmas season. Politicians are going to listen to these voters and make these deliveries happen by any means necessary.
This could be seen by a two year old.
There is not even a slim chance that there will be some popular uprising against a govt. That made postal workers deliver mail and parcels during Christmas.
They could have done a strike literally any other time of the year.
Its a horrible misread by the union of the sentiment in the country.
Maybe they will win the court challenge in 3 months maybe January 2nd the govt. Recinds the back to work legislation and moves on.
"no point in unions" is a pretty far stretch for this situation. Unions need public support too and using the general public during the time they are at peak greediness as leverage is pants on head Fucking stupid.
This seems a lot like victim blaming, honestly. Like... the government wants to fuck you, workers, so you should know that and avoid being fucked involuntarily in this manner, by instead volunteering to be fucked in this other manner.
Way to "overplay your hand" by not just taking the dicking people in power want to give you.
Is there anything specific in particular about their strategy that should have been corrected? Is there any specific concession that they should have given in? Absent any actual specific corrections/changes proposed, this is just Monday morning quarterbacking someone for choosing a particular track in a poorly formulated trolley problem. They should have gone to binding arbitration! Kinda like what's basically happening now anyways with a jointly chosen mediator! OBVIOUSLY, they should have chosen the OTHER track!
When the government's willing to pass possibly unconstitutional legislation to stop you... it's like... I dunno man, is that the "reality" you really want people to acquiesce too? That's like a thread's width away from just giving in to whatever injustice people who are more powerful than you want to perpetrate. You should just know beforehand that people will violate the law to abuse you, so, you know, transgendered Ontarians should just go right back in the closet rather than risk Ford's wrath; after all, why fight for their human rights when they know about the Notwithstanding Clause?
I literally gave an idea at the start of this for what they could have done different based on recent news that's come out. It's difficult to nail down specifics without being fully privy to the negotiations but it should be pretty obvious to anyone that the government was not gonna let a major postal strike keep going during the holiday shopping season without trying to do something about it. And when governments "do something" about strikes in important services, that something is back-to-work legislation. It's entirely predictable. The strikers should have known this.
The above? That's reality. You know it too. Shit, we've been down this kind of road before with this very union. I have no idea what the lot of you are actually trying to argue here.
Frankly, many of you seem to have trouble differentiating analysis from support. Saying "it is totally predictable that the government will legislate postal workers back to work to stop them from striking during holiday shopping season" is not an endorsement of that action but merely an acknowledgement of a pretty obvious fact.
Also, trying to bring "victim blaming" into this is hilarious. What is this shit? And now transgender rights apparently? Maybe talk about the postal strike instead of trying to drag unrelated issues into the discussion to prop up your argument.
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BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
This seems a lot like victim blaming, honestly. Like... the government wants to fuck you, workers, so you should know that and avoid being fucked involuntarily in this manner, by instead volunteering to be fucked in this other manner.
Way to "overplay your hand" by not just taking the dicking people in power want to give you.
Is there anything specific in particular about their strategy that should have been corrected? Is there any specific concession that they should have given in? Absent any actual specific corrections/changes proposed, this is just Monday morning quarterbacking someone for choosing a particular track in a poorly formulated trolley problem. They should have gone to binding arbitration! Kinda like what's basically happening now anyways with a jointly chosen mediator! OBVIOUSLY, they should have chosen the OTHER track!
When the government's willing to pass possibly unconstitutional legislation to stop you... it's like... I dunno man, is that the "reality" you really want people to acquiesce too? That's like a thread's width away from just giving in to whatever injustice people who are more powerful than you want to perpetrate. You should just know beforehand that people will violate the law to abuse you, so, you know, transgendered Ontarians should just go right back in the closet rather than risk Ford's wrath; after all, why fight for their human rights when they know about the Notwithstanding Clause?
I literally gave an idea at the start of this for what they could have done different based on recent news that's come out. It's difficult to nail down specifics without being fully privy to the negotiations but it should be pretty obvious to anyone that the government was not gonna let a major postal strike keep going during the holiday shopping season without trying to do something about it. And when governments "do something" about strikes in important services, that something is back-to-work legislation. It's entirely predictable. The strikers should have known this.
The above? That's reality. You know it too. Shit, we've been down this kind of road before with this very union. I have no idea what the lot of you are actually trying to argue here.
Frankly, many of you seem to have trouble differentiating analysis from support. Saying "it is totally predictable that the government will legislate postal workers back to work to stop them from striking during holiday shopping season" is not an endorsement of that action but merely an acknowledgement of a pretty obvious fact.
Also, trying to bring "victim blaming" into this is hilarious. What is this shit? And now transgender rights apparently? Maybe talk about the postal strike instead of trying to drag unrelated issues into the discussion to prop up your argument.
Your idea wasn't really a real idea on how to do better so much as it was how to concede. I mean... they're going to a binding arbitrator now, and your suggestion was that they should have gone to binding arbitration earlier. Their goal the whole time was to avoid binding arbitration, as it often is for striking unions right now, because there's a belief that arbitrators only ever address financial issues and never structural ones. So. I mean. If you're gonna say that the conditions of binding arbitration now are going to be so much worse than the conditions of binding arbitration earlier, you're gonna really have to finesse this one with details.
This seems a lot like victim blaming, honestly. Like... the government wants to fuck you, workers, so you should know that and avoid being fucked involuntarily in this manner, by instead volunteering to be fucked in this other manner.
Way to "overplay your hand" by not just taking the dicking people in power want to give you.
Is there anything specific in particular about their strategy that should have been corrected? Is there any specific concession that they should have given in? Absent any actual specific corrections/changes proposed, this is just Monday morning quarterbacking someone for choosing a particular track in a poorly formulated trolley problem. They should have gone to binding arbitration! Kinda like what's basically happening now anyways with a jointly chosen mediator! OBVIOUSLY, they should have chosen the OTHER track!
When the government's willing to pass possibly unconstitutional legislation to stop you... it's like... I dunno man, is that the "reality" you really want people to acquiesce too? That's like a thread's width away from just giving in to whatever injustice people who are more powerful than you want to perpetrate. You should just know beforehand that people will violate the law to abuse you, so, you know, transgendered Ontarians should just go right back in the closet rather than risk Ford's wrath; after all, why fight for their human rights when they know about the Notwithstanding Clause?
I literally gave an idea at the start of this for what they could have done different based on recent news that's come out. It's difficult to nail down specifics without being fully privy to the negotiations but it should be pretty obvious to anyone that the government was not gonna let a major postal strike keep going during the holiday shopping season without trying to do something about it. And when governments "do something" about strikes in important services, that something is back-to-work legislation. It's entirely predictable. The strikers should have known this.
The above? That's reality. You know it too. Shit, we've been down this kind of road before with this very union. I have no idea what the lot of you are actually trying to argue here.
Frankly, many of you seem to have trouble differentiating analysis from support. Saying "it is totally predictable that the government will legislate postal workers back to work to stop them from striking during holiday shopping season" is not an endorsement of that action but merely an acknowledgement of a pretty obvious fact.
Also, trying to bring "victim blaming" into this is hilarious. What is this shit? And now transgender rights apparently? Maybe talk about the postal strike instead of trying to drag unrelated issues into the discussion to prop up your argument.
