Mindful Consumption: Patronage and Support to Our Public Liquor Stores

Another conference was attended, giving me a lot more to dwell on with the current political climate in this province and reviewing the insidious changes to the Saskatchewan Employment Act, and how it ultimately affects us as not just unionized employees, but all of us as workers in general. I thought I'd better start taking a firmer stand on things; to be a more conscientious opponent against all the bad things that this government is doing to strip away our crown corporations and the privatizing of other public institutions. We ended the first evening of it having a bit of a social mixer and being well entertained with a hypnotist act. On the closing of day two, a note of gratitude came to our entire group from the young lad who was our bartender the night before. He said that ever since he worked at the hotel where our conference was, we were the people who he had so far made the most tips from; this is news coming from a guy who on numerous times served that same room full of businessmen and corporate big shots who probably drank more and had a lot more money than us to spread around for gratuities, but their habit of greed prevented them from doing so. That fact gave me lots of faith that we as unionized employees are really innately out there looking out for our fellow labourers, affiliated or not. The subjects of liquor, corporate business greed and hypnosis set my mind to write about this so called trial of privatized liquor stores in the province, and the propaganda that the Wall government is trying to use to sell us on this nonsense. Given what I said in my second sentence, one thing of meaningful action I vow to do, and we all should do as well, is this:

Stop buying from the new privatized liquor stores in this province. Why?

They take profits and revenue away from being used for public services and works in the province. With that money in pure profit diverted instead to private corporations, the government then becomes further relegated to reclaim those losses through more taxation elsewhere, or else slashing funding to other aid programs and public services and amenities. The yield from the profits going to the government coffers from just Saskatoon alone is huge: one million a month from just one of the larger ones alone, according to one of the brothers from SGEU. I dread to think about how much of a loss that would be if all of a sudden every liquor store in this province became privatized.

The employees of the private stores are paid less than the unionized workers at the public liquor stores for the same labour, and I will not support an entity that is doing its part to drive a bigger wedge between the rich and the poor, and taking away from its workers the chance of having a fair living wage, despite the fact that I'd be paying about the same price (or perhaps even more in cases) for the same product at private store. If you do manage to find a cheaper price for the same product at the private store, the average overall difference is probably amounts to within the range of a dollar. However, the difference between the hourly wage non-unionized and the unionized employee is usually greater than a dollar. Why can't they then just be paid the same higher wage if the workload and product prices have little to no significant difference? There are discounts in the public liquor stores too, but just because they aren't advertised more publically in a flyer, as with the case of the private store, we are given the illusion and misconception that there aren't any discounts at all in the public liquor store. I find it to be a strange irony that the private stores can advertise alcohol "publically" while the public stores do not.

You may, for whatever reason, truly hate your current government; and may think that by not buying from the public liquor store it will be your way of "sticking it to the man!" , but think of this repercussion. The reality is that when you take that booze money from the government and instead give it as a profit to a singular (family-owned as is the case with Sobeys here) multi-billion dollar corporation, that buys and lobbies governments on their agendas without our say so, you have basically started a trend of selling off whatever personal political power that you have left as a citizen and a consumer, to a corporation who will give you sweet-bugger-all as a result of their profits, unless you are a share-holder and relying on the crap shoot that is the stock market for a dividend return from them. When all is said and done, the ultimate thing that all governments respect is a means of filling their coffers. The more means of power that a mass of citizens has to pay its government directly, the greater the chance that same government might actually listen to and think more about those masses of people rather than listening the whims of a corporation that has become too large with money: to the point where their money is greater than that of what the rest of the masses have combined.

If there is little to no difference in savings in cost for product, what about the factors of transportation: vehicle usage, fuel, and time? On a personal level, the public liquor store I use is close enough to cycle or walk to; it's convenient, more economical, and more environmentally responsible. The cost of fuel I'd be using to drive to either private liquor store from my place on either end of this town would burn up whatever savings (if any) I would have gained from the booze I bought there. In a practical sense, it's totally pointless for me to buy from the private stores here. As it is now, in Saskatoon, the two private stores are logistically located in some very out of the way spots for the majority of the population of the city, while the public stores are distributed more closely amid the majority of the residential neighbourhoods. You certainly wouldn't be buying the privately sold liquor for the fuel economy (or to save time) in Saskatoon unless you maybe lived in the far West End or in Stonebridge. I don't even have to draw out the Hamiltonian circuits or Eularian graphs to prove it. As someone who grew up rurally, it drives me crazy when people don't more accurately account and factor in for the actual fuel and time costs in the overall "savings" when getting their purchases.

