2007 Civic Strike(s)...

[trece verde]

Fields are being mowed and posts put up by Parks Board management. Either that or else herds of roaming goats...

"Special arbitration" coming up with an announcement to be made sometime tomorrow.

About #$!@#$%!@#$%!!!!!! time...

Trece

 

[Bronco]

Safe to say, any ounce of public sentiment the striking retards in the city had is all but gone after rejecting the mediator's proposal. It's about time the city wised up and contracted ALL city service out!!! Any additional cost this would incur would surely be offset by not having to pay the ridiculous benefits package these hallucinogenic "workers" enjoy. Imagine a world where you get paid for work that you do and is necessary. Perhaps the 2 locals that voted NO should as they have stated get jobs in the privat esector and stay there....hey maybe you'll even be doing the same job!!!!


Absolute gluttony!!!!

 

[Dude]

I heard a radio show where the library assistant was getting HIMSELF an assistant. The assistant to the assistant has a proper title, but essentially their job is to re-stock books.

The ass ass earns something like $18.00 / hour, and the ass was saying that this isn't enough, as stacking books is a tough job, requires heavy lifting, blah, blah, blah.

Listen ass: its fcuking monkey work. If you are going to take a grunt labor job that requires no skills save the ability to find the right row for books, I'm sorry, but $18.00 / hour is WAY overpaid.

Try $8.00 / hour- or whatever minimum wage is. Now you're in line w/ what you do and the skills you have.

 

[One Dart]

Have you ever used the Dewey Decimal System? I think not.

 

[walls]

i'm on medical til february. stay strong boys!!!!
STRIKE STRIKE STRIKE!!!!!!!
.......til february

 

[robj]

Perhaps the 2 locals that voted NO should as they have stated get jobs in the privat esector and stay there....hey maybe you'll even be doing the same job!!!!

privat esector?

 

[Captain Shamrock]

God bless the Unions...........

 

[BJB]

Can't wait to get my $100000 signing bonus!!! errr i mean $1000 signing bounus...... errr i mean $500 after taxes signing bonus!!

Bronco i'll call you from the office tommorow.

WErd

 

[canuckboy]

Well the Longshore Locals have booked into mediation. Looks like the Ports will be shut down in 90 days. Vancouver will be a mess.

I heard those Longshoremen make like 400 per hour and they are all Hells Angels. Them and the city workers are in an evil conspiricy.

 

[dazza]

Safe to say, any ounce of public sentiment the striking retards in the city had is all but gone after rejecting the mediator's proposal. It's about time the city wised up and contracted ALL city service out!!! Any additional cost this would incur would surely be offset by not having to pay the ridiculous benefits package these hallucinogenic "workers" enjoy. Imagine a world where you get paid for work that you do and is necessary. Perhaps the 2 locals that voted NO should as they have stated get jobs in the privat esector and stay there....hey maybe you'll even be doing the same job!!!!


Absolute gluttony!!!!

Hear hear! Unions are completely out of date. So it's more than debateable whether Unions are needed to "protect" the employee. This strike, like other public strikes is essentially legalized extortion. Our labour laws are totally stacked in the employees' favour and these strikes are ALWAYS about money.

CUPE run our cities.

Canada is basically early 70s Britain when it comes to Union power.

My wife called it bang on when she said the strike will be over soon as the weather is getting really sh%*#y.

 

[canuckboy]

Right Unions are totally out of date. Look how fairly non-unionized employees are treated. A good example is the biggest company in the world Wal-Mart. They have been sued for discrimination, not paying worked overtime etc etc, the order of the day is minimum wage. If there were no Unions everyone would make near or around minimum wage. Don't agree with me? Just look at places unionization is close to 0, and thier societies are completely ****ed. Christ just look at states like Georgia and Arkansas. Labour is vitually non existant there and they are the poorest states in the US. California and New York are the most pro-labour and are the most wealthy.

Are Unions perfect? No. I'd rather have the pendulem too far to the left so more people benefit than to the right where only the elite benefit.

Am I a Union member, damn straight. And I can thank my Union for allowing me to own my house in Coquitlam, a couple of cars and able to contribute a few hundred dollars a month into a RESP for my daughters, so they will have even more opportunies than I did. Last time I checked this didn't hurt the company I work for as they are extremely profitable. If this sounds crazy to you I suggest you move to a nice anti-labour country like Columbia or Honduras. Enjoy your sweatshop.