Your idea wasn't really a real idea. I mean... they're going to a binding arbitrator now, and your suggestion was that they should have gone to binding arbitration earlier. Like... their goal was to avoid binding arbitration. So. I mean. If you're gonna say that the conditions of binding arbitration now are going to be so much worse than the conditions of binding arbitration earlier, you're gonna really have to finesse this one with details.
yes thats the point the corporation completely undermined the workers power and got exactly what they want because of the holidays
it was a calculated play the government fell for
Agreed but I think the union also misplayed it's hand. They recently turned down an offer to basically put the whole thing on hold till after the holidays and then slap an abitration deadline on the whole thing. They should have come back with yes to the hold, no to the deadline imo. A strike is playing politics, especially when you are a crown corporation. Take the pressure off the government to cave in and force you back to work and take up the fight afterwards. I think they got over-confident and thought that fucking up the holiday season would force management to come to the table faster and didn't take into account how the federal government would react.
Literally the opposite of what I said. This is not anything like arguing in good faith yo.
This seems a lot like victim blaming, honestly. Like... the government wants to fuck you, workers, so you should know that and avoid being fucked involuntarily in this manner, by instead volunteering to be fucked in this other manner.
Way to "overplay your hand" by not just taking the dicking people in power want to give you.
Is there anything specific in particular about their strategy that should have been corrected? Is there any specific concession that they should have given in? Absent any actual specific corrections/changes proposed, this is just Monday morning quarterbacking someone for choosing a particular track in a poorly formulated trolley problem. They should have gone to binding arbitration! Kinda like what's basically happening now anyways with a jointly chosen mediator! OBVIOUSLY, they should have chosen the OTHER track!
When the government's willing to pass possibly unconstitutional legislation to stop you... it's like... I dunno man, is that the "reality" you really want people to acquiesce too? That's like a thread's width away from just giving in to whatever injustice people who are more powerful than you want to perpetrate. You should just know beforehand that people will violate the law to abuse you, so, you know, transgendered Ontarians should just go right back in the closet rather than risk Ford's wrath; after all, why fight for their human rights when they know about the Notwithstanding Clause?
I literally gave an idea at the start of this for what they could have done different based on recent news that's come out. It's difficult to nail down specifics without being fully privy to the negotiations but it should be pretty obvious to anyone that the government was not gonna let a major postal strike keep going during the holiday shopping season without trying to do something about it. And when governments "do something" about strikes in important services, that something is back-to-work legislation. It's entirely predictable. The strikers should have known this.
The above? That's reality. You know it too. Shit, we've been down this kind of road before with this very union. I have no idea what the lot of you are actually trying to argue here.
Frankly, many of you seem to have trouble differentiating analysis from support. Saying "it is totally predictable that the government will legislate postal workers back to work to stop them from striking during holiday shopping season" is not an endorsement of that action but merely an acknowledgement of a pretty obvious fact.
Also, trying to bring "victim blaming" into this is hilarious. What is this shit? And now transgender rights apparently? Maybe talk about the postal strike instead of trying to drag unrelated issues into the discussion to prop up your argument.
Your idea wasn't really a real idea. I mean... they're going to a binding arbitrator now, and your suggestion was that they should have gone to binding arbitration earlier. Like... their goal was to avoid binding arbitration. So. I mean. If you're gonna say that the conditions of binding arbitration now are going to be so much worse than the conditions of binding arbitration earlier, you're gonna really have to finesse this one with details.
yes thats the point the corporation completely undermined the workers power and got exactly what they want because of the holidays
it was a calculated play the government fell for
Agreed but I think the union also misplayed it's hand. They recently turned down an offer to basically put the whole thing on hold till after the holidays and then slap an abitration deadline on the whole thing. They should have come back with yes to the hold, no to the deadline imo. A strike is playing politics, especially when you are a crown corporation. Take the pressure off the government to cave in and force you back to work and take up the fight afterwards. I think they got over-confident and thought that fucking up the holiday season would force management to come to the table faster and didn't take into account how the federal government would react.
Literally the opposite of what I said. This is not anything like arguing in good faith yo.
That wasn't on the table. You can't just... create offers that don't exist and say they should have accepted them.
Edit: If it's not clear, this is what government agencies are doing nowadays. They're playing explicitly for binding arbitration while unions are explicitly trying to avoid it. That's why government agencies are not negotiating, over and over again across the country, because they know the government will bail them out with back-to-work legislation, which not only takes the more complex issues off the table but then also passes responsibility for the costs off to the government rather than the agency leaders. Off the top of my head, OPSEU and CUPE locals have all been trying to avoid binding arbitration in their strikes.*
For the union to release their leverage, what little of it they have, at the time when it's the strongest... like... that's just giving up the strike. You're done. If they're not negotiating with you in November, they're not negotiating with you in January.
* It's a really perverse situation right now, where unions are trying to avoid binding arbitration because they want structural and administrative issues dealt with, employers are stalling for binding arbitration because they want political cover/to protect their own jobs, labour experts are saying that binding arbitration favours unions because arbitrators have been awarding hefty compensation bumps, and arbitrators are doing that because they don't want to tackle more complex structural/administrative issues because they don't want to be deciding how companies/organizations run themselves, and then governments are just throwing everything to binding arbitration because they don't want the bear the political pressure of prolonged strikes and the courts won't let them just dictate employment terms.
Various reports that GM is closing down its Oshawa plants. This is going to be really bad.
So... Odds that this happened because of the month long Union strike last year.
It's weird, because the stated reason is that GM is transitioning from more traditional cars to smaller hybrids/electric (then why not transition the darn plant?). But I've also heard that the big US car makers were abandoning cars altogether, especially combat and sub-compact, in favour of MOAR SUVs. So which is it, GM?
Want to find me on a gaming service? I'm SwashbucklerXX everywhere.
Various reports that GM is closing down its Oshawa plants. This is going to be really bad.
So... Odds that this happened because of the month long Union strike last year.
It's weird, because the stated reason is that GM is transitioning from more traditional cars to smaller hybrids/electric (then why not transition the darn plant?). But I've also heard that the big US car makers were abandoning cars altogether, especially combat and sub-compact, in favour of MOAR SUVs. So which is it, GM?
That was Ford. Also, retooling a plant is a lot harder than just adding another shift to a different plant already tooled for the model.
Various reports that GM is closing down its Oshawa plants. This is going to be really bad.
So... Odds that this happened because of the month long Union strike last year.
It's weird, because the stated reason is that GM is transitioning from more traditional cars to smaller hybrids/electric (then why not transition the darn plant?). But I've also heard that the big US car makers were abandoning cars altogether, especially combat and sub-compact, in favour of MOAR SUVs. So which is it, GM?
That was Ford. Also, retooling a plant is a lot harder than just adding another shift to a different plant already tooled for the model.
... Oh the company named Ford... That took me a minute.
Damn my old mans been contemplsting retirement from gm I hope this doesnt fuck up his retirement plans
It shouldnt but it blows ass, especially because their running temporary workers ragged atm because the union fucked up and was also in the impossible position of forcing gm to commit to production, which they immediately back tracked on and now we are here
This seems a lot like victim blaming, honestly. Like... the government wants to fuck you, workers, so you should know that and avoid being fucked involuntarily in this manner, by instead volunteering to be fucked in this other manner.
Way to "overplay your hand" by not just taking the dicking people in power want to give you.
Is there anything specific in particular about their strategy that should have been corrected? Is there any specific concession that they should have given in? Absent any actual specific corrections/changes proposed, this is just Monday morning quarterbacking someone for choosing a particular track in a poorly formulated trolley problem. They should have gone to binding arbitration! Kinda like what's basically happening now anyways with a jointly chosen mediator! OBVIOUSLY, they should have chosen the OTHER track!