I'm a frugal person, but not to the point where my saving of a few nickels and dimes supports depriving another local worker a chance for a few more dollars and protected rights and benefits if s/he were union affiliated, and only serves to take away revenues that help my community and province, and gives more power and leverage for corporations to exploit people and crawl into the hip pocket of government leaders. Buying from the public liquor stores is a direct investment into the province of Saskatchewan. Buying public ultimately serves the greater good.

Learning What Lagom Is

I've been enjoying what might be the last weekend of the year that is fair-weathered enough to partake in enjoying my Sunday morning coffee outside on my deck. I write with mixed emotions. I'm reflecting on an onslaught of information which has been knocking around in my skull since I acquired it from my last conference I attended. I'm saddened that organized labour is coming under such attack from all sides by corporation controlled conservative politicians. How has it come to be that the labour movement has been made to look like such an evil thing, when all the policies that unions are trying to fight for are in the interest of fairness, equality, and access to a better standard of living? I'm at least grateful that the recent transit union lockout in this city was deemed illegal, and that these workers can proceed with their jobs. The impact of it has been making life difficult for many of my co-workers.

I don't usually like to climb on top of soapboxes and start tossing around my opinions on political things. However, I'm stuck with dwelling on the subjects of politics and healthcare, and how both our provincial and federal governments seem to be doing all they can to ruin the whole system, and I feel I have some need to process it all through some writing. It really sickens me to know that here in Saskatchewan, the birthplace of Universal Healthcare in this country, which has been noted through the polling of our population as one of our nation's greatest achievements, is now being threatened in various ways by the current provincial and federal governments in the very province from which it was born. Compounded with this is our governments' blatant attacks on the unionized workforces of this province and country. Here are some facts with regard to this province and nation as to the progression of their attempts to erode the healthcare and unionized labour. I could go on and on about the insidious activity of the Harper government: about how he slashed funding and staffing from Statistics Canada and put a gag order on the scientists of Environment Canada in regards to the reality of Global Warning, but I'd like to just remain focused on these things first*:

• Premier Brad Wall spent a ridiculous amount of our tax payers' money to pay a single American consultant to determine how to run the healthcare system instead of consulting directly and working collaboratively for needs assessment with those who actually operate and work in the hospitals and community clinics in this province. Why are we getting administration advice from someone in a nation that: doesn't have the same proportionality of organized labour in the healthcare system as ours does, has the most expensive healthcare costs in the world, no model of Universal healthcare to operate with, and a closer to failing grade in terms of a rating for health care services in a comparison on the international level? Compounded with the expiration of the healthcare expense sharing plan to the provinces set up by the Liberal government 10 years ago, and the Harper government's refusal to renew it, this provincial system will be deprived of several million dollars for our healthcare budget as of this year.
• What reason(s) do businesses and supposedly democratic governments have to really fear and condemn organized labour? Why don't we throw in another nation into the mix for comparison and contrast, someplace where the labour movement is highly present in a democratic country, and then see what kind of hardships are happening there with this extra presence of Unionized labour? So, I did just that. I found out that the nation with the highest percentage of unionized employees is Sweden: one of the countries on this earth that I really like besides my own. I'm using the percentage figure of unionized labour I was given at the conference (67.7%), but I have found other stats with the union membership there as high as 80%. Regardless, in either case,  either figure still makes Sweden the most highly unionized country in the world. I did a three way comparison with Sweden, Canada, and the place where Brad Wall foolishly spent our tax dollars for consultants: the good ol' USA.
  
