I think the time has come to create legislation that decertifies any union found guilty of employing violent tactics during a labour dispute.
Simple? Simple.
in the comments;
“I spoke with a unionized trucker this morning who told me the strikers are openly threatening the other drivers.
”They told us ‘we know who you are and where you live.’ They’re insane.”
Those who have disobeyed have been attacked at home, had their brake lines cut and of course been shot at.
My source’s company said they are even bringing in truckers from Ontario because they aren’t known to the strikers. Every one of the trucks entering the port has to be accompanied by security, paid for by the company.
The police are apparently hopeless to enforce the rule of law, and the politicians are AWOL. This is probably partly explained by the fact that all of the strikers happen to be Indo-Canadian, and no policeman or politician wants to get heavy-handed with a minority group, no matter how necessary it may be. (my wife is Indo-Canadian so if you think I’m being racist you can get stuffed.)
Meanwhile, small businesses like mine will continue to be hammered by the rule of the mob at our ports, and the local economy will continue to lose about $75 million of economic output with every passing week.
Four weeks and counting. Four weeks of mob rule and political paralysis.
How can this country even dare to call itself a member of the modern world?
Eastern Paul, etc. – watch the language in here.
I’d rather, TonyGuitar, that the government limit itself to enforcing the law in this case, rather than regulating our economy by decree. This is particulary prescient if Chip’s street-gang data is correct. That would not be acceptable.
Do you have any links, or more data, Chip?
Unions were needed before modern democracies had fair labor laws and a minimum wage. They are now just business killers and add no value whatsoever. Free market supply and demand can determine fair wages for labor, skilled and unskilled.
Just look at Detroit. Unions have done everything possible to kill off the American auto industry by pretending every unskilled laborer with a high school GED that could turn a screw was worth $30 an hour. They are job killers and barriers to free market competition.
Most Americans are no longer under any illusions as to the necessity or value of unions. Just today, the Teamsters broke away from the AFL-CIO because unions are thankfully dying as a result of all the jobs and companies they have killed or have forced to move elsewhere. Unions produce nothing and add no value whatsoever to the product, but live like paracites via forced payments from honest laborers and honest consumers.
The telephony industry is in crisis. What with voip becoming available to more and more people, and the Internet being delivered by phone lines, cable TV lines, satellite, and soon power lines, there is so much competition for local and long distance service that rates will continue to drop and drop.
And there is a huge backlog of high speed lines that aren’t even being used, that were built during the Internet bubble. All of this means that the cost of getting data from here to there is no longer dependent on distance. Whether across the street, another province, or the other side of the world the cost is about the same today.
This is a new world and those who can’t, or refuse to, change will be left behind. The digital photography revolution did it to the prepress industry and many trade services I used to be associated with are no longer in business because they couldn’t change fast enough. But there’s a big difference between a small prepress company going under and a large company like Telus.
The day of the union has long gone. It was useful, even necessary, years ago, but no more. When new technology allows a company to re-tool and produce more products/services with less labor it means that they need fewer workers. For large companies like GM and Ford and, yes, Telus, who all have large union contracts, something has to give. Either the company trims their labor force or they go down.
As for the truckers strike I have to say I don’t know enough to comment. But there is no excuse for terrorism of any kind. Whether it’s against another nation, another religion, another race, or another worker, it’s all terrorism.
Well said, Tom. Thanks for the data point on those AFL-CIO results today, I was wondering how that would play out but I hadn’t seen the news yet.
The only institutions that survive their usefulness, to the detriment of all and especially their staff and customers, are those propped up by the state with our tax dollars.
As Sir Wilfrid Laurier (the 7th prime minister of Canada, for those of you keeping scrore at home) said, “Experience has established that institutions, which at the outset were useful, often end by becoming intolerable abuses owing to the simple fact that everything around them has changed […] and they have not. The role of government [is …] not to force action in any one direction but to remove barriers to man’s own efforts to undertake personal and social improvement […] Man must be free to seek his own improvement and be responsible for his own destiny. If you remove the incentive of ambition and emulation from public enterprises, you suppress progress, you condemn the community to stagnation and immobility.”