When the government's willing to pass possibly unconstitutional legislation to stop you... it's like... I dunno man, is that the "reality" you really want people to acquiesce too? That's like a thread's width away from just giving in to whatever injustice people who are more powerful than you want to perpetrate. You should just know beforehand that people will violate the law to abuse you, so, you know, transgendered Ontarians should just go right back in the closet rather than risk Ford's wrath; after all, why fight for their human rights when they know about the Notwithstanding Clause?
I literally gave an idea at the start of this for what they could have done different based on recent news that's come out. It's difficult to nail down specifics without being fully privy to the negotiations but it should be pretty obvious to anyone that the government was not gonna let a major postal strike keep going during the holiday shopping season without trying to do something about it. And when governments "do something" about strikes in important services, that something is back-to-work legislation. It's entirely predictable. The strikers should have known this.
The above? That's reality. You know it too. Shit, we've been down this kind of road before with this very union. I have no idea what the lot of you are actually trying to argue here.
Frankly, many of you seem to have trouble differentiating analysis from support. Saying "it is totally predictable that the government will legislate postal workers back to work to stop them from striking during holiday shopping season" is not an endorsement of that action but merely an acknowledgement of a pretty obvious fact.
Also, trying to bring "victim blaming" into this is hilarious. What is this shit? And now transgender rights apparently? Maybe talk about the postal strike instead of trying to drag unrelated issues into the discussion to prop up your argument.
Your idea wasn't really a real idea. I mean... they're going to a binding arbitrator now, and your suggestion was that they should have gone to binding arbitration earlier. Like... their goal was to avoid binding arbitration. So. I mean. If you're gonna say that the conditions of binding arbitration now are going to be so much worse than the conditions of binding arbitration earlier, you're gonna really have to finesse this one with details.
yes thats the point the corporation completely undermined the workers power and got exactly what they want because of the holidays
it was a calculated play the government fell for
Agreed but I think the union also misplayed it's hand. They recently turned down an offer to basically put the whole thing on hold till after the holidays and then slap an abitration deadline on the whole thing. They should have come back with yes to the hold, no to the deadline imo. A strike is playing politics, especially when you are a crown corporation. Take the pressure off the government to cave in and force you back to work and take up the fight afterwards. I think they got over-confident and thought that fucking up the holiday season would force management to come to the table faster and didn't take into account how the federal government would react.
Literally the opposite of what I said. This is not anything like arguing in good faith yo.
That wasn't on the table. You can't just... create offers that don't exist and say they should have accepted them.
They offered something that was like what you'd want. Go back with a modified version of the offer. You know, negotiate. Like I literally already said.
I mean, I actually quoted the post you are pretending says the opposite of what it says and you are still pulling this schtick. Just silly goosery.
Personally, if I heard about any retailers by name putting pressure on the government to get the postal workers back to work because they aren't getting their packages, I would be inclined to not shop there.
Besides, I know its a dick move as I work in a retail space, I know the current backlog is already going to not get cleared up til some time in January, forcing them back to work doesn't actually help Christmas shopping at all at this point, any of the Christmas orders worth a damn likely shipped and arrived in October already by other couriers than Canada Post.
lolwhat?
Black Friday sales are on right now. People are ordering shit all this weekend.
That's because you don't understand what happens in Ordering and Recieving in Retail. Like Halloween? That gets ordered in March and arrives sometime in August. On pallets.
If all your concerned with is personal online shopping, sure, Postal Canada strike impacts you, sorta, its not like any number of private package courier vans and cube trucks like Loomis aren't running. But the larger scale stuff that the larger retail chains are supposedly complaining about in the news about getting Postal Canada back to work? Like something coming through McKesson or Unipharm and so on? Hasn't been impacted at all, that's all done.
This seems a lot like victim blaming, honestly. Like... the government wants to fuck you, workers, so you should know that and avoid being fucked involuntarily in this manner, by instead volunteering to be fucked in this other manner.
Way to "overplay your hand" by not just taking the dicking people in power want to give you.
Is there anything specific in particular about their strategy that should have been corrected? Is there any specific concession that they should have given in? Absent any actual specific corrections/changes proposed, this is just Monday morning quarterbacking someone for choosing a particular track in a poorly formulated trolley problem. They should have gone to binding arbitration! Kinda like what's basically happening now anyways with a jointly chosen mediator! OBVIOUSLY, they should have chosen the OTHER track!
When the government's willing to pass possibly unconstitutional legislation to stop you... it's like... I dunno man, is that the "reality" you really want people to acquiesce too? That's like a thread's width away from just giving in to whatever injustice people who are more powerful than you want to perpetrate. You should just know beforehand that people will violate the law to abuse you, so, you know, transgendered Ontarians should just go right back in the closet rather than risk Ford's wrath; after all, why fight for their human rights when they know about the Notwithstanding Clause?
I literally gave an idea at the start of this for what they could have done different based on recent news that's come out. It's difficult to nail down specifics without being fully privy to the negotiations but it should be pretty obvious to anyone that the government was not gonna let a major postal strike keep going during the holiday shopping season without trying to do something about it. And when governments "do something" about strikes in important services, that something is back-to-work legislation. It's entirely predictable. The strikers should have known this.
The above? That's reality. You know it too. Shit, we've been down this kind of road before with this very union. I have no idea what the lot of you are actually trying to argue here.
Frankly, many of you seem to have trouble differentiating analysis from support. Saying "it is totally predictable that the government will legislate postal workers back to work to stop them from striking during holiday shopping season" is not an endorsement of that action but merely an acknowledgement of a pretty obvious fact.
Also, trying to bring "victim blaming" into this is hilarious. What is this shit? And now transgender rights apparently? Maybe talk about the postal strike instead of trying to drag unrelated issues into the discussion to prop up your argument.
Your idea wasn't really a real idea. I mean... they're going to a binding arbitrator now, and your suggestion was that they should have gone to binding arbitration earlier. Like... their goal was to avoid binding arbitration. So. I mean. If you're gonna say that the conditions of binding arbitration now are going to be so much worse than the conditions of binding arbitration earlier, you're gonna really have to finesse this one with details.
yes thats the point the corporation completely undermined the workers power and got exactly what they want because of the holidays
it was a calculated play the government fell for
Agreed but I think the union also misplayed it's hand. They recently turned down an offer to basically put the whole thing on hold till after the holidays and then slap an abitration deadline on the whole thing. They should have come back with yes to the hold, no to the deadline imo. A strike is playing politics, especially when you are a crown corporation. Take the pressure off the government to cave in and force you back to work and take up the fight afterwards. I think they got over-confident and thought that fucking up the holiday season would force management to come to the table faster and didn't take into account how the federal government would react.
Literally the opposite of what I said. This is not anything like arguing in good faith yo.
That wasn't on the table. You can't just... create offers that don't exist and say they should have accepted them.
They offered something that was like what you'd want. Go back with a modified version of the offer. You know, negotiate. Like I literally already said.
I mean, I actually quoted the post you are pretending says the opposite of what it says and you are still pulling this schtick. Just silly goosery.
You don't know anything about labour relations. It is not goosery to point out that you do not, and that your ideas are about as fantastical as the union building a spaceship to take them to Mars. You claim to be thinking more strategically than CUPW is, but frankly, your idea that the union should give up all its leverage at the point that it's the strongest, so that it can prolong the strike when they're at their weakest is some of the most horrid labour negotiating strategy I've ever heard. "Sure, we'll do our job when you need us the most, and then go back on strike when you don't need us as much! Cuz that's how strikes work!"
