A Message to the Picketers

This message is aimed at all the AUPE picketers outside Artspace, not just the striking SAIL employees, since there are so very few employees out there.

It has now been 6 months since the strike began. 

As I listen to your "celebrations" outside our home, hear you verbally abuse some of our members and gossip about others behind their backs while lounging under our balconies, so many thoughts and questions come to mind.

Like so many others, I wonder why you are here.  Oh, yes, I see your signs, but they don't answer the question at all.  Yes, I hear you yelling your accusations about SAIL, but I have asked the questions and gotten the answers.  Your accusations sound increasingly desperate in attempting to slander SAIL to justify your presence.

I wonder if any of you, sitting in your camp chairs, obsessing with your phones and gossiping, have grasped the magnitude of just how much damage you have done.

No, I don't mean the damage you've done to our Artspace members.  We can tell, by your contemptuous laughter, that you don't care that you have caused people to be hospitalized.  In fact, you seem quite proud of it.

No.  I mean the damage you have done to yourselves.

Do you truly not understand this?

The first error was made from the beginning.  Normally, strikers picket offices, factories or storefronts; the physical location of their employer.  But you never did that.  No.  As bad as it would have been to target a non-profit, volunteer run company, that is not what you did.

Instead, you went after the very people it was your job to care for, and everyone around them.  To draw a comparison, it's as if you worked at a furnace cleaning company and, when on strike, decided to picket the homes of customers whose furnaces you'd cleaned - plus their next door neighbors, plus everyone else on the block, plus anyone who visited their homes, most of whom have never done business with your employer - rather than the company itself.  It's completely illogical and counterproductive.  How did you ever think that this would get you any support?

That, however, is not the worst of it.

The worst of it was how you chose to behave on the picket line.

You chose to not only picket the homes of people you knew had no control over funding, but you chose to do it in a most regressive and vile manner.  It was not enough for you to come out and walk around with signs.  No.  You chose to harass, yell, insult, swear and threaten people.  Even now, do you think we can't hear you as you laugh at us?  As you talk about us with such anger, hatred and contempt?  You're right in front of our homes.  You're right under our balconies.  You're right outside our windows.  We can hear you.  We can see you. 

For so long, you have tried to make this about dignity and respect, but your behavior has shown this to be a lie. 

It's about money.  That much is obvious.  If it were really about dignity and respect, you would have behaved in a dignified and respectful manner.

I ask you this.  After all this time, have you not yet realized that you have wasted 6 months of your lives?  No; not just wasted.  It's 6 months of your own actions damaging your own selves.

Have you not realized that no amount of money will win back what you've lost by doing what you've done?

No amount of money will regain you the integrity you lost by going after some of the most vulnerable people, in their own homes.

No amount of money will give you the respect you lost when you chose to go after the people you used to provide care for.  Their friends.  Their family.  Their neighbors.

No amount of money will repair the damage you have done to your own reputations, through your behaviour outside our homes.

You have also damaged the reputation of every AUPE member, because what you have done has been done in the name of your union.

You have also damaged the reputation of all other unions, because what you have done have become representative of all picketer behavior.

You can try and shift the blame to somewhere else all you want, but the only ones responsible for this damage is yourselves.  You can try and convince yourself that this is all part of some noble cause, but your own actions have shown the opposite.  There is nothing noble about anything you have done outside our homes. 

There is nothing you can accomplish by being here.  There never was.  You've gone after the wrong people and, in the process, destroyed any positive thing you could have gained, had you only chosen to at least behave in a dignified and humane manner. 

Every time you come out here, you serve only to destroy your own reputation, that much more. Every time you come out here, more of your personal integrity is lost.  Every time you come out here, the more you reflect negatively on the reputation of your fellow union members.  Every time you come out here, you serve only to cause more harm to yourselves.

Have you not yet figured that out? 

Is the money worth it?