Cool, cool, cool, B.C. on the verge of a general strike!

God I love when shit like this happens!
See, the gov-ment legislated the teachers back to work sans contract...so all the other Unions are getting their dander up about it and some of the other shit Gordon Campbell has done. Now, they're talking general strike.

A country that sticks together. :toast:

The contract was actually (forcibly) extended, was it not?

...it's really a point about semantics. If one says (forcibly) extended, it's like saying "collatoral damage". Its sort of newspeakish.

Unions are in it for themselves as much, if not more, as they are for the union members.

Yeah, they've done a lot of great things--especially, oh, decades ago. But sometimes they shit, and when they do, it's really big and it always stinks.

I just get tired of the union-worship around here.

ON EDIT: In no way am I absolving the provincial government, current or otherwise.

How does one come about defining teachers as an essential service?

It sort of becomes a leap of faith for me to try and visualize that. Like they should be in New Orleans for a disaster or down the street fighting a fire? To me an essential service goes had in hand with the immediacy of an action. Not the requirement that we have baby sitters, so everyone else can go to work.

I have a hard time with that definition.

I was one once, and babysitting was what happened by default when I was doing my best to help them grow into productive members of society.

As far as what's "essential," hell, I don't know. My feeling right now is that, if a student is required to be there when school's in session, so's the teacher.

It's not in session, I would presume that the student is not to be there?

How does one come about defining teachers as as essential service?

I suppose that a neat leap from that acceptance is that parenting is an essential service as well.

...and this goverment's narrow ideological blinders force it into making bad public policy decisions which are higlighted in this case. Most democratic regiemes would allow the teachers their right to strike for at least a bit of time. Not allowing them to at all, is autocratic. It's really an issue of principle.

But of course this government, following the in-vogue right-wing thing to do (which is something Mike Harris made an "issue" out of), decided that teaching was an "essential service" along the same lines as Emergency personnel who are responsible for keeping people alive(!) like the Police, Fire and Emergency Health services. In fact if Teaching was a baby-sitting service, where kids with no parents had to be looked after, then I would agree that it would be an "essential service" at least to a minimum level.

Besides the teachers wouldn't be allowed to go on strike indefinitely, any government would order them back to work after say 2-3 weeks on strike. But of course, this government would prefer to impose their will on everything, especially troublesome unions.