The deal offered by Canada Post was, "Die or die." Saying, "Oh, we'll take the first die, if you throw in a hundred bucks," isn't negotiating and it isn't a strategy; it's suicide.
My schtick is that I know something about labour negotiations and you do not. It is not silly goosery. It's being informed and educated from having gone through this before, from having talked to lawyers and union strategists and done research. If that's silly goosery, then I'm a silly goose and proud of it. And relieved not to be the guy who's just yelling, "Why don't unions just do THIS? It's so obvious! Unions R dum."
Personally, if I heard about any retailers by name putting pressure on the government to get the postal workers back to work because they aren't getting their packages, I would be inclined to not shop there.
Besides, I know its a dick move as I work in a retail space, I know the current backlog is already going to not get cleared up til some time in January, forcing them back to work doesn't actually help Christmas shopping at all at this point, any of the Christmas orders worth a damn likely shipped and arrived in October already by other couriers than Canada Post.
lolwhat?
Black Friday sales are on right now. People are ordering shit all this weekend.
That's because you don't understand what happens in Ordering and Recieving in Retail. Like Halloween? That gets ordered in March and arrives sometime in August. On pallets.
If all your concerned with is personal online shopping, sure, Postal Canada strike impacts you, sorta, its not like any number of private package courier vans and cube trucks like Loomis aren't running. But the larger scale stuff that the larger retail chains are supposedly complaining about in the news about getting Postal Canada back to work? Like something coming through McKesson or Unipharm and so on? Hasn't been impacted at all, that's all done.
I do understand how it works in retail. But that's not what I'm talking about. Or most people really. When people talk about all the shipping around the holidays they aren't talking about what you are for exactly that reason.
Voters want their shit delivered during Christmas season. Politicians are going to listen to these voters and make these deliveries happen by any means necessary.
This could be seen by a two year old.
There is not even a slim chance that there will be some popular uprising against a govt. That made postal workers deliver mail and parcels during Christmas.
They could have done a strike literally any other time of the year.
Its a horrible misread by the union of the sentiment in the country.
Maybe they will win the court challenge in 3 months maybe January 2nd the govt. Recinds the back to work legislation and moves on.
"no point in unions" is a pretty far stretch for this situation. Unions need public support too and using the general public during the time they are at peak greediness as leverage is pants on head Fucking stupid.
If you can't win in December, you can't win in January. That's the problem. The threshold of pain for politicians enacting back-to-work legislation is lower than the threshold of pain for employers actually negotiating in good faith rather than stalling and betting on back-to-work legislation. That does not change in January or February or March. For a lot of these unions, there is no daylight to be found. That's why so many of them are getting back-to-work-ed repeatedly, over and over again. It's not that every fucking union in North America are always misplaying all their hands, from the TTC to Ontario TA unions to Air Canada to Canada Pacific to Canada National to Saskatchewan public servants to Ontario teachers to Ontario college faculty. And this isn't even counting all the services that have been declared "essential" and are thus forbidden from striking.
Some of you still seem to be under the illusion that there is actual good-faith bargaining happening here. There is not. There are unions negotiating with middle-tier managers who've been ordered by executives to hold the line, who know that if they hold the line long enough, governments will step in with legislation. Unions just... don't get good deals any more. They can't, under these circumstances, not when there's always a trump card that employers can play, and public that not only accepts it but demands it. And governments are now enacting more legislation to make back-to-work legislation even more in their favour, by demanding that arbitrators consider the government's "financial capacity to pay," because they're using it so damn often that what fairness remains in back-to-work legislation actually is a huge burden for them. Like, for CUPW, this is going back to the SCC for the second time in ten years. That's how ridiculous this legislative practice has been.
When y'all are like, "Oh hey I support unions, they play an important role in society," and then turn around and go, "All these unions getting back-to-work-ed are just misplaying their hands and screwing things up for their workers," no, you don't support unions and no, you don't support unionized workers, because you've looked at a world where governments and public sentiment are so tilted against unions that they're getting crushed and going, "Yeah no, this is still a fair playing field and it's just unions shooting themselves in the foot. All of them. For decades now. Yep. It's their own fault that back-to-work legislation, which one wasn't even a thing, is now used not even months into a strike and looms over all bargaining as a dagger of Damocles."
As a union member, you're my white moderate.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Clearly what they're doing is working. Continue to strike on Christmas and turn public sentiment against you.
It's always going to be a PR war and fucking the largely ignorant general public during holiday season will be another few straws on the camels back.
I disagree that there is no leverage during the rest of the year and I believe that the PR war is more easily won when people aren't pissed off about Jimmy's lego set not being delivered.
Or we can keep pretending this is some academic problem when it isn't and we'll wonder why no one supports unions and back to work legislation is continually supported by the public.
3/4 of my working family are in unions, I don't give a shit what label you care to throw out at people who disagree with you.
Just so there's no ambiguity here, I support back to work legislation for postal workers during the Christmas holidays and I will next year. I can do this and vote for political parties that support unions and fairer labour practices.
I can do this because I don't believe unions always make the right decisions and are so sacred that I would use derisive language reserved for racists when they face criticism.
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Caulk Bite 6One of the multitude of Dans infesting this placeRegistered Userregular
3/4 of my working family are in unions, I don't give a shit what label you care to throw out at people who disagree with you.
Just so there's no ambiguity here, I support back to work legislation for postal workers during the Christmas holidays and I will next year. I can do this and vote for political parties that support unions and fairer labour practices.
“I can’t be anti-union, I am friendly with many people in unions. That is how that works.
Now let’s talk about how unions need to eat shit and like it.”
I don't claim to know anything about labour negotiations, but there are a few things I want to point out:
1) The organizations that Hippofant mentioned, as well as Canada Post, are generally fairly large, have limited competition (in some cases, legally enforced), and are pretty important to peoples' lives and/or the economy in general.
2) From what I've experienced, people aren't anti-union, they're anti-"union fucking up my life". It's the lack of choice that's the issue. If, for example, there were two reasonably similar public transit systems, then the TTC could go on strike and most people wouldn't mind too much. But, there's no real alternative, so if it came down to a choice between me losing my job/home because I can't get to work, or them eating shit, then they can eat shit. Perhaps not the most generous of attitudes, but I find it hard to believe that if I ran a huge "Cut My Taxes and Defund the TTC" marketing campaign that they'd all just sit back and take it. Conversely, if all the McDonald's workers went on strike, the public wouldn't give a damn, because everyone could just eat somewhere else, and no government would ever pass back-to-work legislation or force binding arbitration on the folks working at McD's.
3) The point of a strike (as I understand it) is to inflict harm on the company to the point that it becomes financially beneficial for management to offer better terms. As Canada Post is basically a legally-enforced monopoly in one aspect of its business, and also not specifically a profit-driven organization, the normal rules don't really apply. Barring legislative action, CUPW could go on strike for years, and CP would continue to exist without much difficulty and wouldn't permanently lose any of its letter delivery market share to another company. While its package delivery revenue would ultimately suffer long-term damage, from a managerial standpoint that doesn't matter since they have no shareholders to satisfy and no growth targets to meet. The people who really suffer are those who rely on CP's services, and that's why a strike was never going to work in this case: It's hitting the wrong target. Now, the general public could go after the management for bargaining in bad faith, but (a) They don't know, and (b) People tend to retaliate against who's fucking them the most directly, which is why in the case of a lockout, public sentiment is often somewhat different.
