Expected Behaviour

I make it a rule with regard to dealings on a personal level:  never get angry at someone for displaying expected behaviour.  Get annoyed, get disappointed, get sad, but never lose your temper.  So it is with today's cancellation of the Air Canada strike.  This Conservative government is the most business-friendly administration in Canadian history.  The owners are firmly in control of the machinery of the state, and they're using it in the way that is, unfortunately, expected of them.  Suppress costs (especially labour costs) in order to maximize profits; it's the neo-liberal paradigm, and Harper is, as I firmly pray to nameless gibbering gods in the dead of night, the peak of neo-liberalism in Canada.

6,800 Air Canada flight attendants rejected two deals made between Air Canada and the union that represents the attendants, CUPE.  The real sticking point was Air Canada's plan to create a low-cost airline to hop between various hot-climate tourist destinations.  The wage structure at the new subsidiary airline would have paid out at the top level a whopping 25% less, and would caused route overlaps that would result in lessened job security.  The starting salary of an Air Canada flight attendant is only $18,000 to begin with, which as anyone with even a modicum of self-honesty knows is far, far below the poverty line.  Even the offered 9.3% increase would make that $19,674 - just enough to live in your parent's basement on.
CUPE's gains were pretty weak, compared to the loss of job security and earning potential; the union did not have the confidence of the members.  The first offer did little for them, and the second one removed a number of concessions that the airline had originally given to fringe items.  So, what is left to them but striking?

Enter the Sun King and Parliament.  Rumour has been abounding for some time that if the flight attendants went on strike the Conservatives would implement back-to-work legislation.  They only have the right to strike until they try to, and then they don't, amirite?  Well, even the (rumoured) threat of a wildcat strike has been smothered.  Today the federal government asked the Canadian Industrial Relations Board to determine whether or not Air Canada flight attendants constituted an "essential service".  Specifically, "whether any services need to be maintained, in the event of a strike or lockout, to prevent an immediate and serious danger to the safety or health of the public".  Until the CIRB comes to a decision on this "question", there will be no strike, on pain of decertification.  It is a transparent ploy by the Harper government to force the matter into arbitration, where the airline will likely gain significant concessions from the union, and flight attendants will likely end up worse off for it.  Air Canada stands to gain, of course, and from a hand-in-glove corporate-state marriage, that's just expected behaviour.

#OccupyToronto on October 15th.