Ever wonder what it's like to live in a place without garbage collection? You don't have to go to Africa to find out, just hop on a plane to Vancouver. Since mid-July, 7,000 Vancouver city workers, including librarians, park staff, lifeguards, development bureaucrats and, yes, garbage collectors, have been on strike.
It's hard to imagine such a broad and protracted strike in the U.S., but British Columbia is another beast. It has heavy union membership, labour-friendly governments, and strikes almost every summer. In the recent past, we've had grad student strikes, featuring the spectacle of TAs burning trash can fires and banging on pans in an attempt to interrupt classes. We've had transit strikes. We've even had nurse and teacher strikes, both of which are illegal at least in New Jersey.
The current strike was catalyzed in part by considerations for the 2010 Winter Olympics, which will be hosted here. Essentially, the city offered the union a contract that extends only until the day after the Olympics end. Angrily decrying this offer as a means to silence labor unrest just until the world's sports fans leave Vancouver, the union rejected the city's offer, and insisted that their contract either expire before the Olympics or significantly after it. Neither side budged, and now here we are, eight weeks in. Several nearby cities, such as Richmond and North Vancouver, had similar city strikes, but were all able to resolve them relatively easily. Vancouver was supposed to use these settlements as a model for reconciliation, but, for whatever reason, this has not worked.
I'm surprised it hasn't received much international news coverage, but I suppose these things are somewhat routine for BC. Truly, it's no longer in the Vancouver news too often either, because it is a dull and unchanging situation. I think the latest update is that the city is seeking mediation from the federal ministry of labour.
How does the strike effect us Vancouverans? The city has lost millions in revenues from its pools and golf courses, which have been shut down throughout their most popular summer months. The closure of our libraries obviously restricts our access to knowledge. The strikers have lost millions in income. Any private construction project requiring a city permit has been put on hold, to the tune of, you guessed it, millions of Canadian dollars. And, as you might imagine, the garbage situation is not too good. The rat population is supposed to balloon, and the city's fruit flies are having a field day. Trash is scattered along Vancouver's normally pristine city streets. Lacking a car, I usually have to sneak my apartment's trash into a private dumpster behind a bar a couple blocks away. It's surprisingly humiliating, sneaking one's trash around--I hope you appreciate the dignity modern sanitation affords you.