4) Is it unfair that striking is not a viable negotiation tactic for the people in these organizations? Yes. Is everyone who works at these places aware that striking's not viable? If they're not, they should be. This isn't a new development. They're going to have to come up with something else.
Clearly what they're doing is working. Continue to strike on Christmas and turn public sentiment against you.
It's always going to be a PR war and fucking the largely ignorant general public during holiday season will be another few straws on the camels back.
I disagree that there is no leverage during the rest of the year and I believe that the PR war is more easily won when people aren't pissed off about Jimmy's lego set not being delivered.
Or we can keep pretending this is some academic problem when it isn't and we'll wonder why no one supports unions and back to work legislation is continually supported by the public.
3/4 of my working family are in unions, I don't give a shit what label you care to throw out at people who disagree with you.
Just so there's no ambiguity here, I support back to work legislation for postal workers during the Christmas holidays and I will next year. I can do this and vote for political parties that support unions and fairer labour practices.
I can do this because I don't believe unions always make the right decisions and are so sacred that I would use derisive language reserved for racists when they face criticism.
Like, duders, nothing unions are doing is working. That's my point. You keep on going, "Oh hey, what they did didn't work so it was obviously wrong," and... well first, that's results-oriented thinking and there are a whole host of well-explored reasons why that's a fallacy. And second, you can't demonstrate that there is something better they could have done!
Though the Canadian Union of Postal Workers had mounted rotating strikes in different cities during the 12-day labour disruption, it didn't really hit home until union leaders announced that the strikes were to hit Montreal and Toronto.
With that announcement, Canada Post locked out all of its 48,000 workers. Given that Canada's two largest cities account for more than half of all mail traffic, the system would have been effectively shut down anyway, postal management said. Plus, they also said the rotating 24-hour strikes had already cost $100 million.
Rotating strikes and as the strikes moved to major cities, back-to-worked. And did Stephen Harper et al. face any political punishment for this act?
This is the reality facing public sector unions in Canada right now. There are no political consequences for sending unions back to work via legislation. None! Forget Harper's Conservatives; Dalton McGuinty, known as the "education premier," legislated Ontario teachers back to work, illegally as it turns out, and the Ontario government had to give a huge payout to the teachers' unions to compensate them for that illegal act in their next bargaining cycle. Did McGuinty's Liberals pay any political price for that? Did the Liberals not get reelected twice more? And then when Ford got elected, was anybody talking at all about how the Liberals had legislated Ontario teachers, nurses, TAs, and college faculty back to work, as well as declaring the TTC essential? Were not teachers' and nurses' unions actually lined up against Ford?
These were already rotating strikes. That is to say, CUPW had already attuned their job action to try and reduce the impact on the public. But as soon as they touched Toronto and Montreal or as soon as they affected Christmas, boom back-to-work. It's just unacceptable to the public for unions to inconvenience them in any way. How many students do you think actually go to York and how much political power do they actually have? Or how many people were inconvenienced by Air Canada counter staff going on strike, oh wait, they were threatened by the federal government threatened with back-to-work legislation, before they even went on strike!
This is CUPW we're talking about here, not my shitty amateur-ass local. These guys are the grandpappy of Canadian public sector unions. They're the union that got us maternity benefits nationwide. They won their Supreme Court case over their last round of bargaining. These guys know what they're doing, and public sentiment is still, "Fuck 'em." They can't get anywhere in bargaining, because really they're not bargaining with Canada Post but rather with the federal government, so the whole bargaining process is just entirely broken as the Canada Post executives just try to hold the company line because they've pretty much been ordered by their political masters to not offer any concessions, so this is how it goes now. Some unions go all out. Some unions back down. Some unions wildcat. Some unions work-to-rule. Some unions try to thread a different needle. They all get back-to-work-ed. How many strikes can you even list that actually ended with a negotiated settlement, rather than back-to-work legislation or binding arbitration or the union getting crushed?
Of course, prima facie, unions should consider public sentiment in how they conduct themselves, but when public sentiment is, "Fuck you," there's only so much you can do. So that's why you get this:
And that's why you get this:
And while you might not be the ones saying, "Fuck 'em," you are saying that it's okay for people to say, "Fuck 'em," and when A leads to B leads to C leads to D, and I'm pretty damn sure you are, as individuals, not fine with C and D, so I don't know how you can be okay with A. Unless you're just not aware of what everybody in a (public-sector) union is aware of, which is that they're getting fucked, because governments have found this back-door channel that completely nullifies their ability to effect change at no cost, and the fucking is going to continue until the public starts saying that it's not acceptable any more, and that very much includes people in unions themselves who are too damn "moderate" to fight for anything worth fighting for.
And I'm not even a union lifer or anything like that. My next career switch may very well be to an ununionized job. But I don't think there's any actual doubt on the ground, on either side, about the reality that unions face right now, not even amongst union leaders, though you might need to get a few drinks into them before they'll admit it to you. There is no "right way" to do this any more. They're all trying to figure it out as they go before they all go extinct.
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
4) Is it unfair that striking is not a viable negotiation tactic for the people in these organizations? Yes. Is everyone who works at these places aware that striking's not viable? If they're not, they should be. This isn't a new development. They're going to have to come up with something else.
Like workplace sabotage or slowdowns? There's not a lot of options available for labor to put pressure on management. You take away their ability to strike and things either get ugly or the union effectively loses the ability to extract concessions from management.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
This seems a lot like victim blaming, honestly. Like... the government wants to fuck you, workers, so you should know that and avoid being fucked involuntarily in this manner, by instead volunteering to be fucked in this other manner.
Way to "overplay your hand" by not just taking the dicking people in power want to give you.
Is there anything specific in particular about their strategy that should have been corrected? Is there any specific concession that they should have given in? Absent any actual specific corrections/changes proposed, this is just Monday morning quarterbacking someone for choosing a particular track in a poorly formulated trolley problem. They should have gone to binding arbitration! Kinda like what's basically happening now anyways with a jointly chosen mediator! OBVIOUSLY, they should have chosen the OTHER track!
When the government's willing to pass possibly unconstitutional legislation to stop you... it's like... I dunno man, is that the "reality" you really want people to acquiesce too? That's like a thread's width away from just giving in to whatever injustice people who are more powerful than you want to perpetrate. You should just know beforehand that people will violate the law to abuse you, so, you know, transgendered Ontarians should just go right back in the closet rather than risk Ford's wrath; after all, why fight for their human rights when they know about the Notwithstanding Clause?
I literally gave an idea at the start of this for what they could have done different based on recent news that's come out. It's difficult to nail down specifics without being fully privy to the negotiations but it should be pretty obvious to anyone that the government was not gonna let a major postal strike keep going during the holiday shopping season without trying to do something about it. And when governments "do something" about strikes in important services, that something is back-to-work legislation. It's entirely predictable. The strikers should have known this.
The above? That's reality. You know it too. Shit, we've been down this kind of road before with this very union. I have no idea what the lot of you are actually trying to argue here.
Frankly, many of you seem to have trouble differentiating analysis from support. Saying "it is totally predictable that the government will legislate postal workers back to work to stop them from striking during holiday shopping season" is not an endorsement of that action but merely an acknowledgement of a pretty obvious fact.