Sadly, we see far to many once noble organizations, such as Greenpeace, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Mother’s Against Drunk Driving falling foul of this all too common human fallability.
Fortunately, there’s still Ducks Unlimited. As far as I can tell, they’re not falling fowl of anything.
I do not agree that the telephony industry is in crisis, John, I think it’s in a sea change. These things happen.
As to the rest of your post, I’d have to say, “Yup.” The last paragraph is particularly poignant.
Anon, you know not of what you speak. Whatsoever.
The union refused to show the offered contract to the members. They did a pre-emptive strike. Telus (yes, against the rules, but after four years, who is paying attention) shipped the contract to the employees directly.
Yes, there are things that are cheesey. But there are many that are not.
The UNION made a decision on behalf of Telus workers KNOWING that said workers had voted against a strike (more AB emps than BC).
BC workers want to earn OVER $20/hour for ANSWERING THE FRIGGIN PHONE.
And their birthdays off. Like they had under BC Tel.
F*ck off. I’m in private industry & only get my birthday or “anniversary” day off if I take a vacation day.
Welcome to the real world.
Is it me, or is it hot in here?
Whew! Plenty of back and forth!
Anyway, myself, I’m pretty much in the same boat as Candace.
And some people could use a drink around here…
Unions are nothing but communist mafias, plain and simple, and union members are lazy morons who don’t want to work for their pay. I say bring in the riot cops and Police dogs and have at ’em.
I don’t understand why eastern Paul uses a term describing the intimate behaviour of heterosexual women as a slam.
Are you married Paul? Ever had a woman go down on you? Did you tell her you think it was an extremely degrading thing to have done and that now you don’t respect her?
Further to Tony’s comment at 8:40, where he says, “The fundamental human right of freedom of association implies that voluntary labour collectives are legitimate, as is any individual’s volitional withdrawl of their services. Non-volitional (closed shop) unions are, on the other hand, a principal manifestation of collectivismist evil.”
Right and somewhat wrong here. I agree that closd shops are unjustifiable (don’t know that I would use the word “evil”), and I agree that voluntary labour collectives are legitimate. But in this country, it’s the involuntary aspect of unions that gets up my nose.
Freedom of association requires the freedom to NOT associate – anything else is conscription. And sadly, thanks to our Supreme Overlords, people can be forced to join unions, and pay union dues, and see those dues used for purposes they do not support (particularly political purposes) entirely against their will.
In that sense, every union job in Canada is a closed shop situation.
Which is the main reason that I detest unions as they are currently constituted. They may have served a purpose once – now their only purpose is power.
Can’t speak to the BC Trucker Union – but I can say Telus has problems – they are alienating customers faster than any other company on the planet. With all the new competition they just don’t get it and they will continue to lose customers and money and the employees will lose jobs until Telus get’s into the 21 Century. Every person I know who has moved in the last two years had to wait at least 10 days with no phone service before being hooked up. Not surprisingly some of these people opted for much bigger Cell phone plans (with Rogers) rather than having a land line. Now with VOIP it’s another ball game.
Union or no union Telus employees ought to start thinking of new careers. Certainly in Alberta the union would have accepted the contract – the labor market here is such that if you don’t like your job you can walk down the street and get another.
Oh yeah – Eastern Paul – Did you perhaps think that some of those scabs may be single mothers, or have families that can’t live on strike pay. In Alberta we have “right to work” legislation so that those people don’t lose their homes supporting a union mandated strike they personally oppose.
”Richmond RCMP say eight trucks parked at the Pro West yard on River Road were heavily damaged Friday in a hail of bullets unleashed by a group of South Asian men who drove into the works yard in a red car. Police say the shooting began around midnight. No one has been arrested as the police investigation continues. Bowman says a truck driver who was sleeping in one of the trucks at the time of the shooting was lucky not be injured and he estimated damage to vehicle windows, doors and radiators at approximately $150,000.”
http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=863fb468-4c77-428e-9402-4a15fad762d9
This isn’t the first time they’ve fired shots. How many union members — anywhere in Canada — would regularly use guns during a strike?
