Good Tuesday folks, It’s been a month or so since I’ve written a rant, so I may seem a slight bit rusty at it. Here goes nothing.
The month of June has so far been quite eventful, from doing the spoken-word and visual art shows, along with Car Stories and Infringement Therapy, in the Montreal Infringement Festival this year to getting attacked by a gorilla named Ace at the fringe. Crazy days.
The month of June has also caused me some suffering at the hands of the Federal government and the postal service. Don’t get me wrong, I feel for the postal workers, but they do make twice the most I’ve ever earned by the hour. I wonder if they’re hiring. I had to wait a whole extra week for my EI cheque, and that I was truly unhappy about. In the end, Service Canada allowed me to pick up my cheque at the location nearest my apartment.
To add insult to injury, I had to pay for parking.
I know that I’m the little guy, but I don’t see unionization as necessarily a good thing. This is because, according to the experiences I’ve had up until now, unions have never been good to me. Usually I get hurt as a third party who isn’t involved, but then, I have also twice worked at jobs where there were unions. I got no protection and was paid very badly and had to pay 4% of my salary in dues, not to mention the ridiculous amount of unpaid overtime. Then they used the “seniority excuse” less than two months later to get rid of me – Without the possibility of EI! -ZERO PROTECTION! I WAS SCREWED!
For this reason I don’t trust unions, as my experiences with them have simply never been fruitful. When I was a student at Concordia, one of the student clubs I was a member of, The Concordia Writer’s Group, got shut down by the student union simply because they could, without any warning. When we came back demanding explanations or answers, they made some nonsensical claim about sending e-mails to nonexistent e-mail boxes.
We only found out about our quashing when we came in for a meeting one day, and the locks had been changed. It took an RCMP officer to demand they let us retrieve our own belongings, and even then they gave us considerable trouble, rushing us and standing in our way. Needless to say, I wasn’t too pleased with the CSU.
Of course, being unemployed doesn’t help at all. As of this week I’m actively looking for work again, but I strongly suspect it will be more of the same bullshit I’ve encountered my whole life. Overly demanding bosses, difficult labours, speeds too fast for me to handle, and very, very low pay. Lots of whip-cracking so that I may give most of my earnings to my landlord, to the phone company, to the power company, and whatever is left to the grocery store. I never seem to be able to earn enough to save anything, and I’m not getting any younger.
* Image: Wikimedia Commons
