After achieving a 95 per cent strike vote in June, the BCGEU has finally begun job action. In our era of unaffordability, institutional capture, and cowardly leadership, abandoning wickets in favor of pickets appears to be the only option left for working folks. As a unionized employee myself, it is my duty to not trespass their line. I am happy to oblige, and indeed I hope more civil servants join in. A strike that shuts down the government might be the only democratic tool we have left.
Due to being raised an anabaptist, my view of democracy is rather fundamentalist: ballots and elections do not define a free people. Rather, their ability to abstain from any scheme, no matter how grand or small, proves whether they are truly free. I do not have liberty if I can be compelled by anyone, particularly the state, to act against my conscience. If readers are unclear on this point, I invite them to visit a library or store, and pick up any book about the 20th century.
Within the workplace, the right to “conscientiously object” compounds. While it’s true that as a society we have made the woebegotten choice to live as little better than well-clothed serfs with less privileges and rights than our ancestors on every front, cajoled into often manic and meaningless work by people of no greater virtue or insight than ourselves on behalf of elected officials, investors, and commissars entirely dissociated from reality, we still own our labour.
Indeed, contrary to COVID propaganda, workers still own their bodies. It is their voluntary compliance that keeps this debt-riddled, listing boat called by ever less relevant place-names afloat. And given how low in red ink the gunnels truly lie, thanks to the nonsensical policies from parties that do not live with the consequences of their ideology, those in steerage class finally have an opportunity to save or scuttle this bark by battening down hatches or abandoning ship.
You’re welcome to call that an extreme view. But instead of jeering at me in the style of our post-political age, I invite anyone in good conscience to defend the social contract as it stands today. Select a member of the establishment - from the lukewarm complacent to the diabolically self-righteous - to demonstrably prove that everything is just fine: “oh Giede, you silly alarmist: pull this lever and turn these dials - you’ll see that the popular will still affects change!”
Long ago, conservatives and liberals were actually in harmony on this point. The “think globally, act locally” motto of the left resonated with pundits on the right dismissing the idea of saving the planet - “try saving your school board instead!” And yet, if I tried to save SD 57, by the end of my first week of campaigning, I’d find myself not just disqualified, but without a job and run out of town. Those are the reactions of a hardline theocracy, not a liberal democracy.
This is not a debate about odious or outdated concepts of morality, nature, etc, because far less strident positions invite the same reaction from the consensus. COVID made this crystal clear with its coercive mandates but the same unquestionable orthodoxy exists at both the city and regional district’s permit office, in the halls of our college, university, and hospital, around your neighborhood the second you contravene the covenant slightly. Trespassers are heretics.
Some might agree with my theme but still assert that all of these bodies have appeal processes to address grievances. I’ll simply say this: I have been both an appellant as well as a witness in these proceedings, from pathetic zoning laws to the untouchable topic of gender. Your presence there means you are guilty, and your defense simply helps them make their predetermined decisions sound less arbitrary. This isn’t open court, it's a closed inquisition.
But there is a remedy: non-participation. At work, this manifests as job action and the strike, which the BCGEU is currently exemplifying. Let us pray more join in solidarity, bringing our overreaching ship of state to a halt. At this point, we have nothing left to lose but our chains.
