Watching friends and colleagues try to find a place to live in the Sea to Sky recently leaves me with a rather upsetting (and only partially rhetorical) question: what happens when it just becomes too expensive to be alive?
Between skyrocketing housing and gas prices, mostly stagnant wages and general inflation, how are Canada’s younger generations supposed to get ahead?
Don’t try and answer that—it will only end in frustration.
Every time I try, I follow the same train of thought to end up in a familiar place: an interview I conducted nearly 10 years ago with a sociology professor at the University of Regina.
I don’t remember the exact topic, or even what the story was about—but one line from that interview has stuck with me all these years later (funny how that works sometimes).
This professor posited that, in a societal, greater-good sense, people don’t tend to push for change until things first get very bad.
I’ve referenced that line to friends and acquaintances dozens of times since then, and applied it to various situations in my own realm of understanding.
As in, you can be aware of the garbage and recycling piling up in the closet, but you don’t need to take it to the Nesters depot until you can smell it when you walk in the door (I may or may not be pulling this metaphor directly from my life this week).
So when I look at a situation like, say, a two-month-and-counting transit strike, I find myself empathizing with the employees.
Workers don’t go on strike because it’s fun. They do it out of necessity, usually as a last resort to counter the suffocating force that is greed. The transit workers I’ve had a chance to speak with since the strike began have all told me the same thing: they just want to get back behind the wheel.
But they also want to be able to feed their families, pay their rent or mortgage, and still have enough left over to save for the future—you know, the same very basic things most humans want, and deserve, out of life.
I can’t speak directly to the conditions our local transit workers have to deal with on a daily basis—or the intricacies of negotiations between unions and employers, and how one deal might affect the next round of negotiations in another town—but I applaud their resilience, and I wish them the best.
And while we’re handing out applause (and talking about things having to get very bad before they change), news that Vail Resorts is hiking its minimum wage for all employees was a welcome surprise last week.
The announcement comes on the heels of a certifiably disastrous season, PR-wise, for the mega resort conglomerate.
Putting aside the complaints we hear on a weekly basis here in Whistler, my inbox has been full of negative headlines from other Vail Resorts ski towns for weeks—stories about staffing shortages, underpaid workers, overcrowding, bad customer service, petitions calling for change… The volume and breadth of bad coverage really is impressive.
With all that negativity, Vail Resorts CEO Kirsten Lynch must have known she needed something positive to balance out the universe—and good on her and Vail Resorts for stepping up in a big way.
With any luck, the new wage on the mountain will force more employers in town to follow suit. It won’t solve our problems overnight, but it’s a positive step in the right direction.
Getting less attention, but equally important, is Vail Resorts’ stated commitment to employee housing in the towns in which it operates.
The company’s long-delayed 240-bed employee housing building was back on the Whistler council agenda on March 22, and its completion can’t come soon enough.
In regards to its most recent generosity, I suspect Vail Resorts’ boardroom in recent months bore a metaphorical resemblance to my closet—that is, producing an unpleasant smell growing too invasive to ignore. So they took the garbage to Nesters before it became even more unpleasant. A prudent move.
Prior to the company’s announcement, there were signs things were headed for more unpleasantness. An Instagram account created in early March declared a Whistler Blackcomb-wide walkout was to take place on March 11, with a stated goal of demanding better wages and benefits as well as monthly rent subsidies.
As it turned out, the movement was just one guy, and on the day of the proposed walk-out, Whistler Blackcomb said it saw fewer call-outs than on an average day. But every movement, no matter how small, has to begin with a single step.
Both B.C. and Canada have long and colourful histories when it comes to strikes and labour action—Canada’s first general strike took place in Vancouver in 1918, after labour leader and conscientious objector Albert “Ginger” Goodwin was killed by a police officer.
At that time, inflation caused by the First World War had the effect of devaluing workers’ income, which led to a labour shortage. It would take more time and space than this column affords to properly explain the context of the strike—and the violence it was met with—but there are clear parallels to what we’re seeing today.
So as we trace the trajectory we’re currently on, wondering where it’s all headed, we might find clues in the history books—but sooner or later, one way or the other, someone’s going to have to take out the trash.
