Dalton McGuinty, the ever so targeted premier of Ontario has once again shown himself to be an inept leader, this time concerning his order to bring back to work legislation against the striking York University faculty. I believe it is an issue of saving face rather than caring about education. Yes thats right, I used the word education when talking about McGuinty,you know, the guy who wants to stick it to students any way he can.

Follow up:

While McGuinty and his stooges are attempting to win over the public heart strings with sad tales of poor students suffering, people such as myself just shake their head and wonder wtf? I ask myself, when did post secondary education become an essential service? I do not recall something that you willingly enrol in as essential, after all, voluntarily doing that is well, on your own accord. I do however, understand the students plight as earlier in the fall, I witnessed and partook in a strike on a university campus by the faculty.

Although I take an understanding, I also support the union because I am a union member as I've stated before. Though this 79 day strike doesn't seem to have an end in sight until now, back to work legislation is wrong and is setting a precedent for the future bargaining of any union in Ontario that has members working on college and university campuses. Basically what this says is that yeah, you can have bargaining rights, you even have the supposed "right" to strike, but if you do, we will force you back to work. All this talk about how the students are being held hostage is bull shit and is only used as propaganda to garner public support.

Is a student who knowingly enrols at a school that has unionized workers really a hostage? If the union was holding them at gun point then by all means use that term but that is not the case. Students are free to leave school any time they want, and if they leave by a specified date, they can get a full refund or a partial refund. They have a choice to stay or go, and by staying, one becomes a willing participant in a sense because they chose to stay. So the poor students shtick just doesn't compute. As I stated, I've seen it, I was there when this went on in Windsor and I got tired of hearing the same sob stories.

It is either the administrations fault or the unions fault or it could be both but from what I have read it appears that the administration is not interested in bargaining in good faith. It is the administration that cancelled classes in November, not the union. Yet the union is demonized for taking hostages while the people in the ivory towers do nothing, hoping for the government to step in, the way they just have. Who is using who?

Lest we forget that the union worked for 2 months without a contract and when it came time to bargain, they sat there waiting to bargain while the administration sat on their asses. Why oh why is the attention ALWAYS diverted to the ones who are exercising their right to strike and not to the real issues? Look at the big picture for once and see that the crap occurring on campuses isn't right and it is only going to get worse. This has been going on for many years and it finally came to light during the Mike Harris years while we silently watched as the corporate agenda was falling into place. In one of my earlier posts I discussed how educational institutions are becoming more like corporations rather than a place to learn and i ponder why students don't seem to care about that. Perhaps it is because the quality of their education is diminishing thus affecting their critical thinking skills. Of course it could simply be that they are young and follow the nimby (not in my back yard) philosophy.

All in all, what McGuinty is doing is covering his own ass, while at the same time looking like an idiot for not doing this sooner (according to some). While all this unfolds, I await his reasons for making post secondary education an essential service and in the mean time, John Tory still sucks because he didn't even win his seat.

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