After reading many ill-informed posts and comments about the postal strike (and nary a whisper about the Air Canada strike), I’ve decided that this will be my theme for the week:
Petty jealousy is no reason to deny workers the right to strike when collective bargaining agreements fall apart.
Blevkog 
I don’t care if Air Canada workers strike because the union and the company have customers and competition. If I am not happy with Air Canada’s service and/or their price I am perfectly within my rights, and ability, to try another Airline. I’m not obligated to contribute to the wages of Air Canada’s employees. Same goes for steel workers or Ford auto workers or Scotiabank tellers.
The reason why people are upset has to do with government workers being paid by their taxes always wanting more…even when those people are getting less.
And you can’t argue that it isn’t government because it is a crown corp. A crown corp by definition is government.
When a Crown Corp needs to pay their employees more, there is less money left to be returned to government to pay for other services (assuming profit). When government employees are paid more, the only result in a period of austerity is that there is less money for other things, including other workers.
It cannot be argued that these people will spend the money into the economy and therefore it will benefit, for anywhere the government spends that money in Canada, the Canadian economy will benefit. If the government didn’t tax that money, someone would have spent it in the economy and it would have benefited….The argument is about the best place to spend a limited resource and I have a hard time believing it is better spent on a postal worker’s salary/benefits than on defibrillators.
And considering that government wages/benefits have improved over the last decade and private wages have been stagnant at best, it isn’t difficult to find people angry that government workers are striking to get more.
By the way, this is the same anger that I have when Clement blows 50 million to get re-elected. I also have that anger for the people of his riding, for they knew he had blown tax dollars to get re-elected and they still re-elected him.
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The mail was still moving during the rotating strikes. Management initiated the lockout, which stopped the service. They reason they did so was because they knew two things: 1) The public would blame the union, without considering the background or facts, and 2) The Harper Government would quickly introduce back-to-work legislation that heavily punished the workers.
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This really was low-lying fruit for the Conservatives – take the meme that circulated in blog and newspaper comments that new Canada Post employees got seven weeks paid vacation. As Briguy said, the government knew that the public could be turned against the union provided they remained uninformed.
As for government vs. non-government unions striking, it’s fast becoming a moot point. Very few private sector workers are unionized anymore.
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Just a slight error in your comment regarding Canada Post and tax payers money. Canada Post hasn’t used any tax payers money to help fund their operations for sixteen years now.
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