Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
life status: normal
i think my life is back to some semblance of normal after the uproar of the past weeks. on friday, treasury board made a final offer to tables 1 and 3 of the union which our bargaining teams rejected, but there has been a decision made by the national council to take it back to our members for a vote regardless. in about a month, we will be conducting a national vote on the offer and until that time no strike activity will take place, which means i get my life back until that time.
although the bargaining teams rejected the offers, i suspect the majority of members will vote for the deal anyway since our reasons for rejection only affect a small handful of people in the union (most of the roll-backs involve enforcement personnel and grain handlers). ignoring the specific reasons why the offers were rejected, i think in all we have won the fairest offer we could given the circumstances with increases of approximately 10% over 4 years and language supporting a social justice fund among other things – and we didn’t have to concede on any major issue (such as maternity leave top-ups, which the board threatened to claw back). when i compare that to the arbitrated settlement forced on ferry workers friday (the same time our deal was offered) – of a 7-year contract with a 3-year wage freeze and then wage increases of 1, 1, 2 and 2.5 % – it looks even better.
so after a week of staying in the city, i took off friday to meet nathan in princeton for a mini-holiday. i will post more about that with photographs later today.
i returned home last night at 7:00 and wasn’t in the door more than 10 minutes when the phone rang, the call display showing “animal hospital”.
at work?
since i have been woefully neglect in maintaining this journal during the last hectic week of picketing activity – i thought a quick update would be a good idea.
although we don’t have an agreement yet, we have returned to work today (friday) in anticipation of an offer being made this morning at 8:00 am. the national strike council decided that rather than have our members lose another days pay we would return to work to await the employer’s offer.
of course, we will not know for another couple of hours whether or not our bargaining team will accept said offer – and if they don’t then it is back to the picket lines next week.
i’m exhausted but so far everything has gone fairly smoothly. indications for a decent settlement are good at the moment.
"ready to stay out as long as it takes"
so, if you follow the news you know that my union is on strike from today until we reach a settlement. i did an interview with cbc radio this morning which i think turned out okay. in lieu of a proper blog posting at the moment – i leave you with a link to the real media version of the interview. wow – do i sound peppy for first thing in the morning.
rhyming couplets
on friday i received a housewarming package that included poems by two of my favourite east van children – jacob and kira. i share their poems with you here since i think they display the fine raw talent of young anarchist poets….. 🙂 (and you should see the crayon drawings on the pages… very nice indeed).
Oh pickles and lies
oh smelly old flies
put them together
and you have a pie
and to make milk
you have to gather some silk
cause a cow is too dirty
so is a gote
as for a drink
blend up some stink
from jacob
for a megin you must be a pagin
for a tristin you must be a christian
for a sum blue you need sum glue
for sum sun you need to run
love kira
weekend chores
besides stacking a cord of firewood and turning 25 pounds of apples into applesauce this weekend i have also managed to redesign this blog. what do you think?
Red Cedar 