Public Services: We are lucky to have unions!

Confrontation looms in public sector negotiations. For many, it is the big circus starting over, and they blame the unions.

For workers, they are fed up with an employer who respects them less by making ridiculous offers and overwhelming them with reforms that are predictably ineffective.

If it’s cracking up all over the place, it’s not because of the unions. It is the state that is destroying public services to justify ceding a large part of them to the private sector.

Collective agreements

Some see collective agreements as the source of all evil. They find it restrictive. They want their employer to be able to do what they want with who they want when they want. It’s called slavery.

However, these same people are not rebelling against the onerous contracts that capitalist corporations have with the state.

In terms of salaries, the state is not able to compete with the private sector, and it offers its employees a reduction in salaries by not covering inflation. MPs voted for a 30% rise, SQ police officers received 21% over five years and other state employees were offered less than 10%. Rather an insult!

I imagine the number of students in the classroom or the number of patients that would have to be followed without traditional supervision. Unions not only defend working conditions, but also protect the terms of distribution of services.

Balance

Citizens must have all versions to evaluate issues.

The media can help by presenting both sides of the coin, which is often not the case.