Tuesday, March 31, 2009
I'm back
As can be seen, I haven't been blogging lately. However, my legion of fans - which is to say, my son and my brother-in-law - have encouraged me to post some of my reflections on legal cases that I've been writing them about. So I shall. I had to look up my password, then re-register through Google - and look up that password - but here I am.
The case in question is pretty unremarkable. It's just that it revives one of my ongoing fantasies. The subject was labour relations. The Calgary Flames - that is, the Calgary Flames Ltd. Partnership, which owns the team and I assume also the Saddledome - fired a chef in the corporate suites. They said it was for cause. He said it was because he was involved in union organizing activities. He'd just recently received a promotion, and the dismissal occurred almost immediately after the employer learned of his union activities, so the Alberta Relations Board found that anti-union animus was one factor in the termination.
My fantasy is this. I'm an NHL player and I'm being interviewed between periods. "So, Steve, you're down 2-1 with a period to go. What do you need to do to get back in this game?" I put on my United Food and Commercial Workers Union cap before Steve Armitage can react. "Well, Steve, really, who cares? I'm going to get paid whether we come back or not. But do you realize that my boss, the Calgary Flames, fired a chef in the arena here because he tried to get a union? We - I mean we players - we have a union, although we don't call it that. Why shouldn't the other workers here have a union? The owners of this team have been found guilty by the Labour Relations Board of unfair labour practices, and ordered to distribute union information to the kitchen and serving staff. Brothers and sisters, please read and study that information, and join the union!"
Part of the reason this is my fantasy is that it isn't ever going to happen. I don't mean with me in it, I mean at all. Pro athletes are overwhelmingly conservative politically. You can get them to go to a kid's hospital or read at a grade school, but if you asked them to stand on a picket line with even workers employed by their own boss - from whom they are protected by a union, because they know enough not to trust him - they'd look at you like you were from another planet.
What did Charles Barkley say to his grandmother when she said he couldn't run as a Republican because they only represented the rich? "But I am rich." Well, in a year or two there may be several fewer teams in the NHL; and with fewer jobs available and reduced salaries (the cap will definitely be decreasing), maybe some hockey players will entertain the notion that they have more in common with the servers in the suites than the occupants thereof.
The case in question is pretty unremarkable. It's just that it revives one of my ongoing fantasies. The subject was labour relations. The Calgary Flames - that is, the Calgary Flames Ltd. Partnership, which owns the team and I assume also the Saddledome - fired a chef in the corporate suites. They said it was for cause. He said it was because he was involved in union organizing activities. He'd just recently received a promotion, and the dismissal occurred almost immediately after the employer learned of his union activities, so the Alberta Relations Board found that anti-union animus was one factor in the termination.
My fantasy is this. I'm an NHL player and I'm being interviewed between periods. "So, Steve, you're down 2-1 with a period to go. What do you need to do to get back in this game?" I put on my United Food and Commercial Workers Union cap before Steve Armitage can react. "Well, Steve, really, who cares? I'm going to get paid whether we come back or not. But do you realize that my boss, the Calgary Flames, fired a chef in the arena here because he tried to get a union? We - I mean we players - we have a union, although we don't call it that. Why shouldn't the other workers here have a union? The owners of this team have been found guilty by the Labour Relations Board of unfair labour practices, and ordered to distribute union information to the kitchen and serving staff. Brothers and sisters, please read and study that information, and join the union!"
Part of the reason this is my fantasy is that it isn't ever going to happen. I don't mean with me in it, I mean at all. Pro athletes are overwhelmingly conservative politically. You can get them to go to a kid's hospital or read at a grade school, but if you asked them to stand on a picket line with even workers employed by their own boss - from whom they are protected by a union, because they know enough not to trust him - they'd look at you like you were from another planet.
What did Charles Barkley say to his grandmother when she said he couldn't run as a Republican because they only represented the rich? "But I am rich." Well, in a year or two there may be several fewer teams in the NHL; and with fewer jobs available and reduced salaries (the cap will definitely be decreasing), maybe some hockey players will entertain the notion that they have more in common with the servers in the suites than the occupants thereof.
# posted by Stephen @ 6:02 p.m. 
