june 12, 2014

it's actually fairly common here to see unifor banners paired with conservative party yard signs (you know the ones, they're standard across north america) on the lawns of upper middle class houses. unifor is the big auto/energy union. i've been aware of this connection for a while, but i kind of expected it to be an under the rug thing rather than something openly flaunted. it's surreal to see how normal it is.

it doesn't make sense on first glance, but it does when you work the politics out in more detail. big union members in southern ontario are very well paid. they're more worried about their taxes being too high then they are about their collective bargaining rights and their political choices reflect that economic comfort. it's no longer "the bosses are stealing my wages to live in luxury" but "the government is stealing my wages to distribute to the community". the difference in function is less important than the perceived lost wages, regardless of the comfort they live in.

nobody wants to talk about it, though. the conservatives don't want to risk losing one of their most effective attack mechanisms, so they keep attacking them. the ndp don't want to come off as utterly irrelevant, so they keep acting like they represent them. but it's all a charade...

there's an election today. i'm not voting. i do sometimes, i don't sometimes. for today, i'm in a relatively new riding and i simply don't know the local candidates or local issues well enough.

i don't expect much to change, though.