explain this one……

ok – i’m confused about this. i just had a meeting with a union rep from another union representing federal government employees in my workplace. in the course of a discussion about collective bargaining, we started talking about the upcoming election and how that might impact the outcome for our agreement.

so – this other rep starts going on about not electing the liberals again and how we have to support stephen harper and the conservative party! this is a party that has been quite vocal about wanting to shred the federal public service and fire us all.

i said to my fellow rep words to that effect – it is counter-intuitive for us as reps to want to see a party come to power that would fire a great many of our members – to which he said “fine, let them gut the federal service”.

bottom line is – the members of our unions pay a lot of dues money to have us defend their jobs, not encourage a newly elected government to fire them.

time and time again, working class folks vote and even argue against their own interests (it gets pretty funny in a government office to hear the conservative types go on about wanting to see big government cut – as long as it’s not their jobs… i wonder whose jobs they think should be cut?)

is it just that people believe everything their newspaper tells them? or is it some sort of internalized self-loathing borne out of the social myth that those who don’t make it rich just never tried hard enough?

thursday afternoon quandry…..