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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   32427 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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Hopefully the province enforces all the fines, especially the ones against the union. It'd set a very bad precedent if people who aren't legally allowed to strike receive no punishment if they do.

Anyways, it's my personal opinion that public sector unions should not be able to strike. They have too much power.

It'd set a very bad precedent if people who aren't legally allowed to strike receive no punishment if they do.

By this reasoning, if Canada was run by a dictator and the law said that his edicts must be obeyed, you would hope that people would be punished for defying the dictator, because otherwise that sets a bad precedent for people being permitted to disobey the law and receive no punishment.

If a law allows arbitrary powers by the government, it's already setting a bad precedent. Allowing people to defy it sets a good precedent for keeping the government from exercising arbitrary powers, which is much more important than any bad precedent from letting people get away with violating laws.

I don't see how this law gives the government arbitrary power. It just forces government employees to do the job they agreed and are being paid to do.

The agreement to do this specific job normally includes a right to strike. The arbitrary power is being used to take away the right to strike that was in the agreement.

The government had an arbitration process available to them to avoid a strike. They chose to suspend constitutional rights rather than give lunch ladies raises that keep up with inflation.

It's a constitutional right that arguably shouldn't exist, and the lunch ladies are overpaid as is typical of government employees.

If Canadian lunch ladies are anything like in the US, they’re actually underpaid but get a more favorable schedule.

I guess it's not like the US then because in Canada, low skilled government employees tend to be paid much better than their counterparts in the private sector.

They have too much power.

The government could always send this to arbitration if they didn't want a work stoppage. Instead they violated the union's Charter rights.

There are certainly public sector unions that grow fat at the taxpayer's expense, but we're talking about a union whose average wage/salary is at about the Canadian median and has gotten dismal raises over the past decade. If they can exercise such power over the Ontario government they're showing it in an odd way.

Why should they send it to arbitration when it's in the taxpayers' best interest to pay them as little as possible? If the raises are so bad, why don't they work elsewhere? I think it's because they are actually well paid for what they do.

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