   

Stat Category	Sweden	Canada	USA
Percentage of Workers affiliated with a Union (2011 -2012)	67.7% (highest in the world)	31.5% (Saskatchewan is province with the highest %age at 35.4%)	11.3%
Health care spending %age of GDP 2011	9.36%	11.81%	17.85% (incidentally, the highest medical expenses of all nations)
World Health Organization rating of Each nation's health system	23rd	30th (but declining)	37th (and declining even faster)
Universal Health Care system	Yes (even plans for coverage for illegal immigrants)	Yes (but being threatened) I learned that Canadians that were even born here and leave the country for a long time are subjected to denial of services	No
Human Development Index Score (Ranking) of 2006	0.949 (4th)	0.949 (4th) tied with Sweden	0.944 (10th)
Nation's rating in highest average longevity	8th	11th	34th
Percent population living below the poverty line	3.7%	9.4%	15%
Average Disposable Income after taxes (in USD, 2014)	$3,181.11	$2,773.50	$3,258.85
Corruption Perception Index (the higher the score the cleaner the government) Maximum good score is 100	89	81	73
Crime: Prison Population Rate (prisoners per 100,000 people)	57 (159th in the world)	118 (129th in the world)	707 (2nd in the world, also ranked number 1 nation for having the largest population of incarcerated people)
Paid Maternity Leave	420 days, 80% of wages paid	52 weeks (365 days), 55% of wages paid	No national program, but some benefits varying state to state. In 1993, a national provision of 12 weeks unpaid leave enacted
Free University	Yes	No	No

 
What can we learn from this?

• A country that makes it easier to people to access education seems to have less of a need to incarcerate them.
• More investment in starting a child off in life with receiving the proper care might have a lot to do with keeping this person out of jail as an adult
• A greater unionized population seems to have less, or tolerates less, corruption of its own government
• If you have a system that implements a fairer living wage in that country, you'll have less people under the poverty line
• Healthcare spending seems to be occurring a lot more efficiently the more the country is unionized, at least in this comparison
• Even though Sweden still ranks 23^rd on the WHO healthcare ranking, the average life expectancy there is dramatically higher than that of the USA which has no true Universal Healthcare system
• The USA may have the highest take home pay out of the three after taxes, but an accident without the proper insurance through one's HMO down there, or some denial of coverage through some bureaucratic loophole which private insurers often pull will dwindle that pay down really quickly.

So, the nation with the largest number of union affiliated employees has come around to developing a society with: less crime and therefore less tax money used to feed and shelter prisoners, free university to keep fewer people enslaved to paying off student debt, a better rated healthcare system; yet with less GDP used for healthcare spending, less social poverty, and more relief to parents for rearing children. Not included on my table is the fact that Sweden has universal daycare. So why then is Brad Wall consulting with a nation whose healthcare system is rated more poorly than that of Canada, where the average life expectancy is already lower than that of Canada, an inefficient one where your access to healthcare solely depends on your own ability to pay/insure yourself for it, a greater division between its rich and poor, has a more dystopian society that has brought them to having the degree of crime, and their policies to deal with it which results in exponential spending on militarized police forces and wars on drugs, and having one fifth of the entire world's prison population incarcerated in their country alone? Isn't that an indication that their society is breaking down? Is it not then a ridiculous notion to be consulting with them for some means of improving our healthcare system? The only reason Brad Wall went this course was to try to learn how skirt around the organized labour in our hospitals and clinics for the sake of making cutbacks, not giving a hoot in hell about patient and client care, or the needs of the people who tend to them.
    
To be fair, Sweden also has this thing going on in its society that can't be conveniently pasted onto a table or chart. They have this unique word in their language called "lagom"; it means not too much and not too little, but just enough. Exercising moderation is held as a high social standard of appropriateness there. It is a cultural concept they have that is applied to a wide range of things, from their diet, to their resource consumption. I also imagine that it can also be applied to things like a common sense of fairness, environmental issues, social justice, and weighing of consequences on a person at a social level. It probably has a lot to do with making people there not so motivated by greed, and more geared toward fairness and equality. It's one of the few places left in the world where the middle class isn't facing extinction as quickly, and a bigger divide isn't being widened so dramatically between the rich and the poor. Over-the-top displaying of affluence and material wealth is generally regarded in their culture as absurd, obnoxious, ridiculous, and even obscene.**I find this attitude deeply engrained in myself already, and am appreciative of it. It makes me want to visit Sweden all the more to give it more exploration. If given an opportunity to be sponsored to be part of making a social documentary in this country for Canadian television or for my own union, I'd jump all over the chance to do it. The social fitting of lagom somehow probably correlates into how and why there is such a notably high preponderance of unionized labour in Sweden, but because this is a correlation it doesn't indicate cause and effect or determine how which begat what, the unions or the social attitude of lagom itself. Whatever the case, the two ideas seem to work interdependently and function well enough together for the Swedes. Union or not, healthcare or not, we would all do better by learning this same ethic from them.

