Pickets on Campus

This morning, pickets sprouted up around the Student Union Building.

Unlike staff across most of campus, the SUB workers are represented by the United Steelworkers. Most of my morning was taken up by fielding questions from our CUPE members about what was happening because few people outside the SUB were even aware the Steelworkers local was in negotiations -- and that both negotiations and also mediation had broken down last month.

In addition to the food outlets now behind pickets, the strike shuts down Cinecenta, CFUV, various resource centres and the Student Food Bank. It also shuts down Zap copy centre where I had left a photo to be printed on canvas. Had I known about any pending action, I'd have made a greater effort to get to campus on my days off.

I dashed off an article for NowPublic this evening, "Striking Students Shut Down Student Services," but if you want to know even more, check out the USW Local 2952 blog.

I miss my public library.

It's been more than a month since the brain trust at the Greater Victoria Library Board locked the doors on its staff due to an ongoing labour dispute (and it's a stupid dispute too -- the Board agreed to pay equity in 1992 but has never paid it!) through the Greater Victoria Labour Relations Association (GVLRA) -- I phoned Chris Graham this morning and got a recording -- he sounded besieged (good!) and promised he was working on it, but I don't believe that for a minute. This lockout is not saving them much but it's going to earn them all a big black eye, come municipal elections this fall.

Worse, it's costing families --especially those who can't afford to buy books or find other access to research databases or the internet in general. CUPE 410 (the local representing members who are locked out) has this estimate on their website:

The loss of Library service is a direct cost to every Library user. In 2007, the Library loaned 4,069,026 unique items.

If users, instead of being able to borrow these items, had to pay for them at only $10.00 each (less than the cost of many paperbacks!), they would have had to come up with $40,690,260.00 instead of the less than twelve million dollars they actually spent to run the Library system.

The Library system, far from being a drain on the economy, is actually a powerful generator of real wealth - wealth that the Library Board has taken away.

A little arithmetic shows that every day of this lockout is costing Victorians at least $111,480.16, for a total loss of service value so far of $3,455,885.00 as a conservative estimate.

I've personally felt it, because Kiddo is a rampant reader. Luckily, I have access to the books at the UVic Libraries, which include a lot of kids' books (both in the McPherson and Curric libraries) -- but Kiddo just mows through them! I brought home 6 books last night and she read 5 of them before bedtime. I also felt it when we were working through the renos and I wanted to check the most recent building codes -- free at the library, but $95 if I wanted to view them online. Pshaw.

It sucks that the people feeling the most of the impact are the low-income families, the unemployed, and anyone on a fixed-income in the region -- it's not their dispute, but they have lost a critical connection within their community.

I can assure you that anyone who is currently sitting as a municipal politician and also on the GVLRA or the GVLB will not be getting my vote in November -- and that includes all current mayors.

Please, give your heads a collective shake and get back to bargaining. Figure this out and give us back our library!

Parksville Day One

After a bit of a challenge finding the hotel, we made it here. We were surprised to find one of the best outfitted fitness centres we've seen in a hotel -- it even has equipment comparable to what I have been using at the physiotherapy gym (hooray!). The room itself is average (at least it's clean) and happily Hubby accompanied me, even though it means Kiddo is with her Nana for a whole week! To make that easier, though, Hubby has just set up Skype Credit so we can call Kiddo without spending a week's salary on hotel phone charges or cell minutes.

There's four other members of my local here (all women, oddly) out of what looks like close to eighty or so CUPE members each taking or leading one of five courses offered this week. Being at the Parksville school will mean I have been to all the major education schools available to our local at one point or another in the past 15 years -- Harrison, Naramata, Parksville and other local courses. In the past I have also attended seminars, conferences, conventions (CUPE BC and CUPE National) and even a think-tank at the request of and for the benefit of the local. Over the years I have been a steward, a health and safety representative, and member of several committees. Currently, I am on three committees: Libraries Technical and Organizational Change, Agreement Study (assessment of the contract in preparation for negotiations) and Communications (as chair). I find the union work interesting and am lucky to work in a department which is very flexible in allowing me to do much of the work inside my schedule, as time and workload allows.

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