Usefully indispensable?

So with Canada Post’s workers heading back to work next week, regardless of your feelings towards unionized labour, I think a little context is required.

But before I get into it I should state I’m not going to provide, nor am I looking for, commentary concerning either the deal the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (C.U.P.W.) were after or the House of Commons legislation forcing them back to work. Honestly I haven’t been following either side closely enough to provide any sort of informed insight.

I am, however, ready to cite two recent news stories that appeared in the media recently where union’s, on the one hand, proved useful (read: indispensable) to an individual seeking justice. But on the other proved indispensable (read: useful) for a corporation resisting their worker’s their right to organize to temporarily dismiss grievances…

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Really think about it

So we’re well into another federal election campaign here in Canada. Exact same shit, exact same pile. I’m so very tired of electoral politics. Voting for things that don’t really matter, all at the expense of everything that does. It’s all so very maddening. If there wasn’t so much at stake, I assure you, it would be virtually impossible for me to pay attention. Not that what I do pay the political process, in my country at least, could qualify as attention. Even in the loosest definition of the word.

As such what follows will not be an endorsement of any particular candidate. Casting my vote May 2nd will be much more an effort in futility than realistically should be in a so called democracy, right? Is this really the state of the country I live in?

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Tè Tremblé

The title of today’s post means “the earth trembles” in Creole. One of Haiti’s two official languages — the other language being French. I’ve chosen that title along with the subject of today’s post as an ever so small gesture of solidarity with the Haitian people. For those unaware, there has to be one or two of you out there, and cares that today marks the one year anniversary of the catastrophic earthquake that merely furthered, but exponentially worsened, the destruction, misery and hardship a bunch of nations, Canada most definitely included, has unleashed on Haiti.

No matter how desperate things may seem and are on the ground in Haiti, I guess the least — as in the very least — I could do is let the world know I’m thinking about them and trying to get others to do the same?

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