Hurry Honey, Finish the Taxes! The Workers Are Striking!
Where to Stand on the Public Servant Strike in Canada
Over 150,000 Canadian public sector workers have voted to strike if a new contract with the government is not reached. The PSAC (Public Service Alliance of Canada) members range -150,000 employees in Canadian public sector- from Canada Revenue Agency employees who ensure EI and other government services run smoothly to coast guard workers and even firefighters. Essentially anything the government does that is even slightly positive is done by these folks.
As per any strike in North America it has been met with consternation from the public and the media alike. Already these working class laborers are being labeled as greedy, privileged, and pampered, meanwhile 8 out of 10 member’s of parliament in Canada got a raise this year as inflation reaps havoc on the middle and lower class. Included in that suffering lower and middle class is the same public servants voting to go on strike.
Too much browsing of this subject on twitter and you will come across several tweets stating how these workers are making well into the six digits on average. In reality the average wage of these striking workers is closer to the 45,000-60,000 range, a wage that may have been considered lucrative 40 years ago but nowadays is borderline unlivable in some areas. The efforts to diminish and guilt these workers publicly is really not a surprise, it has been a timeless strategy to hold down the working class and neuter any real workers movements.
When news of a strike hits it is assumed that the only purpose for this strike is for the workers to make more money. I don’t really blame the public for this assumption because it is certainly all the media discusses about it and even the union representatives themselves often use it as a primary talking point. This focusing on money alone is likely because money talks, no regular joe, jane, or jenby will listen to a union representative talk about how they want to change the requirements for breaks from two 15 minute breaks per eight hours to one 15 minute break per four hours. A change that allows people working shifts that are less than five hours to regularly still have a break. There are many micro details being negotiated in this contract along with the more macro details like wages.
What I am trying to get across here is that when unions negotiate, they do it to improve workers conditions and protections overall, and not just through increased wages. Don’t get me wrong though wages are very fucking important. Inflation is crippling working class people everywhere. We are all feeling the pressure, and that includes those voting to strike, so why the fuck do we accept the pocket watching from the media when these same media figures who commentate on laborer’s fighting for their livelihood make six figure salaries plus benefits.
Pocket watching aside, there are many other reasons we should support this strike and not allow the media and politicians to convince us otherwise. The most prominent anti-strike point I see is the fact that an increase in public sector wages results in more taxes for us and a waste of our tax money. So let’s take a step back for a second and think this one out. We pay our taxes so we can have healthcare, roads, public transportation, and some level of social safety nets. For millions of Canadians social safety nets like disability checks, baby bonuses, and various other tax credits are the difference between hungry and full. This is why we pay taxes, to benefit society as a whole, and the people who work these jobs do that exact thing. If you want to get mad about how our tax dollars are spent then look no further then the BILLIONS of dollars being given to oil companies to pay for a technology that does not work whatsoever.
At the very minimum when we spend this tax money to ensure that public servants have a livable wage we are creating a higher standard for all laborers. Do you think wages would rise if nobody pushed for it? Fuck no, companies have, and will continue to happily exploit your labor for larger profits as long as they can get away with it. Unions forcing the bar forward for working class people allows for better conditions for everyone. Yes the progress is slow, but it is because unions are the only thing we got, aside from raising minimum wage every 10 years or so the government is certainly not doing enough to push wages forward considering they are the ones trying to suppress wages for members of the PSAC.
Since unions are all we got, why is it that the word itself brings a taste of negativity with it? Well propaganda being fed to us our entire lives certainly contributes to the negative image many instinctually have about unions. You will hear nonsense like unions are homewreckers, described as coming into the work family and splitting them up. What’s so funny about the “family” comparison is that in a family there are parents and children, and typically parents have an ability to control the children because they know better. So these employers are essentially saying they should be able to control the employees fully because they know better, hmm, perhaps more revealing than they intended.
In reality, unions provide the only negotiating power and control over livelihood that the working class has. The employer-employee relationship is one of unequal power, the employee fundamentally has little to no negotiating power. The best an employee without organization can do is threaten to leave, when dealing with the majority of employees this is simply not substantial because there are dozens of people champing at the bit to take your position. Leverage gone.
By unionizing an employee makes their threat of leaving or withholding work grow from one employee to dozens or thousands of employees, suddenly replacing you does not seem as great an option. Rather the employer is forced to negotiate for your labor on a level playing field, somewhat. As has been proven countless times, the employer has plenty of pathways to legislate large unions back to work, for instance workers have been forced back to work numerous times including the Canada Post workers in 2018. Of course you only have to worry about back to work legislation and other anti-union tactics if you can form a union at all.
Corporations have spent hundreds of millions of dollars a year to prevent unionization in their workforce. Now why would corporations spend that much money on union busting if it weren’t going to fatten their pockets somehow? Of course union busting fattens their pockets by allowing for further exploitation of their workers due to a lack of negotiation power. Corporations recognize the importance of unions and workers power, and they do whatever they can to crush it.
We as a public are often much too complacent in participating in the public shaming of any form of worker organization and power. But this can be changed, we do not have to continue this infighting in the working class. Every laborer in this country has different political, social, and religious beliefs, but the one thing we all share is the fact that we must sell our labor to survive, and right now all of us are barely surviving. The PSAC recognizes this, they feel the rope tightening around the working class's throat, and they are putting their livelihood on the line to increase the standard in which workers should be paid.
Needless to say at this point, we as the working class should support the PSAC in their contract negotiations and strike if it gets to that point. The party that should be receiving the bad press is the federal government. Not only are they refusing to pay the public servants who keep this country running what they deserve - or at the very minimum a pay increase that is in-line with the rise in inflation over the last three years -, but they are also once again showing how facetious their applause and appreciation of laborers during the pandemic really was.
The workers who are threatening to strike were instrumental if not solely responsible for getting out the much needed financial aid millions of Canadians received during the pandemic. They are also instrumental in making sure that money received by people who were undeserving gets paid back. These monumental tasks have been added on to an already long list of jobs these public servants fulfill, and in response to this increased workload the government has decided to not even give them wage increases that are in line with inflation.
By voting to strike if a contract is not agreed upon the PSAC is fighting for not only the public servant working class, but also the working class in Canada as a whole. When the government continuously fails to not only properly regulate the private sector to ensure the working class can survive, but also fails to ensure that its own workforce has a living wage it becomes paramount for the working class to organize and fight for their own livelihood. This is something that we must all recognize and act on, because as of now the media, the government, and the corporations are all working to weaken workers rights in Canada.