Also, trying to bring "victim blaming" into this is hilarious. What is this shit? And now transgender rights apparently? Maybe talk about the postal strike instead of trying to drag unrelated issues into the discussion to prop up your argument.
Your idea wasn't really a real idea. I mean... they're going to a binding arbitrator now, and your suggestion was that they should have gone to binding arbitration earlier. Like... their goal was to avoid binding arbitration. So. I mean. If you're gonna say that the conditions of binding arbitration now are going to be so much worse than the conditions of binding arbitration earlier, you're gonna really have to finesse this one with details.
yes thats the point the corporation completely undermined the workers power and got exactly what they want because of the holidays
it was a calculated play the government fell for
Agreed but I think the union also misplayed it's hand. They recently turned down an offer to basically put the whole thing on hold till after the holidays and then slap an abitration deadline on the whole thing. They should have come back with yes to the hold, no to the deadline imo. A strike is playing politics, especially when you are a crown corporation. Take the pressure off the government to cave in and force you back to work and take up the fight afterwards. I think they got over-confident and thought that fucking up the holiday season would force management to come to the table faster and didn't take into account how the federal government would react.
Literally the opposite of what I said. This is not anything like arguing in good faith yo.
That wasn't on the table. You can't just... create offers that don't exist and say they should have accepted them.
They offered something that was like what you'd want. Go back with a modified version of the offer. You know, negotiate. Like I literally already said.
I mean, I actually quoted the post you are pretending says the opposite of what it says and you are still pulling this schtick. Just silly goosery.
You don't know anything about labour relations. It is not goosery to point out that you do not, and that your ideas are about as fantastical as the union building a spaceship to take them to Mars. You claim to be thinking more strategically than CUPW is, but frankly, your idea that the union should give up all its leverage at the point that it's the strongest, so that it can prolong the strike when they're at their weakest is some of the most horrid labour negotiating strategy I've ever heard. "Sure, we'll do our job when you need us the most, and then go back on strike when you don't need us as much! Cuz that's how strikes work!"
The deal offered by Canada Post was, "Die or die." Saying, "Oh, we'll take the first die, if you throw in a hundred bucks," isn't negotiating and it isn't a strategy; it's suicide.
My schtick is that I know something about labour negotiations and you do not. It is not silly goosery. It's being informed and educated from having gone through this before, from having talked to lawyers and union strategists and done research. If that's silly goosery, then I'm a silly goose and proud of it. And relieved not to be the guy who's just yelling, "Why don't unions just do THIS? It's so obvious! Unions R dum."
Right, see, here's the problem. Their leverage isn't at it's strongest now. The whole issue with your argument is you are making the exact same mistake as they did here: you think the holiday shopping season puts pressure on management. It doesn't. Because the government will legislate you back to work to keep mail service going for christmas shopping, it's the opposite. It puts pressure on the union. Their position is weak right now. They can't push too hard or the very predictable outcome we just saw happen will happen.
Like, you keep repeating the same argument but no matter how many words you use, none of them change reality. We know how this goes: you get sent back to work by the government if you try and disrupt holiday shopping. This is both a predictable outcome and the one that literally actually happened.
On top of that, this whole "Well striking the rest of the year wasn't getting anything done" attitude is equally silly. Because yeah, the previous tactics weren't as effective as they wanted. This is true. But they weren't getting legislated back to work either. So, like, how has their situation improved? The unstated assumption of this idea that nothing they were doing before was working is that clearly they need to try something different. When that something different gets you a worse (and entirely predictable) outcome, maybe it was a bad idea.
I've heard some speculation this morning that this is a tactic by GM to squeeze out concessions from the union and the government as GM is downsizing globally and is putting pressure on their various factories to essentially compete with one another for future retooling and work.
I don't buy it. I think, and we'll hear soon enough today, that this plant is done for.
Like 2 years ago I litterally saw construction equipment tearing parts of it down and theres been talk about GM fully pulling out for years.
Beyond that Theres the fact that the way they were laying people off twenty years ago (anyone with less then like 10 years of seniority was on shaky ground) told me that there was no point in applying for work there.
So yeah: kind of amazed that theres enough people left at the plant for something to be described as a "mass walk out".
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So how does this blow up in the goernment's face exactly?
The government aren't the ones negotiating. It's a crown corp so the connection is kind of hands off.
I also seriously doubt that trying to make the mail work during the christmas season is going to be a bad look for parliament. That's not a PR battle you should have trouble winning.
Passing legislation that is illegal is a bad look at any time under any circumstances.
Of course, if they wanted to make sure that the mail got out in a timely fashion, they could order canada post to settle immediately because again: they had a full year to settle this and chose not to.
Oh please. This isn't even remotely true. There's plenty of things the government can do that can be popular or at least good PR, but are illegal or just bad legislation in general.
The government could do a lot of things. But they were predictably only really going to do this to resolve the situation.
The fact that you have "get legislated back to work" as though it's something that the union is doing is showing exactly why you're not thinking about it right. The government is legislating them back to work. They are striking when it has the most impact. The government is not a passive bystander in this.
But I didn't say it was something the union was going. Nor did I call the government a passive bystander. WTF are you talking about? You arguments are full of these kind of weird and random assumptions.
I said the government legislating them back to work was a very obvious thing that would happen and that should have been taken into account in their strategy.
Way to "overplay your hand" by not just taking the dicking people in power want to give you.
Is there anything specific in particular about their strategy that should have been corrected? Is there any specific concession that they should have given in? Absent any actual specific corrections/changes proposed, this is just Monday morning quarterbacking someone for choosing a particular track in a poorly formulated trolley problem. They should have gone to binding arbitration! Kinda like what's basically happening now anyways with a jointly chosen mediator! OBVIOUSLY, they should have chosen the OTHER track!
When the government's willing to pass possibly unconstitutional legislation to stop you... it's like... I dunno man, is that the "reality" you really want people to acquiesce too? That's like a thread's width away from just giving in to whatever injustice people who are more powerful than you want to perpetrate. You should just know beforehand that people will violate the law to abuse you, so, you know, transgendered Ontarians should just go right back in the closet rather than risk Ford's wrath; after all, why fight for their human rights when they know about the Notwithstanding Clause?
This could be seen by a two year old.
There is not even a slim chance that there will be some popular uprising against a govt. That made postal workers deliver mail and parcels during Christmas.
They could have done a strike literally any other time of the year.
Its a horrible misread by the union of the sentiment in the country.
Maybe they will win the court challenge in 3 months maybe January 2nd the govt. Recinds the back to work legislation and moves on.
"no point in unions" is a pretty far stretch for this situation. Unions need public support too and using the general public during the time they are at peak greediness as leverage is pants on head Fucking stupid.
I literally gave an idea at the start of this for what they could have done different based on recent news that's come out. It's difficult to nail down specifics without being fully privy to the negotiations but it should be pretty obvious to anyone that the government was not gonna let a major postal strike keep going during the holiday shopping season without trying to do something about it. And when governments "do something" about strikes in important services, that something is back-to-work legislation. It's entirely predictable. The strikers should have known this.
The above? That's reality. You know it too. Shit, we've been down this kind of road before with this very union. I have no idea what the lot of you are actually trying to argue here.
Frankly, many of you seem to have trouble differentiating analysis from support. Saying "it is totally predictable that the government will legislate postal workers back to work to stop them from striking during holiday shopping season" is not an endorsement of that action but merely an acknowledgement of a pretty obvious fact.
