Glad to hear that Canadian government workers are waking up to how well they have it. Hope it's not too late as with the medical profession here who for years spoke of how they were "abusing the insurance companies" until they woke up and had tyrants on their hands limiting their ability to do the excellent job they had done all along.
Whining eventually gets someone's attention and I've heard whining about the lousy government jobs in Canada for years and thought that they didn't know how lucky they were. Same for Canadian citizens who complained about lousy health care and came here for their care. It never hurts to have competition and if you need something immediate the American private sector is good at rescues when the Canadian or Veterans Hospitals here would take longer. America is just bad at long term solutions to almost anything. The exception is my Veteran's Healthcare. I am both thrilled and amazed by my "socialist" Veterans Healthcare. I don't mind paying the private sector occasionally and would do nothing to endanger my VA healthcare just to gripe. The English are probably finding out the same thing now but they too, still like to gripe. Some people, like our idiots on the Supreme Court, equate whining with freedom and it IS "freedom," if you are poor. If you're not poor, you're just throwing sand in the gears. Today, even billionaires talk like they are poor. It's disgusting. With them it's a strategy that the police and psycho-therapists use called "gaslighting." Real freedom only comes from having the intellectual and physical capital to attain the significance you have in your potential. Being held back by either poverty or provincial rigidity and the lack of performability is what Thomas Jefferson called "voluntary slavery." REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ed Weick Sent: Tuesday, June 28, 2011 9:31 AM To: [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: [Futurework] Don't worry and try very very very hard to be happy! Some interesting items in our local paper (Ottawa Citizen). One dealt with a sharp increase in disability claims by federal government employees in 2010. Nearly half of the claims concerned mental health and anxiety issues. I've heard from a variety of sources that the public service is not a good place to work now, with the threat of job cuts hanging over people's heads. Even if your job is relatively secure, you're not sure you're going to be allowed to do it as it should be done. I know of one case in which a public servant's job is overseeing government expenditures in another part of the country. It would be logical, even necessary for him to go and see what his clients are doing on the ground. But, oh no, travel budgets been cut. Can't do that. In another case, a friend who is eligible for retirement has just not bothered going in to work. The atmosphere is just too bad. Who needs it? Another item in the paper dealt with anger among postal employees who had arbitrarily been sent back to work by the government. They were on strike, but instead of at least giving things a chance to work themselves out, the government moved in and sent the strikers back to work. One reason given was that too many small businesses depended on being able to send invoices out and get checks back. Well, mmmhmmm, I guess that could be a reason, but the government should at least have given the collective bargaining process a chance to try to work things out instead of shutting it off. It recently did the same thing in the case of an Air Canada cabin crew strike. Nope! Can't wait for collective bargaining. Service is too vital! Yet another item dealt with ex senior Cabinet Minister Stockwell Day setting up a consulting firm in possible violation of the Federal Accountability Act which requires that public office holders to wait five years before participating in lobbying. Day says that his firm would be advisory. It would not lobby or connect clients to politicians or bureaucrats. Oh? Then what would it do? Altogether, it doesn't look like a good time to work for government or a Canadian crown corporation.. But there are other things going on that should make you happy. Hey, Will and Kate are coming! So elate and enjoy, and forget about the silly stuff that you normally have to worry about, like your job, you health or your pension. Ed
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