Stepping away from Anarchy

Future students of British Columbia history will apparently be denied stories of the Great General Strike of 2004. At least the version that talks about the shut down of the province of May 3rd. Government officials and Union representatives met for most of the day Sunday to try and head off a showdown between the Liberal government and the British Columbia Labour Movement. For the most part it is expected that Monday will dawn with full bus service, garbage collection, school openings andother government services. The call for an escalating show of force cancelled, as terms of the arrangement started to leak out to the media late Sunday evening. With the events of the last three days Bill Good and Rafe Mair are each going to have a hell of a show for Monday morning at 8:30.

The government and union meetings coincided with a rare Sunday hearing of the BC Supreme Court which met to rule on the legality of the Health Employees Union’s decision to ignore a back to work order of last week. Union members had reacted angrily when the government imposed a settlement on them that included; a reduction in wages and a retroactive requirement to pay back wages collected that were no longer part of the bi monthly pay packages.

That one ingredient of Bill 37 set the stage for what would have been the beginning of days of chaos starting May 3rd as public sector unions across the province had promised to stay off the job until the offending clause was stricken from the record. As the deadline for action neared, Gov’t and Union negotiators continued their discussions. By 6 pm BCTV had declared the pending job action was off, and while it has yet to be officially confirmed in the media by labour organizers, all indications are that the Day of Protest is not going to happen.

The expectation is that the retroactive wage payback is off the table now and the job loss aspect of the Bill has been reduced and capped to 300 jobs lost in each year of the two year contract. With 43,000 employees certified as HEU members 600 jobs lost should easily be achieved thru attrition. No word has leaked out yet about the wage concessions, but one assumes that the union would have had to give in on something and that most likely is one category that they lost out on.

For Gordon Campbell it was a tense 48 hours as his government faced the prospect of a lengthy and noisy week of discontent. The days of the Solidarity movement from the 1980’s were being presented as the template for the protest, with one difference the union rank and file suggested that they would not back down as the unions of the 80’s did. A recipe for a week of anarchy.

The HEU dispute marks another badly handled situation by a government that seems incapable of presenting its case in any coherent fashion. Considering the speed in which they tossed aside their requirement for reimbursement on the rolled back wages, one wonders why they used it as a club in the first place. The capping of job losses again provides a win for the HEU, yes there will be some positions eliminated, but the whole agenda of contracting out seems to have been discarded now. It was an agenda that the Liberals were treating as a holy grail not more than a few weeks ago. Being a bargaining member of the Health Employers association must be the most frustrating job going at the moment, as the Liberals keep changing their plans on the fly.

The ham handed efforts of the Liberals, galvanized the union movement into action on the May Day weekend. They quickly organized forces that could have had as many as 200,000 people off the job by the end of the weekend. The apparent mean spiritedness of the Liberal’s bill 37 causing even the weakest union link to stand ready to strike. If the plan was to try and split the union movement it was a terrible failure.

The Campbell government has legislated ends to disputes involving teachers, nurses, doctors and forestry workers in the last three years, ferry workers and government workers have been sent back to work with little to no increase in their paycheques, but yet the union movement seems stronger than ever with the strident and largely ineffective tone this government has taken.

The puzzling approach this government takes in every negotiating session causes one to wonder if they really do have a plan in place for where they want the province to go. Previously high profile disputes gave the government an opportunity to flex its muscle with a minimum of impact on many British Columbians, yet when they did lower the boom it was in the one area that could cause the most havoc. The strategy makes no sense.

Last year the Government had promised to privatize the Liquor distribution system, reducing the unionized payroll by eliminating government stores and replacing them with private enterprises which most likely would pay significantly less wages than the BCGEU employees at the Government outlets. To a casual observer this would have seemed the perfect opportunity to send a message to the labour force and the public of a new way of doing business. Yes there would have been disruptions but with private stores in place the public would have had an option, either abstain from purchasing alcohol (most unlikely) or move their allegiance to the private stores.

While some folks may have grumbled it seems unlikely that the population would have stood up and demanded a settlement with the liquor clerks. Buying beer and spirits certainly is not an essential service. Now I’m in no way suggesting that the Liquor distribution system in place should be eliminated, but had this government truly been serious about its plans to change the nature of labour disputes in the province that was a golden chance to begin its labour engineering project. Instead, they settled with the union and in fact will be creating more jobs in the industry, the privatization plans seemingly tossed aside, much to the chagrin of those small businessmen that had already begun to make plans to jump into the promised new opportunities. The expected showdown with labour then never took place.

Then there was the BC Ferry dispute, with countless thousands of Vancouver Island residents left to feel as though they were hostages in that dispute. Again many commentators speculated that the Ferry workers had stumbled into a government trap, their job action causing the average citizen to question the wisdom of a right to strike on what they believe to be an essential service. As that strike took flight emotions ran high, talk of replacement workers was bandied about. The union movement again formed up their battalions and set up the pickets. Within days of the dispute starting all had quieted down, the Government for the most part dispensing of its rhetoric of the early stages. David Hahn, the hired gun brought in to run the Ferry Corp left standing on the pier with his tough stand flapping in the wind, his political masters changing direction on the grand plan of restructuring. Instead of staring each other down on the picket line, the two sides ended up in binding arbitration.

For the Campbell government tough talk doesn’t always translate into tough action. Two battles in which they might have found public support on, passed by without their agenda being put in place. Instead they decided to draw their line in the sand on the one service that all British Columbians would be impacted on, Health Care. Thousands of people have had their medical requirements disrupted, their lives put on hold because this government does not seem to have any idea on how to achieve its goals. The population asks themselves if the last two weeks of health care anarchy really was worth it all.

Instead they lurch and stumble from one crisis to another. Hyperbole and vindictiveness the marching orders, instead of sensible management principles. Whatever happens next in this province one thing is seemingly sure; this government seems incapable of putting its position to the public in a clear and achievable way. Whether that’s leadership from the top or a collective incompetence, they continue to leave the public with a perception of a rudderless ship of state. Many more sailings like this and one suspects the captain will soon be removed.