Pre Coffee Rant

Great fun at art class last night.  Its an painting free-for-all - which means you paint what you want over 3 evenings.  We chat whilst we paint with our core subjects being the Blue Jays and the school strike.  I did divert the conversation to discussing how hot the PM is but apparently that's not a key asset for a leader.  Who knew?

Blue Jays won - yay!  So we talked school.  The teachers are on a work to rule, have been for months.  The Office staff the same.  Cleaners are on all out strike.  My friend recounted how she went to pick her kid up early for a dental appointment and the Principal had to open the door as the office staff can't press a buzzer under the terms of their industrial action.  It gets better.  When she asked the office worker to call the classroom to send her daughter up, she declined "work to rule!" so they had to wait for the Principal to return to have him call ahead.

Now here's my point, for I always have a point.  This is a great, free, democratic country.  Always a socialist at heart, with a very small S,  I respect people's right to take organized action to confront hardship and tyranny.  I support action like the UK General Strike of 1926 where pay was so low people in work were starving and those out of work, back for the war, were without prospects and starving.  That was a movement to say "enough inequality, enough starvation, enough!" 

Roll forward to the Miners Strikes, where the Government closed the mines without any regeneration plans for those communities.  Not cost effective to mine coal? - fair enough, I'm a capitalist too, again small C.  But to take away work without any plans for the survivors to find new work was shameful and inhuman.  Generation grew up without work.  IMO from that came "the choice to not work" as living on the state became an option for some, whilst many had no choice but to do that.

So the point in all of this - industrial action in the face of a future human and social catastrophe or as a challenge to current hardship - GOOD.  Industrial action because you aren't getting paid as much as you wish you were - NOT GOOD.

As we enter the flu season, with the schools being filthy, they are starting to ask us to donate antiseptic wipes to clean the kids desks...but they don't ask via a note home as photocopying is not allowed under the work to rule.  So, grumpy about all this for both sides - as what is the elected leader doing to resolve this?  As Maude always used to say in the Simpsons "won't somebody please think of the children"

Off to work
Namaste