The BC Teachers’ strike hit home today, with CUPE picketing in support of the teachers even as some prospect for reconciliation has emerged. Our daughter’s daycare was closed so that staff could respect CUPE’s picket lines.
But I have to admit that despite the challenge of arranging for childcare today, I’m really deeply proud and touched that my daughter is being looked after by people who have collective bargaining rights that allow them to ensure that they have the working conditions to do a good job looking after her. And when she gets to school, I want to have the same knowledge — that teachers have a way to actually have a voice in how they work and look after our kids, and that no government can just take away that voice overnight. But of course I’ve spent a long time in and around union culture, hearing about the struggle and sacrifices people have made to get or keep bargaining rights, so for me, those bargaining rights are right up there with free speech, abortion rights etc as really fundamental and precious.
In fact, I’ve been caught a bit off-guard by the depth of my outrage over the government’s position on this strike. After all, I’ve been relatively disenchanted by the labour movement for years. What do unions have to say to the world of high-skill information workers who typically own their own means of production? Sure, unions mean something when you’re slaving away on a loom or an assembly line owned by some guy in a top hat (am I the only person whose mental picture of labour politics is stuck in the 19th century?), but what if the “means of production” is that shiny laptop sitting on your desk? Who needs a union to stick up for you?
Well, maybe I don’t need a union — myself. But that doesn’t mean I don’t need unions. This strike reminds me that we all DESPERATELY need unions. We need construction workers’ unions to make sure that building conditions — and buildings — are safe for all of us. We need hospital workers’ unions to stand up for patients’ living conditions. (Our last brush with labour action was when I gave birth in a hospital the very week they privatized all their custodial services. Not pretty.) And we need teachers’ unions to stand up for our kids.
So, (top) hats off to the BCTF. Thanks to their stubbornness, commitment and courage, my daughter may yet be educated in a school with small enough classes and large enough budgets to meet her needs. And just as important, educated by people who can offer first-hand lessons in the value of putting your ass on the line to fight for what you believe in.
I must confess to being reticent to enter into this argument, given your knowlege and, er, academic rigour, but here it goes:
I think it’s wrong-headed to depend upon employees to defend consumers’ rights. If the 20th century has proven anything, it’s that employees (unionized or not) are under-motivated to improve their employers’ services. After all, did the construction workers’ unions prevent leaky condos? Which rights are ferry workers defending?
Money talks. Everybody in the economic chain–employers, employees (unionized or not) and consumers are motivated first and foremost by money. It seems to me, then, that the best advocates for and defenders of consumer rights (where consumers include children in school and patients in hospitals) are consumers. They can talk with their money and their vote.
I must confess to being reticent to enter into this argument, given your knowlege and, er, academic rigour, but here it goes:
I think it’s wrong-headed to depend upon employees to defend consumers’ rights. If the 20th century has proven anything, it’s that employees (unionized or not) are under-motivated to improve their employers’ services. After all, did the construction workers’ unions prevent leaky condos? Which rights are ferry workers defending?
Money talks. Everybody in the economic chain–employers, employees (unionized or not) and consumers are motivated first and foremost by money. It seems to me, then, that the best advocates for and defenders of consumer rights (where consumers include children in school and patients in hospitals) are consumers. They can talk with their money and their vote.
When did we stop being citizens — or in the immediate instance, parents — and become “consumers”? I’m not a “consumer” of my daughter’s daycare services; I’m a concerned parent with a stake in the environment in which she spends much of her day — a stake in the welfare and well-being of the people who look after her.
As for the leaky condo example — well it’s an interesting example of just the point I make above. Those condos were built, by-and-large, by un-unionized workers who were specifcally hired as yet another way to take a shortcut and save a dollar — an approach that has done wonders for BC’s previously languishing tarpaulin industry.
