Fine Alberta-Grade Wingnuttery, With A Side of Industry Whining

Shorter Neil Waugh: That fucking treehugger Harper is in league with Greenpeace to make me pay more for burgers.

Normally, I'd leave it at that, but I'd like to take a closer look at one part of Waugh's article:

Down in the Ozarks yesterday, the Alberta Tories' favourite meat packer, Tyson Foods, was also crying the blues. And not just because the "beef segment" continued to lose money in the first quarter. Largely to blame for its $23-million deficit was "operating losses at the company's Lakeside operation in Canada."

But Tyson CEO Richard Bond had a more urgent problem to discuss with shareholders.

"The dramatic rise in corn prices has become a major issue," he sighed. And while he said he "fully supports efforts toward renewable energy," Bond also warned of the "negative and unintended consequences of overusing grains."

First of all, while the overuse of crops for biofuel can cause problems, that has been recognized and those problems are being dealt with. Secondly, screw Tyson Foods. That would be this Tyson Foods:

Tyson Foods has forced thousands of workers into the cold and onto picket lines at the company’s plant in Brooks, Alberta. About 2,300 UFCW Canada Local 401 workers at the Lakeside Packers plant had no other choice but to strike on October 12, 2005, after the company rejected a provincial mediator’s contract agreement. Workers are asking for basic human rights and safety protection on the job, but have only been met with violence and racism on the picket line.

These workers, many of them refugees from Sudan and Somalia and immigrants from Nigeria, have been attacked on the picket line and subjected to racist jeers. Three were sent to the hospital after being beaten and left writhing in a ditch beside the road. The Local 401 president was also hospitalized when his car was run off the road by Tyson officials, who have since been charged with dangerous diving.

And, just in case you're wondering how bad things could be in a factory in Alberta in 2005, here's another excerpt, from that report:

Godwin Iwanegba, a Tyson employee, illustrates the fight for dignity when he says, “I begged to use the washroom and my boss said 'No', so I ended up wetting myself and standing in my own urine for the rest of the work shift. Later I was disciplined for filing a complaint about what happened.”

For more than a decade, Tyson Foods has operated Lakeside Packers with some of the highest injury rates of any industrialized plant in North America. Many workers have been seriously injured and over the years, scores of workers have been left with permanent injuries and disabilities from working the Lakeside line. The company has refused to agree to a fair contract, leaving workers with the bleak choice of having to strike or return to work at a reprehensible workhouse that has chewed through 100,000 workers over the last 10 years.

Fortunately, the strike did get resolved more-or-less happily. Nonetheless, it'll be awhile before I, and a whole lot of other Albertans, are really ready to put up with any moaning from Tyson Foods on the subject of their bottom line.

Unfortunately, due to the presence of enemy fighters in the region, the brave souls of Oi! Thump! have had to maintain radio silence this week. Studying for midterms, preparing a lecture on St. Augustine, and marking term papers had nothing whatsoever to do with it. It has of course meant that we've missed out a bit on our coverage of the province-wide labour uprising in B.C., but we have been keeping an eye on things, and will be writing more very soon. We promise.

Steeeeeeeeeeerike!

So, the B.C. Teacher's Union is on strike. Illegally. Personally, I couldn't be prouder of them, nor of the other trade unions in B.C. who have threatened a general strike in support. However, the fact is that the B.C. teachers are acting illegally, and have been duly punished for it. However, the facts that a) the teachers have dared to strike at all (da noiv!) and b) that they have not all been summarily executed for this heinous crime, have caused much pants-wetting chez the usual suspects:

I predicted “peanuts” would be the ruling, earlier. I was wrong. The judge issued roses and bon-bons instead. I overestimated the ability of the liberals, once again, to simply dispense justice without bias and to maintain law and order in our country.

That’s right. Nothing. No fine. No jail time.

Do you get the impression from this that the PTBC types had actually organized a "Watch The Teachers Get Slammed In Court" Party (despite ludicrous claims of prescience), only to have the judge pull the rug out from under their feet, leaving sitting glumly around a bowl of stale nachos and half a case of Diet No-Name Brand Cola? I sure do.

Instead, the liberal judge who was appointed to the bench by liberals, wagged a finger (scratch that—I was guessing but I reconsidered. I’m thinking it was more of a wink and a hug) at the unionists and told the radical left-wing teachers’ union ("party") that they should stop paying their members their strike pay for 30 days. Strike pay was $50 per day, which was coming out of their huge, multi-million-dollar strike fund.

What's interesting here is that our hero keeps following the words "teachers' union" with the word "party" in brackets (check his site for further examples). He thereby cunningly makes the astute political observation that, um, the, uh, teachers' union, um, errr, ah... Anyhoo, the $50/day strike pay that the teachers are losing works out to about $1500/month ($1100 or so if they're not counting weekends), and, on a teacher's salary, that's a big hit. And therein lies the problem. If provinces actually started paying their teachers a living fucking wage, and started treating with the contempt they deserve the jackasses who whine on about how teachers "are overpaid," and "only work ten months a year," and all that other shit, maybe the teachers wouldn't actually need to go on illegal strikes in order to get their point across. And then these idiot anti-union conservatives wouldn't have to spend as much time actually looking after their own drooling, knuckle-dragging offspring, and hey, EVERYBODY would be a fucking winner. But no, instead we get thinly disguised bloodlust directed against anyone who tries to stand up for themselves. It is to weep.

That’ll learn ’em! (The teachers, and the kids, as well as all the people.)
Oh and remember .... vote liberal.

Well, that was incoherent. Was that supposed to be sarcasm? Anyway, it occurs to me at this point that the only group of working people treated more like shit than the teachers are the nurses. Swell. The people who teach our children, and the people who save our lives get to put up with being shat on for the crime of trying to earn a comfortable wage by (semi-)human fucking scumbags of the sort that drag their hideous bloated carcasses around the messageboards at PTBC and Conservative Life. What a great world.