This isn’t a normal labour dispute. It’s thuggery and blackmail.
Now, the company is thinking of hiring armed guards. You are witnessing the first whisper of anarchy. The police are helpless. The federal government is useless.
And it needs to be reiterated that the targets of these people are usually other unionized truckers. The unionized drivers I’ve talked to think the strikers are completely nuts, both in their demands and their methods.
What we need is ‘right to work’ legislation. I cannot for the life of me understand why any thinking Canadian would join a union voluntarily–another group to suck off of our paycheque.
I have never belonged to a union, but a few weeks ago had to cross a union info line to shop at WalMart. The union stood on WalMart property, in effect blocking the entrance. Union people were inside the store putting union pamphlets into merchandise–when signs clearly state ‘No Soliciting’! If this is the respect unions have for Canadians going about their daily lives, I wouldn’t, as my father used to say ‘give them the sweat off my balls’! Unions are preying on workers in Canada and it is time to wake up and smell the coffee.
Final post from me, but this is a gem from the police:
“The gunfire follows another violent incident Thursday night at Target Transport, also on River Road in Richmond. A security guard was held at gunpoint there while a second man smashed out truck windshields with an axe.
… Richmond RCMP Sgt. Ron Paysen said it’s not clear whether either incident has ties to the container truck work stoppage, but said police are on heightened alert to vehicles driving around the city late at night.”
Riiighht. A security guard was held at gunpoint while someone smashed out a truck windows, and the police aren’t sure it was tied to strike. The RCMP are bloody fools. And what are they doing by simply ”driving around the city at night?”
The violence is at the depots. Put some people there 24/7.
And you’d think that our vaunted gun registry would have led to some arrests by now (sarcasm mode definitely turned on).
I guess it won’t be too long before Canadians heading south start meeting Mexicans heading north. Everybody hates the US, so much so, in fact, that we can’t keep ’em out.
The comment from the eastern goof sure puts a different light on things. It shows how much the socialist hordes have gotten in destroying our country. If these scumwads want to pplay hardball I say lets dig the guns out of the hiddy hole we put them in when the gestapo (oops, gun registry)started and start using them.
UNION DISARRAY
Arguing that the AFL-CIO hasn’t done enough to stem the rapid decline in membership, four of its constituent unions are pulling out, effectively forcing a break-up of America’s largest organized labor federation. The immediate reaction is of course cen…
“Eastern Paul, etc. – watch the language in here.
Posted by: Kate at July 25, 2005 12:30 AM”
***** Please accept my apologies.
As an aside, the truckers here in Alberta have a deal for around $125 or so an hour. Most are looking for $140.00. That’s tractor and some type of trailer to haul materials like gravel or asphalt.
So $70.00 an hour seems like subsistance rates, where you’re out of buisness after a year,or your first flat tire!. Of course they’ll fight tooth and nail to get more! The money HAS to make sence. It’s either get more dough…..or quit.
Don’t you think they’re better off staying in the buisness they know but at a rate they can survive on?
If it were me, I’d have moved on to something better. Some of them can’t for whatever reason.
And the scabs who WON’T HELP are contemptable. That’s why they are treated harshly.
Ta-Ta for now.
Tony, I also prefer that government not engage in labour negotiation. We have to put our prefrences aside here.
When bullets start flying and air-brake lines are being cut,the potential losses of life are too high to sit back and *let things develope*. Prefrences are out of the window here.
As I said above, Gordie must set a ten or fifteen percent increase to recognize the 20% fuel increase, and the parties must get back to the table and settle.
If this is not the solution, then the one who knows what it is should list it here now. 73s TG
I don’t know TG, I have to disagree with you on this one. If you react to mob violence and threats by paying the perps, it sets a really bad precedent.