But enough nit-picking: let me tackle your core point head-on, that “the best advocates for and defenders of consumer rights…are consumers”. The very examples you choose — children in school and patients in hospital — show why that is so often NOT the case. I don’t expect an eight-year-old to lobby for bigger class sizes; I don’t expect a cancer patient to hop out of bed and picket for better hospital meals. Particularly in the public sector — where the “consumers” of services are often people in need, receiving services from a de-facto monopolist — it’s often up to frontline service providers to serve as the guardians of service quality. I’m thankful that so many take that role so seriously.
When did we stop being citizens — or in the immediate instance, parents — and become “consumers”? I’m not a “consumer” of my daughter’s daycare services; I’m a concerned parent with a stake in the environment in which she spends much of her day — a stake in the welfare and well-being of the people who look after her.
As for the leaky condo example — well it’s an interesting example of just the point I make above. Those condos were built, by-and-large, by un-unionized workers who were specifcally hired as yet another way to take a shortcut and save a dollar — an approach that has done wonders for BC’s previously languishing tarpaulin industry.
But enough nit-picking: let me tackle your core point head-on, that “the best advocates for and defenders of consumer rights…are consumers”. The very examples you choose — children in school and patients in hospital — show why that is so often NOT the case. I don’t expect an eight-year-old to lobby for bigger class sizes; I don’t expect a cancer patient to hop out of bed and picket for better hospital meals. Particularly in the public sector — where the “consumers” of services are often people in need, receiving services from a de-facto monopolist — it’s often up to frontline service providers to serve as the guardians of service quality. I’m thankful that so many take that role so seriously.
I actually worked on a carpentry workers’ campaign to prevent leaky condos. They had a broad policy strategy in place around skills certification and sector regulation that could have gone a long way to avoiding those problems.
Of course, you wouldn’t have to dig too far to find a little self-interest at work there — competition from cheap, non-union labour (often people gang-hired and handed hammers) makes it hard for people who make higher (read “livable”) wages to find work. But there’s also a pride in the craft of carpentry, outrage at what was happening, and a recognition that the entire industry was falling into disrepute.
Ultimately, I don’t buy the argument that it’s all about money. If it was, then teachers wouldn’t be putting an average of something like $1,000 a year of their own money into classroom supplies… and I don’t think most would be in teaching in the first place. (Hell, if it was about money, I wouldn’t be working where I am, or where I’m going to be at the beginning of next year; I’d be at an ad firm that sells cigarettes to Third World kids or something.) Issues like class size and specialist teachers have a direct impact on working conditions, but they also profoundly affect teachers’ ability to go home at the end of the day feeling that they made a positive difference in their students’ lives.
I actually worked on a carpentry workers’ campaign to prevent leaky condos. They had a broad policy strategy in place around skills certification and sector regulation that could have gone a long way to avoiding those problems.
Of course, you wouldn’t have to dig too far to find a little self-interest at work there — competition from cheap, non-union labour (often people gang-hired and handed hammers) makes it hard for people who make higher (read “livable”) wages to find work. But there’s also a pride in the craft of carpentry, outrage at what was happening, and a recognition that the entire industry was falling into disrepute.
Ultimately, I don’t buy the argument that it’s all about money. If it was, then teachers wouldn’t be putting an average of something like $1,000 a year of their own money into classroom supplies… and I don’t think most would be in teaching in the first place. (Hell, if it was about money, I wouldn’t be working where I am, or where I’m going to be at the beginning of next year; I’d be at an ad firm that sells cigarettes to Third World kids or something.) Issues like class size and specialist teachers have a direct impact on working conditions, but they also profoundly affect teachers’ ability to go home at the end of the day feeling that they made a positive difference in their students’ lives.
Fair point on the builders. I’m totally ignorant as to how many were or were not unionized.
You’re a consumer because you pay (either directly or indirectly through taxes) for your daughter’s daycare services, just as you might pay a plumber or a purchase an iPod. And you’ve hit the nail on the head–you’ve got a stake, while employees largely do not. They are, quite naturally, first and foremost interested in reimbursement–that’s the #1 issue in most labour actions.
Who would I rather have advocating on behalf of consumers? Parents are as much consumers of school as their children, so they’re natural advocates. We’re all consumers of the healthcare system, so we all share a burden to advocate for it. In environmentalism, the trees don’t defend the forests–the nurses shouldn’t defend the medical system.
