TriumphAnt

Diary of a striker – Part 3

Day 4

“To Infinity and Beyond!”

Actually, on second thought this is getting positively Dickensian, not Disneyan… It was the shortest of strikes, it was the longest of strikes; “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.”

Very early Friday morning, I awoke perplexingly to the announced item on CBC radio’s top of the hour news that no settlement had been reached, but striking public servants had been ordered back to work by the union.

It took the better part of the day to collect all the pieces of the story. Apparently an offer isn’t considered “official” until it’s been received in writing, and late Thursday afternoon, the government said it would deliver its “final” offer by 10 pm that night. Then they changed their minds and said the written version would only be available at 10 the next morning.

So the union took a really interesting tack. First, they claimed the government was deliberately dragging its heels to punish the workers for exercising our legal right to strike. They (the union) angrily announced they would not subject their members to another day of lost pay while the government shilly-shallied. So in effect, we were being told to “punish” the government by going back to work for the day. Well, that oughta show them!

Friday’s work energy level could probably be called lackluster at best. Later in the afternoon, PSAC President Nycole Turmel announced that the bargaining team had looked at the final offer, and had decided to recommend that it not be accepted. She added that the strike was still officially on, but strike action would be suspended until the entire membership could vote on the offer.

Can things possibly be any more slippery sloped? We’re still on strike, but we’re not engaging in any action that typically reflects a strike. The bargaining team, which has been grappling with the dotted i’s and crossed t’s of offer and counter-offer, has recommended rejection of the last offer, but will submit the offer to a vote of the full membership, a process that will take six to ten weeks. (And why will a voting process for a mere 80,000 people take about 60 days to complete? Who knows? Must be because of all those dangling chads.)

And if it's eventually rejected, well then it's back to the bargaining table and possibly back to the picket line. (I have to confess that the idea of picketing in December or January at a building located on the north shore of the frozen, windswept Ottawa River is not especially appealing to me.)

No one feels really satisfied with this outcome. Some people I spoke to on Friday were more than a little ticked off with the union, who have also recommended "doing your job", which apparently is code for "working to rule", or no overtime and no extra duty. (Fat chance. I work with people for whom overtime is routine and whose managers expect it. Most job descriptions in fact have an expectation of at least some overtime written into their terms of reference.)

The problem of course is that if everyone suddenly started working to rule, I'm not sure the government could cope with the sudden explosion in productivity. (A little private sector humour there.)

So for the moment anyway, thus endeth my short but brilliantly nondescript career of labour activism.

Now if I can just figure out how to pad it into my résumé…