 

[johnnybluenose]

1. Minimum wage exists because of unions, not in spite of unions or to the dismay of unions
2. Unions are becoming more and more passe. Unions were great in the beginning, when the worker needed to stand up for himself. More and more, these days Unions are about sweet heart deals from the NDP crippling our tax dollar protecting unionized employees who, for the most part, unskilled and paying them far more than fair wages.
Unions started off life to protect the worker from overwork, undercompensation, and unsafe conditions, as the essence of the core of the matter.

Wal-Mart pays their people minimum wage because they need not pay more. You don't need to be skilled or marginally smart to work there.

Why should someone that pushes barcodes across a laser scanner make a buck more than what the government (elected officials) deem as the minimum just wage a worker must be paid to exist.

Now I know we live in a harsh housing climate, and to a man it is harder to live here and stretch the buck here, but that is Vancouver.

That doesn't mean someone who sweeps the floor of the Justice institue or cuts the grass at Killarney, or cleans the bathrooms at the Vancouver Courts should make the same money that someone who owns a successfull cleaning company in the private sector.

Wages are paid and driven up by supply and demand, not unions.
If you are a quality skilled person, with quality work ethic in a job that there is not a line up of qualified individuals applying for, you can pretty much write your own ticket, and that is not down to unions.

Anyone can slap together a big mac or walk fat Alice down to the Womens Apparel section at Walmart, you need not go to school, or slave away all day.
Not everyone can engineer a bridge, or perform open heart surgery, or coordinate a 30 million dollar building project, or manage a team of salespeople to a quota. Supply and Demand.
Pretty much anyone with an able body can jump off the garbage truck and pick up bags and hurl them into the back of the truck. Pretty much anyone can push a lawnmower or ride a lawnmower.

 

[Dude]

Exactly.

A Union guy thanks the union for his well being, while a non-union guy (employed, or self employed) thanks nobody but themselves.

It is a totally different attitude. One side has the "give me more" way of going about their business, while the other helps themselves to a better way of life.

 

[johnnybluenose]

Generally speaking of course.

I know many people involved in unions (Usually guys that don't have a choice ie Teachers, Fire Fighters, etc) that are anti-union for the most part.

But generally speaking the shop steward has managed to brainwash decent hardworking people to think that the Union is where it is at, not the work, or the employer.

I know at one of my jobs in a previous chapter of my life we had a guy come in try and "organise" us...we threw him out the door so fast. We all got paid well enough to live and get by, more than most of our competitors were paying their people, and we had a reasonable amount of paid leave and vacation. we had 100% medical and 80% dental, as well as a pension plan.

Most companies (Private Sector anyways) do this sort of stuff to keep the unions from getting in with their often malignant ways which do nothing except for drive up the cost of products and services to consumers and citizens at large.

Often times I think Unions only exist in the Public sector to feed at the public money/beaurocratic trough.

What would be so wrong with the City of Vancouver outsourcing the jobs of Parks and Rec peeps to landscaping contractors? The janitorial services to private enterpise? Nothing, other than the taxpayer would get a break, and the guy who has been grossly overpaid for what he does for a living now has to find another job (which in our market is near impossible to fail at)

any schmuck can get a job for near $20 an hour to work as a labourer on any construction site if he can do a little more than sweep, if you can hold a trowel and pack grout under tilt up panels, if you can direct traffic for concrete trucks, if you can pack lumber as a carpenters helper on a framing or forming crew, the list goes on!

 

[johnnybluenose]

Also, sorry if my soapbox rant is making you guys tired

the management would be forced to become far more efficient and would have a better handle on their scope of work. Again, simply a benfit to taxpayers.

If the firm contracted to cut the grass at Kilarney does a poor job you bring in a new contractor, whereas now you would have to wade through yards of redtape and wrangling to sort anything out if a poor job is being done.

Who needs protection? The Ratepayers/Taxpayers? or the people who have been feeding from the taxtrough their whole working life?

I think the answer is easy to arrive at.