And before we paint everybody with the same brush, let’s not forget that the majority of unionized workers are not good samaritans, sacrificing for the greater good. They’re loggers, ferry employees, bureaucrats and bus drivers. They’re no more or less heroes than the QA engineer at Microsoft or the dude flipping burders at Mickey-Dees.
Fair point on the builders. I’m totally ignorant as to how many were or were not unionized.
You’re a consumer because you pay (either directly or indirectly through taxes) for your daughter’s daycare services, just as you might pay a plumber or a purchase an iPod. And you’ve hit the nail on the head–you’ve got a stake, while employees largely do not. They are, quite naturally, first and foremost interested in reimbursement–that’s the #1 issue in most labour actions.
Who would I rather have advocating on behalf of consumers? Parents are as much consumers of school as their children, so they’re natural advocates. We’re all consumers of the healthcare system, so we all share a burden to advocate for it. In environmentalism, the trees don’t defend the forests–the nurses shouldn’t defend the medical system.
And before we paint everybody with the same brush, let’s not forget that the majority of unionized workers are not good samaritans, sacrificing for the greater good. They’re loggers, ferry employees, bureaucrats and bus drivers. They’re no more or less heroes than the QA engineer at Microsoft or the dude flipping burders at Mickey-Dees.
Darren, I must say I find it quite troubling to compare education wtih iPods, or nurses to trees. People are not things, and public services are not products; they’re a reflection of a shared commitment to basic standards for education, health care, and social security.
I couldn’t agree more that we all bear a responsibility for advocating for quality education, quality healthcare, and other social services. But research on civic participation shows that most people are not very active in pressing their views or advocating for their interests in government service delivery.
Which is why public service unions are so often left holding the bag for protecting our public services. Sure, public service workers are interested in reimbursement — but if money is your primary driver, you’re probably not going to end up as a nurse, educator or social worker. We’re lucky that there are so many people who are willing to forgo the potentially higher earnings of private sector work in order to make a difference in the life of a kid, a patient or a community. And I don’t think they should be embarrassed to ask that the scale of their financial sacrifice — the gap between public- and private-sector wages — be held roughly constant.
But what is striking about the current labour dispute — as with so many public sector labour disputes — is that working conditions are as central as remuneration. Is it self-interest for teachers to want smaller class sizes? Maybe. But teachers’ interest in smaller class sizes is an interest in creating educational conditions that help teachers do their job well. In other words, the self-interest of teachers closely corresponds with the broader public’s interest in educational quality — the kind of correspondence that so often turns public sector unionists into public service advocates.
Darren, I must say I find it quite troubling to compare education wtih iPods, or nurses to trees. People are not things, and public services are not products; they’re a reflection of a shared commitment to basic standards for education, health care, and social security.
I couldn’t agree more that we all bear a responsibility for advocating for quality education, quality healthcare, and other social services. But research on civic participation shows that most people are not very active in pressing their views or advocating for their interests in government service delivery.
Which is why public service unions are so often left holding the bag for protecting our public services. Sure, public service workers are interested in reimbursement — but if money is your primary driver, you’re probably not going to end up as a nurse, educator or social worker. We’re lucky that there are so many people who are willing to forgo the potentially higher earnings of private sector work in order to make a difference in the life of a kid, a patient or a community. And I don’t think they should be embarrassed to ask that the scale of their financial sacrifice — the gap between public- and private-sector wages — be held roughly constant.
But what is striking about the current labour dispute — as with so many public sector labour disputes — is that working conditions are as central as remuneration. Is it self-interest for teachers to want smaller class sizes? Maybe. But teachers’ interest in smaller class sizes is an interest in creating educational conditions that help teachers do their job well. In other words, the self-interest of teachers closely corresponds with the broader public’s interest in educational quality — the kind of correspondence that so often turns public sector unionists into public service advocates.
Wow! murdering innocent defenceless unborn babies referred to as being ‘precious’.
How diabolical can one be???