Sweden also has a higher number of their female population representing their constituents through their government offices than either Canada or the USA. Perhaps that's another reason why there is a greater social mindfulness to allow for a long maternity leave for proper childhood development. With less of an old boys club to deal with, and less influence of some other patriarchal or some other old school theocratic oligarchy ruling them, this has a chance to happen. I wonder what the reaction of the Swedes would be to the senate scandals that happened here since the Harper government took power.
 
*- Statistics Canada used to be the envy of the world with having a publically accessible information for civic leaders and developers, public institution planners, scientists, activists, and businesses to use alike, but through the reign of the Harper government, 20% of its staff were let go, $30 million of its operational funding was slashed, and now measures of privatization and deregulation no longer assure unbiased data processing. Along with the short-listed census, this makes this a war on science, and cripples the Canadian public to having the freedom to access information.
 
**- This social attitude even prevails with the richer capitalists from there like of Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA. Despite being one of the richest people on the planet, he still flies economy class, drives a mid-90s model Volvo, recycles tea bags and encourages his employees to write on both sides of the paper.

The 14th of 14 days

I just arrived home from work tonight, sitting outside on my deck and watching the supermoon in all its fullness, at least for a little while before it becomes enshrouded with the approaching inky black clouds. I'm thankful for the bit of a break from the cloudiness and rain that stuck itself here for the past few days. The thought of heading out for a nightcap somewhere came, but it quickly passed. The truth is that I'm frustrated and tired; so far away from being my ideal self to even think of wandering into some pub, or attempting to be social. I'm all "peopled out"; yet I need some safe way to vent. So, I chose this route.

Between my regular job and union business, I've had a fourteen day workweek. Today was the last day of it all, and the two days off coming up will be less than ideal weather-wise. I always used to look forward to this day: the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. But now, I'm less than enthused. I'm so bankrupt energy-wise. I only feel darkening days coming ahead, both figuratively and literally. Nothing but cloudy skies and rain is in the forecast, and a possible oncoming surge of swelling river due to the havoc happening in Alberta right now. There have been power outages, and probably more to come with the predicted thunderstorms. I doubt if it will be enjoyable, or long enough to refresh me, knowing that this coming Monday I'll just be stepping into a scene of negotiations that's going to make me want to go ballistic and tear my own hair out.

One thing that has been draining me is brooding with a lot of anger. As good as it was to attend my local's convention this past Wednesday and Thursday, gaining such an overload of information and sobering picture of the facts in the report card of what these graft-fed provincial and federal governments are doing to our Crown businesses, public sectors, healthcare sectors, and the stupid amendments of our labour laws, that impact not just unionized labour, but all workers in this province, has left me completely disillusioned with right wing politics. I've given up hope in thinking that anything political will ever serve as salvation a long time ago. We live under a regime that wants to control us by enslaving us with debt, poverty, and corporate influence, and they threaten us more with messing with the terms of hours worked effecting overtime pay, and stripping us of our right to take strike action.

I hope there is someone around next time to slap some sense into me before I allow myself to take on another string days like this again. I'll close this now before I get even more enraged as I start elaborating on the topic. The best thing I can do for myself for the next couple days is to do anything else than be a miserable bastard. I just don't know what or where in my private home life that I should pick up on out of the numerous things around here that seem to have been neglected in the past two weeks.

Pasta, Marshmallows, and an Egg: The Tools for Collaboration

I like attending the workshops at the union office. I find them very enlightening. Attending the one today was a very welcome thing, to get me away from vegetating too long inside my place. It ended up being a fun day. The activity that was most appealing to me in this session was an exercise involving collaboration with a team. Our task was to build a tower with dried spaghetti and marshmallows, as high as we could, which could support a single raw egg on top of it, within a time limit of twenty minutes.

