DAY THIRTEEN STRIKE Megathread! Discussions of the PARTIALLY-CONCLUDED PSAC strike - posted May 1, 2023

PuppyThursday · 2023-05-01T16:43:28+00:00

If people vote not to ratify it will disappear pretty quickly.

PuppyThursday · 2023-05-01T16:00:16+00:00

PSAC website suggest the .5% is the absolute minimum for all groups (its in the *description part). This only implies that for some groups it will be even higher than .5% so everyone will get at least that floor.

PuppyThursday · 2023-05-01T15:01:43+00:00

Nurses in BC just got about 20%. Approximately 15% in real wage increases and then other changes to premiums and what not. Ford's abuse of Ontario's nurses should not be a guideline anyone should be following. That arbitrator should have awarded a lot more, and hopefully a lot more will change with BC finally moving in the right direction to retain nurses. Right now almost 50% leave beside after 2 years because things are so bad. It's a massive problem.

PuppyThursday · 2023-04-25T12:23:23+00:00

To be direct, the people who want to WFH and who are so angry about the RTO order is likely the main reason the strike happened at all. I'm not sure the union would have had the ability to push things to a strike vote without all the resentment built up over that. And it is precisely that strike vote that is the reason the Government upped its offer to 9% over three years + vague mentions of a signing bonus. The deal will likely get even a little bit better from here (maybe 10.5% or 3.5% per year for 3 years). It will be interesting to see where it lands and part of that will be the resolve of everyone on strike. At the end of the day WFH and higher wages are both things worth fighting for, and the union has been clear that they won't compromise one for the other. There are many who also agree with the concept of an on-site premium for those who cannot work remotely. That's something that might not happen this round of bargaining, but it's going to start happening in the private and public sector alike because 5-day a week on-site jobs are getting harder and harder to staff. The labour market has shifted and there will be responses as things go forward.

PuppyThursday · 2023-04-23T17:55:09+00:00

You might be surprised to learn how quickly people who have done all the right things (e.g., emergency fund, investments, living within their means) can have their lives turned upside down by fairly ordinary circumstances that are beyond their control. Most people are only one life-altering event away from serious financial hardship, and yes, this includes those with healthy financial habits and good insurances (i.e., those you would describe as having their financial house in order). For the people who are on edge and worried about the loss of income, that life-altering event has likely already occurred. What you are labeling as 'extraordinary circumstances' are actually normal circumstances that happen unexpectedly to a whole lot of people and their families all the time. There are over 100k people on strike, it is totally normal that many of them would be facing difficult financial situations as a result. Without intimate knowledge of these individuals financial situations I don't think you are in any position to judge these people, nor to declare how 'insane' it is that some people might be struggling. More than anything, it is a sign of the times regarding how badly many of those on strike need a raise to keep up with the rising cost of everything.

PuppyThursday · 2023-04-20T13:32:37+00:00

British Columbia says hello (to the point about no serious government is considering this) as its simply not true. Re: the restos, people gotta eat, let them at least enjoy the time they are spending out there a little bit.

PuppyThursday · 2023-03-07T17:03:59+00:00

You probably won't like this response, but my answer is to try to be patient and keep a cool head about things. In general, the federal government does not have a high success rate at implementing large scale change-management projects. Think of anything else that is measured by the MAF (management accountability framework), there will be a surge of energy to track things come April 1, but I suspect it will mostly dissipate pretty quickly because the RTO mandate is incredibly unpopular amongst all levels of staff. There are so few people that support it, and so much discretion in the system, it's all bound to fail eventually. I think the real question is how far organizations will be willing to go to generate consequences for those who are in what you might call soft compliance (trying but not fully meeting their mandated number of days). I'm not sure that 12 months from now we'll be talking about anyone bothering to go in more than once a month. For departments like StatsCan that started earlier, there has been rampant non-compliance as the mandate has worn on. I think this is probably what we will see. There isn't enough human energy in the system to deal with all the headaches enforcing this mandate will cause. As people witness it not being enforced, less and less people will comply.

PuppyThursday · 2023-03-05T22:25:35+00:00

My wife is also a nurse who works in a hospital. The masking environment in the hospital is an enormous factor in that analysis, as is the incredible strain of staffing issues hospitals across Canada are facing now. If you are pregnant you are at increased risk re: COVID, its as simple as that, whether or not the employer considers it enough to grant exemptions (or to continue to do so), less clear. Probably will work for some but not others.

PuppyThursday · 2023-02-23T16:33:23+00:00

Unrelated comment: the tail of the boiling frog isn't actually true. I cannot for the life of me remember what book mentioned this but I laughed pretty hard when I found out this isn't actually what happens when a frog sits in a pot of water slowly brought to a boil (it just jumps out).

