A Vicious Little Sandwich

It may be apocryphal, but I believe it was Dr. William Osler who once said, "To hell with modern medicine. Half of the pills developed today should be thrown out the window, except it would be bad for the birds." Maybe so, but I got the right half, and my irritating bronchial cough is fast disappearing.

Which brings me to another statement, and the issue I want to address in this post. Dr. Norman Davies, in his magnificent historical account entitled Europe, writes the following: "The first recorded strike was organized by the weavers of Douai in 1245"* Professor Davies does not give the result, but this doesn't detract from the point I want to make -- unions have been with us for some time, and so has their right to strike.

I have no quarrel with that. A union wants better wages and living conditions, management balks, a strike ensues, and one of the parties concedes the position of the other. In most instances, there is compromise on both sides. The process is not called 'collective bargaining' for nothing.

And in earlier times, a strike was often the only weapon workers had to enable them to achieve a reasonable standard of life. A quick read of Orwell's Down The Mine, or a look at Galsworthy's play Strife will bring the point home brutally but effectively.

For most of its history, collective bargaining involved only two entities -- management and the union. Recently, however, a third party has entered the process, and here things go very wrong indeed. This is the 'vicious sandwich' referred to in the title.

The third element, the 'meat' in the sandwich if you will, is the public, and this aspect of the bargaining process only occurs where a public service union is concerned. The public is truly an innocent party in the process, caught between management (the government) and the union.

It is true that certain public services have been denied the right to strike, and use a binding arbitration process instead. Police officers, firefighters, and EMT personnel come to mind. This is done for reasons of public safety. 

What I am arguing for is a moral rationale that would bring an arbitration process for ALL public service unions. The public is not the reason for the strike, that would be government policy that is viewed by the union as strike worthy. But it is the public that suffers, and that in the final analysis is immoral.

This vicious sandwich becomes a moral horror story when a teachers' union decides to strike, thereby harming the students that they, acting in loco parentis as the Education Act puts it, have agreed to care for, nurture and teach.

The late and highly respected Dr R.W. Jackson, former head of the Ontario Institute of Education, would be appalled. After all, it was he who once wrote, "Never lose sight of the fact that the child as learner is not only the centre of the education system, but the very reason for its existence."**

The child.

Not a teachers' union.

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* N. Davies, Europe, O.U.P. (Oxford,1996) p. 370

** Ontario Ministry of Education, Issues and Directions, June, 1980, p. 1