I liked it because not only it was an opportunity to play around and experiment with my limited knowledge of architecture and engineering, but because I got to see how my leadership style works, and how I operate in a team setting. I prefer spending much of my time living and working independently; so I admit and acknowledge that I'm a little oblivious about my personal style of collaborative problem solving and involvement in teamwork.

When it came to task, I introduced the idea of a geodesic design to the group and showed them what a tetrahedral structure looks like, and how to take these small units and build onto them in a patterned frequency for a supportive structure. The idea was totally foreign to these guys, but they caught on quickly after I gave a demonstration. Another guy gave some input as to how reinforce the base's struts, the two women of our four member group were reacting a little frantically as we neared the end, just about knocking it down, but they created an innovative design for the "egg cradle". The structure got somewhat sloppier as it got higher, as we were rushed to finish before time was up, but we still won the challenge, not only in height, but I would dare say we also won in terms of aesthetic appeal compared to the others at the 00:00 mark.

There was more than one dimension in which this was enjoyable. It was just working with a good team itself. My current reluctance to work or play in teams is a result of witnessing/being involved in too many bad teams with in the past. As minor as this recent accomplishment was, I realized that this has been the first time in a long time that I've been able to have a group of more than two people work with me* on a project without naysaying, negativity, bickering, impudence, big egos, sore losers, nagging, or just the outright ignoring and rejecting of any (or my) ideas without reason when sharing constructive input** in a brainstorming session. It showed me how important an environment of respect, focus, trust, honesty, encouragement, support, and solidarity is to have when I do join teams, and just how much those elements have been lacking in the dynamics of most team settings I was stuck in. It's a tall order to ask for. It gave me insight as to why I so often choose to work alone and independently.

TED lecturer, Tom Wujec, has a better explanation of the potential team building exercise with similar such materials and objectives than what I can present. I embedded a link for a video for better elaboration. I wish our prize was $10,000 worth of software.

Tom Wujec on Tower and Team Building.

 

If you should be so curious and adventurous as to try out what we did, here is the challenge:

 

Materials

• 900g dried spaghetti
• 500g bag of large marshmallows (use the fruit flavoured ones if you want to be colourful)
• 1 raw egg

Object: As stated above, build a tower as high as you can with the pasta and marshmallows, that's strong enough to support the weight of a raw egg placed on top of it. Good Luck! Do your best!

 

Here is the link to the official site for the rules of the real Marshmallow Challenge

*- Just to clarify: I work best one on one with people, like me and tolerate being around one or two other co-workers. Larger teams are my challenge. 
**- To rub salt in the wounds, it especially pisses me off when my theory was right to begin with; then some other bozo in the group comes around to opting what I originally suggested, and then tries to claim credit for it when it does works out. I make it a point to weed such people out of my life, and stop working with such bottom-feeding parasites. It has happened often enough that I'm still unwilling to share thoughts in a group setting.

CBO Workers Unite!

We're about a week away from having our provincial election. The events during the three weeks prior to me writing this days have put me in a spot where I feel like I can no longer contain my frustration. I can't divulge the specifics because of confidentiality issues, but it has a lot to do with our current provincial government's failure to recognize and acknowledge the needs of employees working within unionized CBOs.

"What is a CBO?", you ask.*

A CBO is a Community Based Organization, a very general description indeed, but a far more better one than its former appellatives non-profit agency, or not-for-profit organization. Don't be misled, we are not strickly charitable organizations; and CBOs do generate a profit; they create a "social" profit. CBOs are auxiliaries linked to health care, and social/community justice services. We create social profit by creating more social freedoms (or at least by reducing people's suffering) through our service. If you think I'm being delusional in expressing that previous comment, think of these questions:

• How much of your life energy and personal resources would be used/spent if you had no place in your community for your dementia stricken parent/partner/loved-one to live? Would you honestly feel like a freer person if you were responsible for providing all their care alone? CBOs act to assist in sheltering and caring for the elderly with geriantric dementia and Alzeimers with non-medical aide. As the population of aged persons increases within the demographic of our province, it would be ridiculous to think that such services could be adequately implimented strictly by acts of charity alone, and would be super expensive if just left for more formal health services to do it all. The answer is having CBOs as intermediaries. 
• How much more crime (poverty/drug related) would you see on the streets if there were no places for the homeless** to receive the necessities of food and shelter (other than a jail cell). Would you feel more secure? Could those who are this disadvantaged ever find a way to bust out of this cycle and find social freedom if they were just further marginalized and stuck in jail, rather than having resource option of an occasional use of a food bank***, or a treatment centre? Building more and bigger (and expensive, and ineffective) prisons with tax money seems to be the conservative approach, clumping non-violent people who've erred by some minor theft/substance abuse issue in with a population of real rapist and killers. If they weren't hardened people when they went in, it's very likely that they will be when they get out. CBOs working with social and corrections services is the hopeful, more humaine, route. It would be shameful for us to descend into a social cancer of a segregated ghetto society like what is seen in so many American urban centres, but the reason why that scene has prevailed so long there is because of the comparative lack of CBO influence. The greater stigma of crime being linked to poverty halts a lot of people, especially conservative minded ones, from opening wallets and giving charitably to agencies involved in this type of community action, hence they can't operate on charity alone. Workers here need union representation more so than any other CBO for the fact that they work in such a high-risk environment.
• Let's suppose you were a victim of domestic abuse/violence. Aside from the disgustingly useless debate as to who or what is to blame for such situations, would you be any freer or secure without the option of an operational community crisis centre, or a crisis nursery to protect your children? CBOs are the agencies involved with volunteer recruitment, fund-raising, and administration of service for these community shelters and crisis services. 
• Are you operating under the delusion that you, or a loved one, couldn't possibily suffer a debilitating accident that would require not just medical; but long term non-medical care service? Your insurer may cut you a check; but how much remaining freedom and quality of life would you have if there was no one around to assist you in doing something as basic as getting out of bed? CBOs are the long term shelters and care services for these people, who would otherwise have to get that care from more formal institutions like a hospital if they didn'texist for them. Again, they would be impossible to function by charity alone.

There are countless other examples of how CBOs serve and bring quality of life to the residents of this province. I used these few as an example because these are the CBO enivronments I've worked in and contributed to.
I'm tired of blame orientated debates instead of solution orientated forums amongst our elected officials. I'm sickened about just how invisible our and other CBO agencies are to our communities.
It's irritating to see the lag in progress happening because of the in the eyes of certain ministries, we fall behind unseen, yet rigid jurisdictional technicalities that one side or another doesn't want to approach or be responsible for. All this creates some sort of imposed inefficiency for the management of some agencies because they become thus responsible for having to use a sizable chunk of time to campaign for their our fund-raising instead of using the time to deliver the services that they are supposed to provide. The Wall government of Saskatchewan is rightly named, as it seems to have done nothing but built up walls between itself and the unions and others who are democratically trying to serve those in need here.

To Saskatchewan residents, along with the other decisions you are considering before you cast your ballot on November 7th, I'm asking you not to forget about those who work for, support, or are served by CBOs. I'm asking you not to take us for granted. I'm asking you to be apart from the collective ignorance and indifference, as has been shown by the current provincial administration, whose policies have not only been keeping the funds of our province's "prosperity" away from these organizations, but have been active in stifling the voice of union respresentation****, and therefore the workers, trying to make a difference for the lives of people here. Vote with a conscience! Vote for justice! Vote for Health Care! Vote Against Social Decay! Vote for Sharing Our Wealth with Services!

* - Don't feel too bad for not knowing, because I work and for people who don't even know themselves that they are using, or are employed by a CBO.
**- Think carefully before you answer with the stereotype of what you think a "homeless" person is. There is an increasing number of working poor and working homeless in this province because of the shortage of affordable housing that's occurring here. Ironically, some of these short-changed people are CBO workers themselves. What a hell of a reward that is for providing home care services for others.
***- Another disturbing note about the increasing divide between the rich and poor since Saskatchewan has been labelled a "have" province: soup kitchens are appearing now in communities in this province which never had one before, even during The Great Depression.
****- I specifically refer to the passing of Bills 5 and 6 in the Saskatchewan Legislature.