Also, trying to bring "victim blaming" into this is hilarious. What is this shit? And now transgender rights apparently? Maybe talk about the postal strike instead of trying to drag unrelated issues into the discussion to prop up your argument.
Various reports that GM is closing down its Oshawa plants. This is going to be really bad.
Your idea wasn't really a real idea on how to do better so much as it was how to concede. I mean... they're going to a binding arbitrator now, and your suggestion was that they should have gone to binding arbitration earlier. Their goal the whole time was to avoid binding arbitration, as it often is for striking unions right now, because there's a belief that arbitrators only ever address financial issues and never structural ones. So. I mean. If you're gonna say that the conditions of binding arbitration now are going to be so much worse than the conditions of binding arbitration earlier, you're gonna really have to finesse this one with details.
Dude, you aren't even trying. Literally the opposite of what I said. This is not anything like arguing in good faith yo.
That wasn't on the table. You can't just... create offers that don't exist and say they should have accepted them.
Edit: If it's not clear, this is what government agencies are doing nowadays. They're playing explicitly for binding arbitration while unions are explicitly trying to avoid it. That's why government agencies are not negotiating, over and over again across the country, because they know the government will bail them out with back-to-work legislation, which not only takes the more complex issues off the table but then also passes responsibility for the costs off to the government rather than the agency leaders. Off the top of my head, OPSEU and CUPE locals have all been trying to avoid binding arbitration in their strikes.*
For the union to release their leverage, what little of it they have, at the time when it's the strongest... like... that's just giving up the strike. You're done. If they're not negotiating with you in November, they're not negotiating with you in January.
* It's a really perverse situation right now, where unions are trying to avoid binding arbitration because they want structural and administrative issues dealt with, employers are stalling for binding arbitration because they want political cover/to protect their own jobs, labour experts are saying that binding arbitration favours unions because arbitrators have been awarding hefty compensation bumps, and arbitrators are doing that because they don't want to tackle more complex structural/administrative issues because they don't want to be deciding how companies/organizations run themselves, and then governments are just throwing everything to binding arbitration because they don't want the bear the political pressure of prolonged strikes and the courts won't let them just dictate employment terms.
So... Odds that this happened because of the month long Union strike last year.
It's weird, because the stated reason is that GM is transitioning from more traditional cars to smaller hybrids/electric (then why not transition the darn plant?). But I've also heard that the big US car makers were abandoning cars altogether, especially combat and sub-compact, in favour of MOAR SUVs. So which is it, GM?
That was Ford. Also, retooling a plant is a lot harder than just adding another shift to a different plant already tooled for the model.
... Oh the company named Ford... That took me a minute.
It shouldnt but it blows ass, especially because their running temporary workers ragged atm because the union fucked up and was also in the impossible position of forcing gm to commit to production, which they immediately back tracked on and now we are here
They offered something that was like what you'd want. Go back with a modified version of the offer. You know, negotiate. Like I literally already said.
I mean, I actually quoted the post you are pretending says the opposite of what it says and you are still pulling this schtick. Just silly goosery.
That's because you don't understand what happens in Ordering and Recieving in Retail. Like Halloween? That gets ordered in March and arrives sometime in August. On pallets.
If all your concerned with is personal online shopping, sure, Postal Canada strike impacts you, sorta, its not like any number of private package courier vans and cube trucks like Loomis aren't running. But the larger scale stuff that the larger retail chains are supposedly complaining about in the news about getting Postal Canada back to work? Like something coming through McKesson or Unipharm and so on? Hasn't been impacted at all, that's all done.
You don't know anything about labour relations. It is not goosery to point out that you do not, and that your ideas are about as fantastical as the union building a spaceship to take them to Mars. You claim to be thinking more strategically than CUPW is, but frankly, your idea that the union should give up all its leverage at the point that it's the strongest, so that it can prolong the strike when they're at their weakest is some of the most horrid labour negotiating strategy I've ever heard. "Sure, we'll do our job when you need us the most, and then go back on strike when you don't need us as much! Cuz that's how strikes work!"
The deal offered by Canada Post was, "Die or die." Saying, "Oh, we'll take the first die, if you throw in a hundred bucks," isn't negotiating and it isn't a strategy; it's suicide.
My schtick is that I know something about labour negotiations and you do not. It is not silly goosery. It's being informed and educated from having gone through this before, from having talked to lawyers and union strategists and done research. If that's silly goosery, then I'm a silly goose and proud of it. And relieved not to be the guy who's just yelling, "Why don't unions just do THIS? It's so obvious! Unions R dum."
I do understand how it works in retail. But that's not what I'm talking about. Or most people really. When people talk about all the shipping around the holidays they aren't talking about what you are for exactly that reason.
If you can't win in December, you can't win in January. That's the problem. The threshold of pain for politicians enacting back-to-work legislation is lower than the threshold of pain for employers actually negotiating in good faith rather than stalling and betting on back-to-work legislation. That does not change in January or February or March. For a lot of these unions, there is no daylight to be found. That's why so many of them are getting back-to-work-ed repeatedly, over and over again. It's not that every fucking union in North America are always misplaying all their hands, from the TTC to Ontario TA unions to Air Canada to Canada Pacific to Canada National to Saskatchewan public servants to Ontario teachers to Ontario college faculty. And this isn't even counting all the services that have been declared "essential" and are thus forbidden from striking.
Some of you still seem to be under the illusion that there is actual good-faith bargaining happening here. There is not. There are unions negotiating with middle-tier managers who've been ordered by executives to hold the line, who know that if they hold the line long enough, governments will step in with legislation. Unions just... don't get good deals any more. They can't, under these circumstances, not when there's always a trump card that employers can play, and public that not only accepts it but demands it. And governments are now enacting more legislation to make back-to-work legislation even more in their favour, by demanding that arbitrators consider the government's "financial capacity to pay," because they're using it so damn often that what fairness remains in back-to-work legislation actually is a huge burden for them. Like, for CUPW, this is going back to the SCC for the second time in ten years. That's how ridiculous this legislative practice has been.
When y'all are like, "Oh hey I support unions, they play an important role in society," and then turn around and go, "All these unions getting back-to-work-ed are just misplaying their hands and screwing things up for their workers," no, you don't support unions and no, you don't support unionized workers, because you've looked at a world where governments and public sentiment are so tilted against unions that they're getting crushed and going, "Yeah no, this is still a fair playing field and it's just unions shooting themselves in the foot. All of them. For decades now. Yep. It's their own fault that back-to-work legislation, which one wasn't even a thing, is now used not even months into a strike and looms over all bargaining as a dagger of Damocles."
As a union member, you're my white moderate.
It's always going to be a PR war and fucking the largely ignorant general public during holiday season will be another few straws on the camels back.
I disagree that there is no leverage during the rest of the year and I believe that the PR war is more easily won when people aren't pissed off about Jimmy's lego set not being delivered.
Or we can keep pretending this is some academic problem when it isn't and we'll wonder why no one supports unions and back to work legislation is continually supported by the public.
3/4 of my working family are in unions, I don't give a shit what label you care to throw out at people who disagree with you.
Just so there's no ambiguity here, I support back to work legislation for postal workers during the Christmas holidays and I will next year. I can do this and vote for political parties that support unions and fairer labour practices.
I can do this because I don't believe unions always make the right decisions and are so sacred that I would use derisive language reserved for racists when they face criticism.
“I can’t be anti-union, I am friendly with many people in unions. That is how that works.
