Thank you Arthur Williams for the editorial Can't buy back goodwill. Finally someone who understands that working conditions can be toxic or pleasant. With management who treats workers with respect and is willing to listen to their workers, money is not the top priority. When workers live with daily lack of respect or appreciation for any extra effort, why would they try harder? Why would they not feel unhappy?
You do not have to like your boss if you are able to respect him/her. There doesn't appear to be much worthy of respect when you work for a mayor who suggests that if people don't like the way things are run in Prince George they should leave. Nor is there much to respect in a mayor who thinks the people of Prince George have no right to know how much of our money was spent on hiring an outside negotiator. Yes, our money, Mayor Green. Taxpayer money from the people who pay your salary.
You hire top management from out of town when you had people already working for the city who were more than competent and who could have been promoted in house. People who understood our town and had a vested interest in seeing it thrive. You appear to think that the city workers are just money grubbers out to gouge us. They are our friends and neighbours who use the same snow-covered streets as the rest of us, who own homes and pay taxes and over-inflated parking charges like the rest of us, and they know that aging infrastructure has to be replaced or at least maintained. Happy workers are hard workers and they probably have tried to tell you how to spend our money wisely, but no one was listening. Perhaps if you read Arthur Williams editorial you might learn something useful. One can only hope.
B.Hodgson
Prince George