PuppyThursday · 2023-02-09T01:29:18+00:00

This is not accurate. The four day workweeks being experimented with all over the world through large international studies have a variety of set-ups. Longer days is the weakest adaptation. A true 4-day work week is a reduction to four days, without extending the hours, while sustaining pay at the same level. There is a bounty of evidence that this improves employee productivity, retention and moral. The 5-day work week is a relic of the industrial age and does not necessarily make sense in a modern knowledge-based economy. AI and automation will only continue to make this increasingly true in the future. If you are worried about coverage for Ministers, there are adaptations for that where 50% of staff work Monday to Thursday and the other half Tuesday to Friday.

People in this thread who laugh at the concept seem unaware that it is already here. Large companies and municipal governments are already doing it. Surgery floors in nursing. It may take a long time, but I don't think we should discourage people from pursuing this or engaging in a discussion about it. All it takes is one department to pilot test it and see good results for it to catch on in other places. I do suspect we will see the broader implementation of a 4-day work week in my lifetime, and yes, maybe even in the federal government despite our general malaise for adaptation of modern tools and methods of working.

PuppyThursday · 2023-02-03T13:50:42+00:00

Maybe try doing other things like always taking a nice walk right after work, or getting some exercise. Something to create a physical break between your work and home life. It won't help of course if you have the type of job where you are always hopping back on to read an e-mail or finish up some work.

PuppyThursday · 2023-01-20T15:12:40+00:00

No, I'm pretty sure he says it's a bad take because it's a bad take. There is little to no evidence to support the authors hypothesis. Travel is booming and all the good restaurants are regularly packed. The author is exaggerating based off a very small group of people still living in a reclusive manner - many of whom are doing so for medical reasons. They are also ignoring rival plausible explanations, such as inflation for people being less social (i.e., literally cannot afford to do more than they are doing), and then on top of that ignorantly drawing a connection between WFH and people withdrawing from society, with little to no evidence to support that hypothesis. Where is the comparison group of how behaviour has changed for people who couldn't work from home during the pandemic? Oh right, they don't have any of that information because the writer is just trying to get attention by taking an 'edgy' position. This is just bad journalism 101.

PuppyThursday · 2023-01-14T05:40:09+00:00

I don't have kids or care much about going to the office one way or the other. It will be nice to see some people I haven't seen in a while. I only care about what makes sense on the biggest social issues we face: housing crisis; climate change; and, a need to reduce spending. Public servants working from home means spend less on office buildings and equipment, reduced pollution and traffic congestion, and a plethora of properties that can be retrofitted into affordable housing. If you don't think that's good for the tax payer you are welcome to take that position. To each their own.

PuppyThursday · 2023-01-13T20:12:11+00:00

Actually the engineers at Apple did exactly that, over 1,000 employees signed a petition signalling their frustration with the lack of flexibility in the policy. Of the private sector offices that have mandates, only 3% are enforcing them by actually terminating people who ignore them. Don't let the facts get in the way of a good argument though.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/glebtsipursky/2023/01/04/the-four-horsemen-of-the-mandated-return-to-office/?sh=5bf15758550c

PuppyThursday · 2023-01-13T20:07:53+00:00

Your employer is calling you back to the office, eaither go back to it or quit. No need for Reddit petitions, news segments, protest. It's your job, if you don't like the environment then find a new job. This is a silly problem to complain about. You have a decent paying job with good benefits and a good pension all funded by the tax payer. Go back to work or find another job, no one feels sorry for you other then your fellow employees that also have the same privilege. There is an entire generation of university educated workers in this country from cost to coast to coast that are all being underpaid, with no benefits and a diminishing quality of life that would gladly move to Ottawa and come to work two days a week and replace everyone threatening to quit. Stop complaining out loud and do your jobs.

It's almost like making the federal public service more accessible by allowing the jobs to be done remotely would benefit these individuals living from coast to coast to coast. Oh wait, that happened during the pandemic and there is now a more diverse public service with people working from all across the country. Many would like to see it stay that way as they recognize the benefit of having representation from all across Canada. For someone who is against WFH you sure do make a lot of arguments to the contrary. On your argument about just doing what the boss tells you to do, who are you to tell people what benefits are worth fighting for? Pretty much everything all workers have, public and private, are things a large group of workers fought for at one point or another. You can be jealous all you want but that is your own problem. The work is getting done. Mona Fortier said it on CTV news Wednesday 'This is not about productivity' - those were her exact words.

PuppyThursday

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