Lisa Raitt's trampling of union rights speeds up demise of labour ministry

Yes, Virginia, there is a federal Labour Minister. Her name is Lisa Raitt, youngest daughter of Tootsie and former union negotiator Colin MacCormack. But Ms. Raitt may not have the job long. Like labour reporters, labour ministries may soon be extinct.

Union membership is on the wane, swamped by a vast sea of low-paying service jobs and yawning indifference from a public increasingly obsessed by such weighty matters as the stock market, shopping, gossip about nonentities and the struggle to survive when there hasn't been a new product to talk/text/tweet about in the past 15 minutes or so.

Ms. Raitt is doing her best to accelerate her portfolio's demise. The right to free collective bargaining and the right to strike have been fundamental in this country for more than 70 years. With Ms. Raitt in charge, those rights appear headed for the trash can.

Take the postal workers, and don't say "please." Not only did the Lisa Raitt government order them back to work (not new), it imposed wages on the union that were actually lower than the employer's last offer. Something like that hasn't happened in Canada since the final daze of "Wacky" Bennett's Social Credit government out here in the early 1970s.

Customer service agents at Air Canada, a private company, also faced back-to-work legislation this year, after only a few days on strike, with few flight disruptions. Why?

And now we have the sad farce of the current wrangle at good old Air Canada, with all sides bumbling around like a bat in a bowling alley.

This one's been a doozy for Ms. Raitt. She vowed back-to-work legislation before flight attendants had set up a single picket line, called for a review of the long-standing federal labour code because employees twice said no to a recommended agreement (an extremely rare event), and further abused the bargaining process this week by arbitrarily referring the wrangle to the Canada Industrial Relations Board, putting union job action on hold.

This is a difficult dispute. It cries out for the cool deliberation of an independent third party to ferret out root causes and propose a fair settlement.

Yet Ms. Raitt seems more interested in trampling traditional union rights, and few among the 39.6 per cent of the electorate that voted Tory the day before my birthday likely cares a whit.

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It's been a tough slog for pollsters finding Canadians who know anything about the War of 1812. When was it, again, they wonder.

But I, for one, am all for the James Moore government spending $30-million, while slashing the CBC to ribbons, to remind us of the heroism of James FitzGibbon, Charles de Salaberry, Billy Green and Charles Plenderleath, of whom it is no longer acceptable to respond: Who are those guys?

I have my own bit of trivia from the War of 1812, and no, I wasn't there. What forgotten hero of the war is buried in the pioneer cemetery of my hometown, Newmarket, Ont.? Why, that would be William Roe, who, according to my Grade 7 teacher Miss Denne, "saved the gold of Upper Canada" by burying it along the Don River, so the Yankee Doodle Dandies couldn't make off with it, after their dastardly torching of Muddy York in 1813.

Mind you, I've heard they couldn't find the gold after the war was over. Sweet William was never much of a details man.

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B.C.'s privacy commissioner has ticked off the NDP for demanding the Facebook password of party leadership contenders earlier this year. Okay, but no NDPer wants to uncover a picture of Leader Adrian Dix's red underwear, carefully hidden under a nice new suit. (Old Dave Barrett joke).

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As a veteran admirer of great neon signs, most of which have sadly dimmed in Vancouver, I recommend the city museum's current exhibition of some of the vintage electric relics of the past, including the divine Smilin' Buddha Cabaret sign that omm-ed over Hastings Street for years.

However, I hope there's at least one sign that features missing lit-up letters, leading to mirth. Famous writer and Dollarton beach squatter Malcolm Lowry was perpetually bemused, not only by the grape, but from staring across the water at a large Shell neon sign, with the 'S' burnt out.

More recently, I noticed a few darkened letters at the Orpheum Theatre on Granville. O..H.UM read the large sign advertising the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra's home. On days when perhaps the kettle drum didn't quite mesh with the cymbals, VSO conductor Bramwell Tovey must surely have thought to himself, how very appropriate.

So far, no funeral home neon signs missing the trailing 'eral'. That would be dead-pan humour of the worst order.

Have a happy Occupy Vancouver.