CUPE

Well, I have to say, I don't know what to say about this, but from what I can tell, no one really knows what is going on. The support workers of the U of S are striking, and no one seems to happy about it. There is a very interesting discussion that CUPE links to on the OffSound board on the Star Phoenix, the local newspaper, which gives a pretty good idea to how confused people are.

For those of you who don't want to read, here are the problems:

-The newspaper article written somewhat in favour of CUPE was badly, badly written. It basically made the union look bad because it mentioned the pay increases and talks about how much the President of the University gets, not how much the workers get.

-There is a lot of talk about performance reviews, and the fact that these performance reviews can't be challenged. This may be very, very bad for people who have disabilities, or for people with clear conflicts of interest with their managers, which is what always happens in a research environment. This links into the next issue, which is

-Employee shortage. The support staff say that they are looked down on because they ask for more employees or more wages, and never get them, and then everyone complains about how lazy the CUPE workers are.

-Of course, the next issue is that the public percieve (both students and private sector people) the CUPE workers as lazy, and that they don't deserve to strike for the wages they have, and how horribly inconvienced everyone is by this strike. My little brothers are angry that people are on strike, and they don't even know what it is about, but enjoy catcalling at everyone on strike as we drive by. Typical.

-There is also an issue that the person planning to put this in place, Barbara Daigle, was fired from the University of Calgary as VP of HR, and has decided to implent this issue of performance based pay increases (which are somewhere around 2% per year). This would, perhaps, be less of a problem if Daigle hadn't been fired, and most people see the U of S as picking up Albert's trash. Hm.

-Lastly, and probably most of the reason why there is a strike, is housing increases. Most of the employees do get paid alright (according to this) but definitely nowhere near the industry standard. This would probably be fine (since if you live in Saskatchewan you aren't here to make money anyway) except for the huge increase in housing costs for, well, everything. Perhaps the most telling thing about this strike from the housing angle is that most people are striking because they can't currently pay their rent, not their mortgage.


My thoughts, so far:

While I agree that some people complain about 'unskilled workers' and perhaps there is some truth to that, there also needs to something said for people who do it. Most people, probably myself included, are too much of snobs to clean toilets for a living. Given that these people who are support workers either get no respect, or rich kids who go to university have no idea these people even exist, they certainly deserve some credit. Considering that a Canadian campus is a havenly bubble of stupidity in regards to how the 'real world' works, this goes, I'd say, unilaterally for everyone in it. Most of this could probably be solved if the CUPE workers weren't already concerned that most of their jobs were on the line.

Second, I think the major issue that is also being raised is about employee benefits and consideration. There is a suddenly a housing crisis, and the university responds with some kind of performance review for the people who are probably paid the least in the university setting? (Minus sessional lecturers, of course, har har.) Clearly there was a bit of a misunderstanding from the HR point of view, which once again, can only point to the current VP of HR.

Well, there's a lot of nasty issues here, I just hope they get resolved soon.

Anyways, cartoon tomorrow or Wednesday.