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Pique N' Your Interest

Summer of discontent

Hockey’s back, but unless the CBC makes nice with its striking employees, or the employees themselves buckle to administration demands, there might not be a Hockey Night in Canada to enjoy it.

Meanwhile about 14,000 Telus workers are still on the picket lines in B.C., looking for a contract that addresses their fears over future job security.

The B.C. Teachers’ Federation is driving a hard bargain with the province over their next collective bargaining agreement – they can’t legally strike, not since teaching was declared an essential service by Premier Campbell, but they are prepared to take other job action if they don’t get a cost of living increase.

Recently a trucker strike all but stopped shipments within the province while tens of millions of dollars in freight piled up at Vancouver ports. The truckers were demanding higher transport rates to offset rising gas prices.

There’s no pattern to all the job actions and labour issues impacting this province – some are private sector, some are public sector, some are the result of expired contracts, others are a response to economic pressures – but at the root of it all is the fact that middle class no longer means what it used to.

Gas prices are exploding due to concerns about peak oil production and competition from emerging Asian markets. A housing bubble has left many with higher property taxes than they ever dreamed of paying when they signed mortgages. Putting kids through college is more expensive, more medical costs are out-of-pocket, and personal debt is at an all-time high.

Meanwhile the economy has all but stalled, which means for the most part that savings aren’t growing, investments aren’t growing, and wages have stagnated. Our social safety nets are about to be severely tested by aging baby boomers and by the growing disparity between rich and poor in the Western World.

All these pressures, and the simple fact that a dollar doesn’t go as far as it used to, is what’s really behind all of these recent job actions.

In an effort to keep moving forward, to keep pace with the cost of living and to maintain our probably inflated standard of living, union leaders are taking action to guarantee jobs for their workers while keeping the pay hikes coming.

At the same time, in order to compete in a business climate that is increasingly globalized, and driven by outsourcing and the kind of third-party arrangements that the stock market loves, companies everywhere are demanding concessions from their unions.

Those demands have spilled over into the once untouchable public sector. People and companies are demanding lower taxes and governments have been listening, which means the public sector has to rein in costs by using the same kind of outsourcing and third party strategies as the business sector.

That strategy doesn’t always work. The myth of private sector efficiency and cost-effectiveness has come crashing down spectacularly in the past month:

Accenture, a Bermuda-registered company that was hired by the B.C. government to handle billing, call centres and other administrative tasks for B.C. Hydro, was recently forced to lay off workers in order to realize a profit from their contract. They claim service levels won’t be affected, but no reasonable person could assume that fewer workers could possibly mean better service.

Maximus, a U.S.-based company that was hired by the province to administer the Medical Services Plan and Pharmacare, has been fined for continually missing call centre performance targets.

While workers have a right to be concerned by recent trends, the reality is that money is not really the issue – give someone a 10 per cent raise these days, and they will turn around and raise their cost of living by 11 per cent.

People claim only to want the same middle class lifestyle as enjoyed by their baby boomer parents, but how many of those parents had more than one television? How many had two cars? Did they have computers, cell phones, designer clothes, home theatre systems, health club memberships? Did they eat in or eat out, or drop $4 on cups of specialty coffee? Did they fly to Mexico and Vegas for their family vacations or pack the whole brood into the station wagon and drive somewhere?

There’s a reason shows like Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire and The Apprentice are a success, why anyone gives two farts about Paris Hilton, and why members of Oprah’s studio audience wept with joy when they were presented with keys to new cars – our culture is obsessed with money, and in our inflated sense of entitlement can never get enough cash or possessions.

According to the National Association of Home Builders the average size of an American home has increased from 983 square feet in 1950 to 2,330 square feet today, while at the same time the average size of the American family has decreased by about one full member. Almost 82 per cent of new homes have two-car garages, probably because the average nuclear family has two or more cars.

SUV’s are selling a little more slowly with rising fuel prices but still account for half of all light-duty vehicles (working vehicles) sold today. At the same time the average fuel economy of vehicles actually got worse in the last few years after decades of incremental improvements.

While I can sympathize with anyone who works hard for their money only to see it gobbled up by rising costs, the reality is that the American Dream, also known as the Canadian Dream north of the border, is just not realistic for most people. You can’t live like a wealthy person at today’s middle class wages.

The good news is that money and happiness are not the same thing, and if you doubt that you really need to visit a few Third World countries.

That isn’t to say that unions are wrong to try to get everything they can for their members, including job security. But it’s time for everyone to acknowledge that the economy is going through a significant readjustment period and that things may never be the same.

Maybe we should adjust our dreams – and expenses – accordingly.