As Tuesday drew to a close kids were ramping up for a Wednesday morning return to school.
With all the excitement this week a reminder to kids – and drivers – is in order. Until going and leaving school becomes a routine, please watch for cars and kids. It is so easy to strike off into the street or be masked by a parked vehicle and unable to be seen. And, yes, drivers still haven’t caught on to the results of distracted driving.
Between peeking at cell messages or driving with a coffee and bagel in hand, it is a wonder more accidents don’t happen. Please be careful.
Regarding smartphones, new rules are set to take effect, limiting, and banning cell usage at schools. Teachers will capably instruct students of the rules, although segments of the media have covered many stories where educators, and more-so labour organizers, complain about the fuzzy nature of the plan. There isn’t a need to overcomplicate the point.
This is where parents can help and back up schools in their quest to limit distractions caused by phones. Adults at school and home need to manage this conversation for the betterment of students.
We hope the first week of school is a success and pupils get off to a great start.
Labour and life
Labour Day in Canada has its roots in the Nine Hour Movement supported in Canada by printers and members of the Typographical Union.
Beginning in 1869 and hardening to a point of striking in 1872, workers fought to reduce the workday to nine hours and the work week to entail no more than 54 hours. Such hours would be abhorrent to the majority of workers today. Most workdays average eight hours, and overtime becomes automatic when hours exceed 44 per week. Along with improved emphasis on safety and civil workplaces, unions have benefited workers overall by improving conditions as a matter of regulation and law.
Workers have it pretty good in that sense. This may explain the continued decline of union membership in North America.
Troubling for the population, however, is the number of government jobs and essential roles impacted by union membership. Education, health, transportation, emergency services (police and fire) can be paralyzed when governments and union leaders fail to negotiate in a timely fashion.
It is a dynamic that rears its head with regularity and unnecessarily gives unions a bad name and coddles a workforce who most Canadians figure to be well-paid and well looked after in terms of benefits and pensions.
Compared with the average worker’s salary and entitlements, the public service is doing quite well for itself.
In times past many governments have been shy about hiring, recognizing that once brought on as an employee, the burden to taxpayers, compounds over time. Since 2016 the federal government has brought on tens of thousands of employees – to what effect we do not know. But that cost continues.
A show hosted on CBC last week spoke to the number of federal workers fighting against return-to-work policies. The union agreed to two days but is non-committal when it comes to three days in the office. The arguments for and against work from home can be discussed another time, but in this context, some workers are getting a real leg up over their peers who must continue to commute and attend work.
While labour and management will always have differences of opinion, all we know with certainty is without workers, no work will get done.