Unions control the port in Vancouver, and they don’t want the police or anybody else down there watching what they do. Well, TS. Now that hundreds of millions worth of other people’s property is held hostage to their tactics, with businesses being affected across the province and the country, the solution is for the port to be secured and re-opened. If it takes the army, so be it.
It really makes you sick when you see teamsters standing on the suffering rhetorical corpse of Joe Hill, and singing the same union song. Well, anybody and his dog knows that a teamster and Joe Hill are two completely different kinds of people.
In a great country like Canada, shouldn’t we be able to solve this problem by having the state, at an Italian restaurant in Montreal, use the simple expedient of a few brown envelopes and suitcases of cash extorted from the citizens? I mean, why deal with all the middle men, why not placate organized crime directly, like we used to?
Because when if you remove the middleman, our government would be reduced to a level that could only be described as appropriate. And you know how that would go over in Ontario.
Canadians: divert those ships to Seattle instead of Vancouver!
Seattle’s waterfront unions are strong compared to most U.S. ports, but nowhere near as lockstep brain-dead as the unions suffocating the Vancouver waterfront.
Long term, Canadians may need an alternative port city for handling their international trade – perhaps Prince Rupert?
Theres a pipeline in the works from Ft Mac to Prince Rupert. The Chinese want some of our Tar Sands oil.
Why Prince Rupert was chosen over Van?
No doubt many reasons and Vancouver Politics was probably part of it.
Brake lines being cut,this does not present a hazard as the truck will not move if it cant build air pressure to release the brakes.
There are warning buzzers also inside the cab to indicate low air volume and pressure.
In terms of brakes a greater danger is going down a grade and heating the brakes up (by using them) and then they lose there effectiveness.
When you hear on the news that some trucker plowed into somebody on a descending grade, his brakes failed(got hot).
For any truckers out there, dont you just love those medicals we get every 2yrs to stay current.
And how come girls dont have prostate glands, I tell you its not fair.
My suggestion,doctors with small fingers are best.
OK, I’m not a big fan of Telus or unions but it seems that the Telus strike is getting tense already.
“Telus CEO Shows Up At Union Rally
Jul, 26 2005 – 11:00 AM
A potentially explosive confrontation between picketers and management at the Telus building in downtown Calgary Tuesday morning.
With the union president on the picket line giving workers involved in the job action a pep talk, the CEO of Telus trooped out staff who have crossed the picket line and replacement workers.
The two sides went nose-to-nose outside the Telus tower.
Most of them smiled and chanted “Telus, Telus, Telus” while picketers carried placards and verbally sparred.
Union president Bruce Bell came in from B.C. to deliver a pep talk to picketers. At the same time, Telus CEO Darren Entwistle came out to shake hands with those on the job in a real effort to let the wind out of the sails of the picketers.
Police were on hand to keep an eye on things.”
Not to go off-topic too long, but some little known info…
Doug asked:
” how come girls dont have prostate glands”
Actually, girls do have something similar: the paraurethral gland, I believe it’s called. Google it for yourself. Very hush-hush, taboo topic, it seems.
O/T
Yea, arent those 15 minute pees wonderful.
Dribble, Dribble.
OK. I can see the truckers wanting more money and have no problem with that. $75 an hour is not for just driving the truck. The owner of that truck has to make the monthly payments on the truck, the insurance (some companies cover this), fuel (about 85 cents a litre unless you are a large volume customer that gets bulk pricing), tires ($3000 for a full set of winter tires and the same for summer so $6000 a year), other repair and maintainance, pay the driver, and pay all your taxes, running rights for provincial and municipal areas you operate in. Owners of trucks barely make ends meet. The cost of EVERYTHING has gone up, but the rate that truck owners and drivers has not gone up in 15 years. Would anyone else accept not getting a raise in 15 years, yet see their profits dwindle every year due to increasing costs? I won’t and neither will you!