Industrial ... Stupiditiy or Traffic, part 3

There’s been a large scale process of Union voting in the time that we’ve been in Canada. I can’t pretend to understand the ins and outs of the industrial climate here at this point, but I’ve got a couple of bits of information that help me to understand. Some of this could be wrong and a little ill-informed, but its just to paint a picture, not to discuss the finer points of Canadian Industrial Relations or its laws.

There’s an overriding agreement that says that when the unions are negotiating, they all do so at the same time. When something like 75% of the unions have agreed and signed on to the agreement, the others are forced to arbitration with no legal right to strike.

If they haven’t got that many unions signed up, then they have the right to strike, but have to provide notice and meet other conditions.

As of about 4 days ago, they were about 2 unions short of getting to the 75% that would remove the legal right to strike.

The Carpenters Union issued notice of intent to strike. It went to the courts with a result that it was ruled that any strike would be illegal. Over the next four days, 2 unions signed up and now the right to legally strike is off the table.

And that’s where we are today. The union is playing it smart and they aren’t putting the members at risk by striking. Instead, when they’re off duty, the are operating ‘information pickets’. What this means is that groups of them stand at strategic points with signs seeking support from their follow workers.

What this meant for me today was that there was about 50 of them on the other side of the highway waving placards and generally being well behaved and peaceful … well back from the traffic and all.

Which would be fine if it wasn’t for the bloody rubber neckers. And I should point out that this is far from restricted to Canada. Singapore was a classic for it. Now if you’ve been keeping up with recent posts and have kept track of this ramble, you’ll be taking into account the volume of traffic that comes down this highway as I return from work. Buckets of it.

But put one person on the other side of the road with a sign and some twit thinks that he needs to read it. So he slows down. As does the person behind him. When all the other twits decide that this is a good idea, I get stuck at the other end of the bloody line doing 30kms/hr on a 100km/hr highway taking an hour to get home instead of 30 minutes. Not that I’m bitter at all.

It just means that the day before I leave this place, I want to go stand just off the side of the highway as peak hour starts with a sign that can only be read by a fifth grader in a pickup truck that reads something like:

“Before I leave, I just want to cause my own little traffic Jam”