Setting the table
Talking public-sector cuts at holiday dinner… and all the other festive events where your friends, family, and coworkers don’t want to hear it.
It’s that time of year again, and even if you’re not celebrating the holidays, you might have your fair share of invites to the typical gatherings that crop up mid-December: work parties, area council events and a whole host of other socials.
Which means there’s also a good chance you’re spending more time with more people who don’t always agree with each other. No one wants to face the dreaded family-meal-turned-heated-political-debate.
2020 will be no exception, and if anything, as an AUPE member, this could be the year that dishes up some of the most intense political conversations at the table. Ones that will find you demystifying a lot of Christmas tall tales. Tales about tax breaks for CEOs trickling down into jobs for the rest of us or the battling interests of public-sector workers and the “real” taxpaying Albertans.
You’ll be hearing them from the staunch anti-unionists. People that think it’s you versus the union, and instead of strangers online, these people will be coworkers, family, friends. They’ll be your fellow community members.
And if we can’t navigate these conversations together, none of us will be able to build this province into the home we need.
Below is a how-to for talking about the issues that matter most to you with the people who probably also care (and just don’t realize it yet). This way you can use your holiday parties to build bridges of solidarity…rather than burn them.
Dialogue! Don’t Debate
With so many myths circulating about Alberta’s public sector, the provincial economy and taxes today, chances are at least one or all will get served up at a holiday dinner this year. The best way to prepare is to anticipate the scenarios you could find yourself in. Here are a few to help get you started.
Scenario 1. Imagine this. You’re over at your parents place. You’re about to break bread when one of your relatives says:
“I don’t get how these government workers feel justified crying for a six per cent raise. I haven’t had a raise in ten years. I don’t even have a pension plan – you don’t see me complaining.”
How do you respond?
Don’t bite back with a long list of facts and numbers. For example: how long it’s been since GOA members secured a raise, or how many of them make below X dollars a year.
The best thing you can do is validate your relative’s experiences as a way to shed light on other workers’ realities. Try following these conversation sign-posts, or something similar, and there's a good chance you’ll get somewhere:
- Put the focus back on them. Reinforce what they were saying:
“Wow ten years is a long time with no raise. And no pension plan – that must be difficult nearing retirement and not knowing if you’ll have a stable source of income.” - At this point, your relative will probably elaborate on their hardships. This is a good time to ask them something like:
“In an ideal world, what would you change about your working conditions?” - Validate that they deserve these improvements. Top it all off by saying:
“I like to hear when workers are pushing for better compensation – it’s a reminder that we should all be treated better and be able to make ends meet for the work we do.”
Scenario 2. Here’s another myth you might hear over the holidays. Say you’re at an area council party and you hear a coworker say something like this:
“I don’t get these socialists who are against corporate tax cuts. If businesses are making big bucks, then they’re hiring more people and injecting money into the local economy – that’s just common sense.”
How do you respond?
Don’t make sweeping generalizations: “the rich don’t care about workers” or “our interests and their interests will never be the same.” Using us-and-them language too early in the conversation could make your co-worker dig in their heels and refuse to meet you on your level.
The key here is specificity (not busting trickle-down theory with more theory.)
Point to real-life examples that bust the myth of job-creating tax cuts:
- “I’m not sure big companies invest in the communities where they operate. Just a few years ago Canada’s corporate tax rate was close to its lowest, but the money Corporate Canada sent out to tax havens was at an all-time high.
- “Since the UCP introduced their corporate tax break I’ve only heard of big layoffs in both the public and private sectors.”
This sets the record straight without relying on ideology. In a situation like this it might even be worth it to pose a question to your coworkers that uses their own logic: “If big business’s main goal is make big bucks, don’t you think if it served a CEO’s bottom-line to layoff staff and cut their wages, they would?”
Scenario 3. Here’s another one. You’re at a holiday party with a group of friends. The conversation is light, people are having fun, but someone makes an off-hand comment:
“Yikes, the public-sector in Alberta is ballooning. When are we gonna stamp out the bureaucracy in this province?”
How do you respond? There’s a quick and dirty response and a follow-up that we’d recommend in this situation.
The quick-and-dirty: Some times less is more. Simply say, “I wish the UCP looked at management, but so far it’s been frontline workers taking the brunt of it.”
The follow-up: If the conversation continues, focus on your friend’s experiences with the public-sector, so they can use their firsthand knowledge (rather than anti-public-sector rhetoric) to judge it. You might say:
“I totally agree that a top-heavy public sector is not the way to go. Have you ever waited at the doctors for hours or been late for work because of uncleared roads? That's a sign we need more resources for our front-line workers.”
The better you know this person, the more specific you can be: “weren’t you saying your kids class has 50 students in there?” or “Remember when there was a mix-up with your lab tests, and you were so worried?”
Scenario 4. Another myth you’re likely to hear will revolve around the provincial deficit, which the UCP have both exaggerated and used to justify their job-killing budget.
“Alberta sure dug itself into a deep hole. Do you know how many oil and gas workers have lost their jobs in the last four years, and all the last government did was spend, spend, spend. Now unions want more government spending. What we need is to tighten our belts,” is something you might hear.
How do you respond?
Don’t feed the fake fire: there’s probably no point trying to explain Alberta’s debt is the lowest relative to the province’s GDP.
Odds are they already think any and all debt (regardless of size) is bad - so try to change their mind on this point. Here are some lines you can use:
- It’s true, a lot of workers are really suffering with the loss of so many jobs...across the board. But the answer isn’t to cut public services. That’s exactly what we need during hard economic times: income support, subsidized health services, affordable housing, mental health support. All of this is propped up with our collective pool of public resources.
- Don’t forget, public investment makes for more jobs. Losing nurses isn’t going to win a welder their job back. And letting private companies take over the public sector rarely does anything for workers, since these companies tend to put profit before people.
These are just some of the myths you might hear over the holidays. The point to remember is it really doesn't matter how anyone voted in April, we’re all Albertans, and we all stand to lose under this government's plans, unless we stand together.