Now let’s talk about how unions need to eat shit and like it.”
1) The organizations that Hippofant mentioned, as well as Canada Post, are generally fairly large, have limited competition (in some cases, legally enforced), and are pretty important to peoples' lives and/or the economy in general.
2) From what I've experienced, people aren't anti-union, they're anti-"union fucking up my life". It's the lack of choice that's the issue. If, for example, there were two reasonably similar public transit systems, then the TTC could go on strike and most people wouldn't mind too much. But, there's no real alternative, so if it came down to a choice between me losing my job/home because I can't get to work, or them eating shit, then they can eat shit. Perhaps not the most generous of attitudes, but I find it hard to believe that if I ran a huge "Cut My Taxes and Defund the TTC" marketing campaign that they'd all just sit back and take it. Conversely, if all the McDonald's workers went on strike, the public wouldn't give a damn, because everyone could just eat somewhere else, and no government would ever pass back-to-work legislation or force binding arbitration on the folks working at McD's.
3) The point of a strike (as I understand it) is to inflict harm on the company to the point that it becomes financially beneficial for management to offer better terms. As Canada Post is basically a legally-enforced monopoly in one aspect of its business, and also not specifically a profit-driven organization, the normal rules don't really apply. Barring legislative action, CUPW could go on strike for years, and CP would continue to exist without much difficulty and wouldn't permanently lose any of its letter delivery market share to another company. While its package delivery revenue would ultimately suffer long-term damage, from a managerial standpoint that doesn't matter since they have no shareholders to satisfy and no growth targets to meet. The people who really suffer are those who rely on CP's services, and that's why a strike was never going to work in this case: It's hitting the wrong target. Now, the general public could go after the management for bargaining in bad faith, but (a) They don't know, and (b) People tend to retaliate against who's fucking them the most directly, which is why in the case of a lockout, public sentiment is often somewhat different.
4) Is it unfair that striking is not a viable negotiation tactic for the people in these organizations? Yes. Is everyone who works at these places aware that striking's not viable? If they're not, they should be. This isn't a new development. They're going to have to come up with something else.
Like, duders, nothing unions are doing is working. That's my point. You keep on going, "Oh hey, what they did didn't work so it was obviously wrong," and... well first, that's results-oriented thinking and there are a whole host of well-explored reasons why that's a fallacy. And second, you can't demonstrate that there is something better they could have done!
This is an article from 2011, when Harper et al. back-to-work-ed CUPW last time, unconstitutionally as it turns out: Who wins with back-to-work legislation?
Rotating strikes and as the strikes moved to major cities, back-to-worked. And did Stephen Harper et al. face any political punishment for this act?
This is the reality facing public sector unions in Canada right now. There are no political consequences for sending unions back to work via legislation. None! Forget Harper's Conservatives; Dalton McGuinty, known as the "education premier," legislated Ontario teachers back to work, illegally as it turns out, and the Ontario government had to give a huge payout to the teachers' unions to compensate them for that illegal act in their next bargaining cycle. Did McGuinty's Liberals pay any political price for that? Did the Liberals not get reelected twice more? And then when Ford got elected, was anybody talking at all about how the Liberals had legislated Ontario teachers, nurses, TAs, and college faculty back to work, as well as declaring the TTC essential? Were not teachers' and nurses' unions actually lined up against Ford?
These were already rotating strikes. That is to say, CUPW had already attuned their job action to try and reduce the impact on the public. But as soon as they touched Toronto and Montreal or as soon as they affected Christmas, boom back-to-work. It's just unacceptable to the public for unions to inconvenience them in any way. How many students do you think actually go to York and how much political power do they actually have? Or how many people were inconvenienced by Air Canada counter staff going on strike, oh wait, they were threatened by the federal government threatened with back-to-work legislation, before they even went on strike!
This is CUPW we're talking about here, not my shitty amateur-ass local. These guys are the grandpappy of Canadian public sector unions. They're the union that got us maternity benefits nationwide. They won their Supreme Court case over their last round of bargaining. These guys know what they're doing, and public sentiment is still, "Fuck 'em." They can't get anywhere in bargaining, because really they're not bargaining with Canada Post but rather with the federal government, so the whole bargaining process is just entirely broken as the Canada Post executives just try to hold the company line because they've pretty much been ordered by their political masters to not offer any concessions, so this is how it goes now. Some unions go all out. Some unions back down. Some unions wildcat. Some unions work-to-rule. Some unions try to thread a different needle. They all get back-to-work-ed. How many strikes can you even list that actually ended with a negotiated settlement, rather than back-to-work legislation or binding arbitration or the union getting crushed?
Of course, prima facie, unions should consider public sentiment in how they conduct themselves, but when public sentiment is, "Fuck you," there's only so much you can do. So that's why you get this:
And that's why you get this:
And while you might not be the ones saying, "Fuck 'em," you are saying that it's okay for people to say, "Fuck 'em," and when A leads to B leads to C leads to D, and I'm pretty damn sure you are, as individuals, not fine with C and D, so I don't know how you can be okay with A. Unless you're just not aware of what everybody in a (public-sector) union is aware of, which is that they're getting fucked, because governments have found this back-door channel that completely nullifies their ability to effect change at no cost, and the fucking is going to continue until the public starts saying that it's not acceptable any more, and that very much includes people in unions themselves who are too damn "moderate" to fight for anything worth fighting for.
And I'm not even a union lifer or anything like that. My next career switch may very well be to an ununionized job. But I don't think there's any actual doubt on the ground, on either side, about the reality that unions face right now, not even amongst union leaders, though you might need to get a few drinks into them before they'll admit it to you. There is no "right way" to do this any more. They're all trying to figure it out as they go before they all go extinct.
Like workplace sabotage or slowdowns? There's not a lot of options available for labor to put pressure on management. You take away their ability to strike and things either get ugly or the union effectively loses the ability to extract concessions from management.
Right, see, here's the problem. Their leverage isn't at it's strongest now. The whole issue with your argument is you are making the exact same mistake as they did here: you think the holiday shopping season puts pressure on management. It doesn't. Because the government will legislate you back to work to keep mail service going for christmas shopping, it's the opposite. It puts pressure on the union. Their position is weak right now. They can't push too hard or the very predictable outcome we just saw happen will happen.
Like, you keep repeating the same argument but no matter how many words you use, none of them change reality. We know how this goes: you get sent back to work by the government if you try and disrupt holiday shopping. This is both a predictable outcome and the one that literally actually happened.
On top of that, this whole "Well striking the rest of the year wasn't getting anything done" attitude is equally silly. Because yeah, the previous tactics weren't as effective as they wanted. This is true. But they weren't getting legislated back to work either. So, like, how has their situation improved? The unstated assumption of this idea that nothing they were doing before was working is that clearly they need to try something different. When that something different gets you a worse (and entirely predictable) outcome, maybe it was a bad idea.
At the moment it seems like GM has made no official statement on anything but given the silence I would say the closure news is 100% accurate.
The CBC article I saw said there were 2,500 people working there, down from 25,000 in the 80s and 90s.
Also, Bombardier cut 3,000 aerospace jobs two weeks ago, if anyone cares.
I don't buy it. I think, and we'll hear soon enough today, that this plant is done for.
Beyond that Theres the fact that the way they were laying people off twenty years ago (anyone with less then like 10 years of seniority was on shaky ground) told me that there was no point in applying for work there.
So yeah: kind of amazed that theres enough people left at the plant for something to be described as a "mass walk out".