Whine Du Jour

I am not a fan of people who need to talk to me to sell me stuff.  Send me a letter and I will consider it. 

My union (I am still new to the whole union thing as my previous academic outposts were not unionized) apparently has a deal with an insurance company that gives me a modest bit of benefits.  Well, if I sign up for them.  And there is the hitch: the insurance company needs to send someone to my house to sign me up for these benefits. 

What are these benefits? A very modest accidental death/disability insurance and discount on glasses.  It was the latter that interested me as I have AD/D via my employer (perhaps due to the hard bargaining of my union ... or not as I had such stuff in other places). 

So, I stupidly agreed to meet with the salesperson to sign up, knowing that there would be some sort of pitch for additional benefits that I would have to pay for.  And that is what we got.  I wanted to cut to the chase to find out what these "permanent" "benefits" would be, but that would require more dancing through the script than I wanted to hear.  The price turned out to be 5% of my yearly income for benefits that we never quite got to. 

Oh, and those benefits that I was supposed to get? Well, the glasses coupon is only good for 2015, and I would have to go through this needs analysis/salespitch every year to keep getting that benefit.  Turns out my time is sufficiently valuable and that I am sufficiently impatient that I am willing to forgo the savings on my glasses so that I do not have to hear this pitch.

Sorry, salesperson, but since I was coerced into hearing what you had to say (to get benefits, need to meet with person in person), I was cranky to begin with and the script you had must made me crankier.

Oh, and union, crappy deal.  Thanks.

Unions and Student Protests

For those who ponder why I would be less than thrilled with Quebec unions or why I seem to skitter along the political spectrum, the latest stories (in French, in English) about the role of Quebec unions makes it abundantly clear.  What people have long suspected is now quite apparent--that the big unions have been providing significant financial support to the student groups, funding their mobilizations outside of Montreal (subsidizing the buses), for example.

Why would the unions do this?  Of course, they take the stance that they support Quebec's left as a matter of principle.  Sure.  What that really means is that they will support anyone or anything that will screw over Jean Charest and the provincial Liberal party.  The unions have long hated this current government and have long been aligned with the separatists. 

I get it that unions were/are important for being some kind of counter-balance to the power of corporations.  Jacob Levy examines the pro's and con's of unions quite well, although I am not a libertarian so I do not exactly share his point of view (not a surprise to him).  So, I see their necessity, but I also have seen how the combo of strong unions and ties to one side of the political system can seriously warp things. 

The Republican readers of mine (all three of you) are probably gleeful about this, but this combo does not really exist in the US.  Unions are very weak and they are not so embedded in the political system.  Yes, many unions support the Democrats, but this support is weak at best.  They give some money but cannot promise voters.  They certainly do not disrupt ordinary life to make the government of the day look bad.  American unions cannot even mobilize their members that much on election day. 

When I lived in the US, I supported the idea of stronger unions since the political system favors the corporations.  After ten years in Quebec (actually, after a few months), I realized that powerful, entitled unions that are eager to disrupt, prone to sabotage, are hardly ideal.  That they jumped in on the side of students, despite the fact that this ongoing mobilization and the increasing debt crisis are both counter to the interests of their members, is hardly surprising.  Any chance to mess with Charest and the Liberals makes sense to them.  But given the polls, where the student movement is hardly popular, it is pretty clear that the unions' strategy of remaining in the background was their wisest decision. 

I wonder if the student organizers realize that they are a stalking horse?  Maybe if they went to classes?  Probably not--they will just consider themselves the vanguard of the proletariat. 

Strike That!

H/T McGill Memes

Many campuses in Quebec are on "strike" and some departments at McGill are in strike. To be clear, the strikes involve students who are protesting an increase in tuition planned by the Quebec government after years and years and years of tuition freezes and then very modest increases.

Mrs. Spew is flummoxed.   Not that the students don't have something to complain about (she is more sympathetic than I), but that employees strike.  Students, on the other hand, are paying money (modest as it may be in Quebec right now) for their education and then some are saying--we will not partake of this thing for which we have paid.  So, a walk out: yes.  A strike?  Hmm.

For me this raises all kinds of issues to over-think.  My colleague, Jacob Levy, has been tweeting and otherwise discussing a basic problem at McGill: the students of the Faculty of Arts (for Americans, that would be the College of Arts) voted against a strike.  Some sub-units decided to have their own votes: English majors, Social Work (I think), Women's Studies (I think).  The French literature folks are also on strike, but I am not sure if their focus is on tuition or something else (we already know about my French skills).  Anyhow, Jacob raised the issue of the legitimacy of representation: who can say yes or no and the inconsistencies involved.

For me, I have a similar view, but as a scholar of separatism, I focus on how it tells us much about the problem of self-determination.  Who is the self that is entitled to vote on being self-governed?  The problem is, of course, of infinite divisibility.  I am, of course, taking perverse joy in seeing Quebec's political dynamics play out on this smaller stage: the refusal to take no for an answer; the willingness to pursue the smallest audience that will say yes, and so on.

Anyhow, I did have a pop quiz today.  I hope no English majors, Social work folks, Women's Studies students, etc. were harmed.

Meanwhile, we are getting daily notices from McGill about protests/marches/etc.  Since some of these have turned just a tad violent, I cannot complain too much about McG's defensiveness.  I do find the discussions to be lacking perspective, comparing the tuition battle to the civil rights movement, for instance.  But the students already lost a heap of support by blocking a major bridge (perhaps the only one on the south short that is not likely to collapse) during rush hour.  Attention might be good, but antagonizing everyone?  I think not.

I am addled by seemingly semi-daily drives to Ottawa to prep the move and by the pressures of twitterfightclub, so this may have rambled more than usual.