Okay, so as you may know, by day I’m a humble public servant. Right now my union, the BCGEU, is on strike. My building has been on strike for two weeks now.
I’ve been in unions before, and I’ve even voted to strike, but this is the first time that I’ve been on the picket line.
When I was working as a teaching assistant at SFU, I was a member of the Teaching Support Staff Union (TSSU). I think we were bargaining for a new contract the entire time I was doing my master’s degree. In my last term, we held a strike vote, and I volunteered to do some polling shifts. It was actually pretty fun, sitting at the table and helping people vote. We ended up with a pretty strong strike mandate (I can’t remember what the percentage was). In fact, one of my colleagues in the School of Communication actually served strike notice at convocation, as he was receiving his PhD. It was pretty great to see the look on the president of the university’s face as he handed it to her.
Unfortunately for me, I was graduating too, and was no longer a TA or a member of the union when the pickets were set up soon after.
But anyway, now I’m actually on strike.
I’m not sure what the cats have to do with this, but they are perfect.
So, we’re on strike. It’s a nice change of pace honestly. The strike pay, though less than I would get if I were at my desk, is fairly reasonable for a union of 34,000 just finishing its fifth week of progressively escalating job action.
As government employees are scattered in offices across the province, my building has attracted BCGEU members working in all sorts of different ministries. I’ve made new friends from across government, and one of the things I’ve noticed we all have in common is that none of us have ever been on strike. And it shows. There have been a lot of challenges, but we have such a great group of volunteer picket captains that take everything with good humour that I know there’s no problem they couldn’t solve.
In the past, our union has relied on the BC Liquor Distribution Branch (LDB) and the BC Liquor store’s employees to strike for us, so I’m glad that union leadership isn’t taking that route this time. It doesn’t seem fair for LDB staff to always shoulder the brunt of job action for the whole union.
What this means is that a bunch of office workers, most of whom have never struck their worksites, and most of whom don’t really have much contact with the union at all, are experiencing what solidarity looks like for the first time. Some people hate it. They just want to get back to work and seem embarrassed to have to be out with us.
Others, however, are really into it! Or at least, are being good sports. We’d all rather be working, but it makes such a difference when people come to the picket line with patience and an open mind. We spend a lot of time standing or walking around. We cheer when drivers honk for us and when cyclists ring their bells for us. We get really excited when members of other unions refuse to cross our picket line.
It’s an interesting time. I’ll leave it there for now.