The public,
especially public servants, will pay a big price for the last decade of recklessness.
It is fine
for the NAPE Head, Jerry Earle, to have reminded Anthony Germain on the CBC
Morning Show recently, "this is a government that said there would be no
layoffs". But such lamentations are meaningless when it is clear deficits
and the growing public debt are unsustainable. The howling will not have much
currency with fired workers, either.
Jerry Earle
has a big problem. And it is not just about a bloated public service. Issues,
other than labour costs, also affect labour.
The
operating deficit is one thing: but how many more will be pushed when the cost exceeds $10 billion,
$11 billion, $12 billion, or more, as many senior engineers believe it will?
Earle met
with Premier Ball last week. Do you think he thought to demand a full and
independent review of Muskrat, one that left no doubt it would contain a
thorough basis for decision-making, including the data necessary to determine
if it should be shut down?
Public
servants will be sacrificed, to be sure.
But, the
truth about Muskrat and the incompetence of Nalcor is already proven in the litany
of cost overruns, and other well-known problems; Jerry Earle doesn’t see that a
good many more public employees will become sacrificial lambs as they mount.
He, no
differently than CUPE President Wayne Lucas and NLTA President Jim Dinn, will
write words of protest and derision as the health care and education systems are
torn apart.
But for
them, like the small business people in St. John’s, too, who are just now awakening
to the myopia of municipal minds, fiscal crisis was never once given a moment’s
forethought.
Union
leaders have mandates to protect their membership from potentially harmful public
policy. Indeed, one can think of few organizations with a mandate as singular
or as well-financed to assess those perils as NAPE, CUPE, and NLTA.
Fifty cents
of every dollar saved, when the government wields the ax, will represent fired
workers, many with families.
A real
leader would have been ready to present to Dwight Ball the terms of the Muskrat
Review. He would have made it clear to the Premier he will be dissatisfied until
the reviewing authority meets the Union’s satisfaction. He might have reminded
the Premier NAPE has political power and is willing to use it. He might have
used the opportunity to demonstrate that power can be calibrated to exceed rhetoric.
It is too
late for Jerry Earle to prevent many of the firings that will occur, but he can
insert himself in the decision-making process in a way that ensures the cuts
are not misplaced; that any money saved is not wasted on what is very likely a
sink-hole.
But, as the
incomplete is the EY terms of reference confirms, Jerry is capable only of siding with Siobhan Coady; the latest in a line of shallow Natural Resources Ministers content to be Nalcor supplicants.
I am tired
of the Jerry Earles. They are found not just in Unions, but at the Board of
Trade, at the University, and in the professions, too. They are all too busy
having breakfast to think about lunch.
I have a
problem with people being pushed out the front door, as Nalcor’s Ed Martin
heads out the back exit, not with what’s left of the Treasury, but the balance of our borrowing capacity.
I have a
problem offering opinions to government under the façade of public engagement,
on ways to resolve the crisis, when I know Nalcor will be allowed to squander savings
from real people, their lives thrown in disarray.
All that is
heard is an impotent and hollow NAPE President commenting: 'Dwight Ball will be
going back on his election promises, if he conducts a lay-off'; as if that kind
of comment registers on either the meek or the frightened, as Dwight Ball
certainly is.
Earle vowed
to be “more assertive” in displacing Carol Furlong as NAPE President, but he seems
unaware that it is too late when the pink slips are distributed.
Carol
Furlong kept silent as Cathy Dunderdale skewered an in-depth and rational
review of the Muskrat Falls project.
Furlong, the
CUPE and NLTA leadership, too, gave no help to the “naysayers” who advanced a
compelling case that Nalcor had contrived
the “business case” for the project.
The warnings,
even then, spoke to the threat of cost overruns which threatened the viability
of far better conceived projects throughout the world.
But the union
leadership remained mute, unwilling to challenge the Dunderdale Government, or consider
the consequences, if the “naysayers” were right.
Jerry Earle
was never far removed from Carol Furlong, having acted as NAPE’s Chief
Negotiator.
Like Furlong,
he could only see the small picture of the next pay hike; the larger one
depicting irrational exuberance, outright megalomania, deceit, and who would
have to pay for the misdeeds to which these things gave birth, eluded him.
Now, Jerry
Earle is President of NAPE. “Assertive”,
for him, is an articulation of the same old rhetoric except, in the current
environment carrying less punch, if it ever carried any.
Earle will
preside over the unceremonious firing of a good many public servants, just as Wayne
Lucas and Jim Dinn will act surprised as CUPE and NLTA memberships face, not
just cuts, but the greatest challenge in the history of the local union movement.
Public
sector employees need to know their hapless leadership allowed delusion, as
much as complacency, to prevail over their fundamental interests.
Jerry Earle will
dither as his members write cheques to the dozens of individually owned
corporations which protect the tax status of the $300,000-$500,000 paid each of
the project management team.
He will
watch as the price of Muskrat rises every year.
Jerry will wave
“Good-Bye” as public servants are given the door.
They will
say: There goes Jerry. Being assertive.