[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by GGG

I think one reasons unions would be interested in an illegal strike right now is that we now know the government stance to dealing with unions in the future. It will be sign are offer or we legislate using the NWC.

So what you’re saying is that despite knowing without question how extreme this government will act against unions, we should prioritize giving them another excuse to abuse their power rather than focusing on doing everything we can to take that power away from them?

There’s a reason why I’ve been trying to warn people about these clowns and advocating against them for the better part of a decade. I’ve personally tried working with them on numerous occasions and the fact of the matter is they don’t give a #### about workers and will always do the dogmatic anti-democratic bidding of their corporate overlords.

That won’t change until people rise up in masses. Relying on a minority of the population who despite having clearly been right about standing against the values of that party and have lost significant power and resources because the majority of the population were fine with letting it happen is shortsighted and frankly hypocritical.

Maybe you should be asking the people who work in our province’s primary industry to walk off the job first since that would have more of an impact of the people who bought and paid for the UCP.

Until the people actually show that they will support unions in this kind of fight, unions need to use their resources tactfully. Becoming a sacrificial lamb by letting the government bait us into acting on emotion instead of logic doesn’t fall under that category.

I get that some people who’ve probably never had to fight for anything in their lives may be a little frustrated to hear that their theories on how unions they’ve historically opposed or never strongly supported should save the day aren’t practical. The bottom line is this: While Unions have proven themselves to be one of the most effective catalysts for change and standing up to oppression in modern history, they can’t do it as effectively without having the support of the masses backing them up. Despite what you might be lead to believe through social media algorithms, we’re not there yet.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is, a lot of people who for years we’ve been telling to WAKE UP appear to finally be starting to do so. If you’re one of them, great! Welcome to the party pal! Go wake some more people up and let’s put us all in a position to take these tyrants on and win!

How does that sound?

Perhaps they can wait to see if there is a political cost via recall but as of now public unions have lost all bargaining power as they will be NWCd back.

Unions ain’t gonna be relying on recall to fix anything because they know first hand how difficult getting 40% of a group of people signed up for something really is. That recall legislation has been garbage since the day it was tabled. The UCP knew it would likely never lead to any meaningful changes because they already had their similar union busting legislation as an example. But since enough people can’t seem to figure out the problems with that legislation the UCP exploited those same people and convinced many that this crap is actually giving us a reasonable shot at recalling anyone.

This is effectively Raegan vs the ATC which led to the decline of union power in the US

If you really believe that the ATC strike was the catalyst for the decline of Union power in the US then I really don’t understand what point you are trying to make by bringing that up as an example for why unions in Alberta should ban together and go out on an illegal strike in this current scenario or what outcome you’re expecting.

Actually what happened to the teachers is significantly worse. The ATC strike was illegal, it could have been avoided too but that’s a whole other discussion. It is however a good example of why you shouldn’t overplay your hand when deciding to strike, whether legally or illegally. The Reagan administration was thought to be pro-labour up until that point but as it turned out it was the beginning of the Republican Party’s shift to what we see now. The ATC didn’t expect them to go as extreme as they did because at the time there was no reason to believe that Reagan would do that. Do you think unions have the same faith in Smith and the UCP?