 

[Dapotayto]

All the elitist fcuking snobs whining about the unions make me sick. So who the fcuk exactly is going to be able to live and work in Vancouver picking up your garbage, tending your parks, cleaning your streets, working in your libraries, while making minimum wage because they're "unskilled"? Tell me that. It doesn't take a fcuking rocket scientist to figure it out. The answer is no one. Oh, unless, perhaps you opened up immigration and exploit foreigners looking for a supposed "better way of life". That is until they got sick of it and moved to interior, or better yet, the prairies. I swear, some of you think the lackey angels will come down from heaven and save the educated, worthy people of Vancouver and do all the shitty jobs for free so no one would have to mingle with the riff-raff and our tax dollars won't be wasted on such mindless heathens. All hail capitalism! Down with the blue-collar workers, they don't deserve to live in the same area, breathe the same air, have a good life like the educated, entrepreneurial among us. The capitalist are the only people truly worthy of living a dignified life. If you haven't been to university then begone, for you are less than deserving, less than human. What a fcuking joke. I'm an educated, trained professional and I'll tell you what. if I ever see that elitist cnut Sam Sullivan at the top of a slope anywhere I'll kick his wheelchair down that hill so fcuking fast he'll get a photo radar ticket on his way down. Take it to the bank.

 

[FRANCIS]

I usually don't get too involved in these discussions but I have to pass on a personal experience. My first job out of BCIT was at the City of Vancouver Planning Dept. A couple of months into the job, I went into the Supervisor's office to ask him a question and low and behold, he was asleep with his head on his desk at 2:00pm in the afternoon, sorry not making this up. I turned around and walked out, I lasted six months before I left the most boring institutional environment I have ever been in. I have never felt the same about unions since.

I have worked in the private sector since then and never looked back.....

 

[johnnybluenose]

All the elitist fcuking snobs whining about the unions make me sick. So who the fcuk exactly is going to to live and work in Vancouver picking up your garbage, tending your parks, cleaning your streets, working in your libraries, while making minimum wage because they're "unskilled"? Tell me that.

You got it.
1. Garbage pick up can easily be contracted out to a 1-800-gotjunk or other rubbish removal firm
2. Parks can be tended to by private sector landscaping companies
3. Steet cleaning can be accomplished by hiring guys who could buy an Atlas Sweeper truck and form a small business (ie Owner/operator of a semi rig)
4. Library workers could easily be de-unionised and have Library Managers hire and manage people like the rest of the private sector does

I swear, some of you think the lackey angels will come down from heaven and save the educated, worthy people of Vancouver and do all the shitty jobs for free so no one would have to mingle with the riff-raff and our tax dollars won't be wasted on such mindless heathens. All hail capitalism! Down with the blue-collar workers, they don't deserve to live in the same area, breathe the same air, have a good life like the educated, entrepreneurial among us. The capitalist are the only people truly worthy of living a dignified life. If you haven't been to university then begone, for you are less than deserving, less than human. What a fcuking joke.

Okay, nobody said that if you don't go to Uni that you are useless/lazy. Shitty jobs are shitty as people that have nothing better going for them tend to get offered them, or take them. That being said there are many firms and contractors out there that would love a shot at bidding that work. If you want to simply work your shift go home and smoke a joint or hang with the fam then work for someone else, it doesn't need to be a union head or in the public sector.

I'm an educated, trained professional and I'll tell you what. if I ever see that elitist cnut Sam Sullivan at the top of a slope anywhere I'll kick his wheelchair down that hill so fcuking fast he'll get a photo radar ticket on his way down. Take it to the bank.

Then you would go to jail and you would have your food made for you by overpaid cooks, you would have your wankstained sheets and soiled linens cleaned by overpaid unionized staff, and continue to drain our tax dollars by being sent to jail for an act of outrage, nevermind clogging up the judicial system whereby judges and clerks and countless others are protected by unions for the betterment of who?

goodnight now.

 

[BlazeArmy]

By what right should someone be able to live and work in Vancouver. House Values have nothing to do with rights but supply and demand. If it costs 600,000 for a house in vancouver and a similar house is 400,000 in Surrey and you can only afford the 400,000 house why should you make more money so you can live in vancouver. I have guys working for me who drive in to Annacis from Maple Ridge every day so they can afford to have a big house with a nice big yard on what the family makes now. These guys are making the top wages for our industry in their jobs and i have never heard them complain about having to live so far away. They have co-workers who make a smiliar amount of money and they live in townhouses in surrey. Should the gusy in Surrey be pissed they don't have a big house like the guys from Maple Ridge. I know i will not be able to afford to own a house in the town i want to live (Tsawwassen) but can afford a house on Cloverdale, Guess where i looked at places.

 

[johnnybluenose]

Keep in mind I am not trying to be inflammatory, and there is no magic wand to wave over everthing, but it seems that public sector work stoppages are occuring way to often, and for the most part, labour intensive jobs that are unionized in the public sector, could easily be contracted out for the betterment of the majority of citizenry, not just the protected workers who are being kept from earning a paycheck by the cronies that purport to 'protect' them