VIUFA strike

While recognizing and supporting the legal strike action by Vancouver Island University professors, I am nevertheless struck by how many people outside faculty, staff, and students this strike is harming. I have witnessed some members of the cleaning staff reduced to scrounging for bottles and cans to support themselves; some of the tutors to students with LD's are now desperately searching for outside employment; and people who work in tangential jobs have been seen applying for welfare in order to survive.

In all of the brouhaha about who is right and who is wrong, no one appears to have given any thoughts to the harm being done to the lives of those who have no vote in this job action: those who do NOT get any strike pay or whose pay is too low to have saved against such an event. Naturally, both sides are self-righteous and convinced of the justification of their reasons for holding out. I am appalled at the combined lack of compassion and brains displayed by all of the PhD's in both administration and faculty with their supposed 'higher-level thinking" skills. Shame on all of you. What a sorry example you all are for your students.

Yes, faculty should fight to retain programs and course offerings, and yes, faculty should be fighting to have transparency over budgetary matters. However, this job action should have been staged in such a way so as not to harm students and tangential staff--perhaps in a series of jobs actions so that the negative results of this job action are mitigated for those who are not directly employed by the three unions. 

I most certainly hope that a thorough post-mortem of this disruptive event is conducted after the fact so that all of the negative fall-out and personal harm from this event can come to light. I am certain that for those who do NOT earn in excess of $80,000 a year, this strike has hurt a lot of families. Get over yourselves, stop intellectualizing everything,  and start looking at the real lives you are damaging.