I’m bluffing!

I’ve been tinkering with my writing process again, or maybe it’s more accurate to say I’m continuing to work on how I work. If I wanted to make it sound more impressive, I’d say that I was continuing to refine my creative methodology to maximize the innovative potential as I establish best practices. I’ve spent too much time exposed to business meetings, I suspect.

So, to catch everyone up to speed, here’s a snapshot of what I have in place so far. I use a giant whiteboard as a workspace, a place to park ideas/plot notes/bits of dialogue, and when it’s full it…stays full, I guess. Anyway, it did, until I had a revelation about the uselessness of a whiteboard full of disjointed ideas from several different phases of the project. Some of those notes were incredibly outdated, and the actual plot had left those notes abandoned in a corn field as it drove away laughing. So, I transcribed the notes with pen and paper, and wiped the board clean. In the process of copying and erasing, I was actively thinking about the story (the sequel to WitchKids, if you were wondering), and I resolved a few of the plot elements that were bothering me. I’m very glad that I could work out a solution to these rough patches, because enough of them had accumulated that I was having real trouble writing the story and enjoying it despite the rough spots.  After the board was cleared, I picked up the ol’ dry erase marker, and I wrote out the story synopsis, and a few more rough spots were smoothed out.

Yes, I am going to explain the picture above. Geez, you’re impatient. As I stood in front of the refilled whiteboard today, I prepared myself to move on to the next step, until I realized that I didn’t know what that step was. Come to think of it, I didn’t really know what the previous step as going to be until I stumbled into it, and that’s how the writing process has been for me from the start. Sure, there are hundreds of how-to books on creative writing, but in the end the process you use is entirely self-created. The real plan you have to fully adopt is:

Step 1) look into the chaos of the unplanned future

Step 2) will yourself into the chaos to shape something out of it.

Most of the new things that I’m working on now, whether it’s novel-writing, parenting, freelance writing, or political activity, are without clear roadmaps. there are a lot of opinions, and some of them are very helpful, but ultimately it’s still advice. I come up with an idea, and then I jury-rig some kind of plan to (hopefully) move towards making that idea real.  And when I’m sitting in a meeting of my riding association executive, or interviewing Marc Garneau for an article on space exploration that I hope I can sell to someone somewhere, or trying to manage dinner at a restaurant with just my 3-year-old and myself for the first time, I can’t help but feel like that confused dog up there in the picture. Who put me in charge of stuff? I have no idea what I’m doing. Oh well, better keep faking it until I make something interesting happen.

Labour Disputes and Government Intervention

The labour dispute between Electro-Motive and its workers is gathering  a lot of attention (as it should) and a lot of sympathetic political attention. But what are the actual options available, and what are the repercussions?

The offer put forward by the company, essentially demanding that the workers take a 50% pay cut, is unfair. The workers have a right to feel insulted by this offer, and they have the right to withhold their labour in protest. They are not an essential service, their work stoppage won’t have a direct effect on the public good, and so it’s a legal negotiation tactic.

On the other side, the company has the right to make such an offer. It’s ugly, unfair, and done with an understanding/threat to move the operations to a place where the workers will accept that salary (in this case, Muncie Indiana), but it’s not illegal.

And though it is politically expedient for each level of government to point the finger of blame at the others as being too lax with “government handouts”, every level of government has given some kind of incentive to Electro-motive to persuade them to stay in London and manufacture locomotives.  So what could they do now in response to the situation?

1) The federal government could nationalize the company, seizing it from the parent company Caterpillar and assume operational control of Electro-motive. This would create a trade and foreign relations crisis that would eclipse the dispute itself, and have serious long-term repercussions. It’s also probably illegal and possibly an act of war.

2) The federal or provincial government could introduce legislation to end the lockout, though the legality of  such legislation would make it a messy situation. And even if they forced both side back to the bargaining table and appointed an arbitrator to make a binding contract decision, the end result would still likely be the closure of Electro-motive and the relocation of the locomotive production to Indiana.

3) All 3 levels of government could stand by and let the dispute resolve itself.

The sad fact of the scenario is that there is no real chance that the workers will be able to keep their jobs at their current salaries. Direct government intervention right now isn’t legitimately possible, and they all know that. Their hand-wringing and visits to the picket line won’t change it.

The real failure in good governance is the lack of protective measures to limit the effect of situations like these. Each level of government is supposed to ensure that they collect enough revenue that they can adequately protect and assist people when required, but their unshakable faith in “lower corporate taxes=more jobs” equation leaves them with a restricted amount of revenue to use. The money they choose not to collect from corporations is the money needed to buffer the after-effects of corporate actions. The Federal Government should be ensuring that Employment Insurance is properly funded and can quickly assist those applying for help, the Provincial government should be ensuring that retraining programs have additional resources to call upon when a large workforce is suddenly thrown out of work, and the municipal government has to have the money available to fund the increase in support services that will be used. Instead, we have Federal and Provincial crowing about the lowered corporate tax rate, and the Mayor with his bunch of “Zeros” cutting funding obsessively to meet their campaign promise of no tax increases.

Though all levels of government make the argument that “business incentives=more jobs” the reality is that the only guaranteed way a government can create jobs is to hire more people for public service.  Every other incentive, whether a direct subsidy paid to a company, a tax expenditure that allows a company to avoid paying some of their taxes, or an across the board tax cut, cannot be directly tied to an increase in full-time, permanent jobs at a living wage.

Companies are amoral, driven by a simple mandate to increase revenue for the shareholders, with no consideration to the community or the employees. Any kind of enticement offered to them to lure them to the city is at best a temporary arrangement that will dissolve the moment a cheaper offer is made. Government’s role is to collect enough tax revenue from these companies so that the community can survive the effects of the company’s demise or exit, and to create smart international trade agreements that protect the Canadian people and Canadian businesses instead of the multinational corporations.

 

Buzzwords A’plenty!

A buzzword is a word that used to sell an item without really explaining anything about it. Buzzwords can have a very technical origin, and they might have meant something useful at some point, but by the time they are bandied about by the general populace, they’ve become vague placeholders that are meant to trigger emotion, not transmit information. Buzzwords are fantastic selling tools, because they shift the purchasing decision away from “what features does this item have and do I need those features?” to “do I feel good when I think about buying this product?”

The LPC Biennial convention was awash in buzzwords. It was buzzword-driven, really. Bold. New. Change. Modern. Status Quo. Grassroots. Insiders. These words carry connotations and implications, but they have little practical value. I can proclaim that I will boldly innovate my next meal, but that could easily mean that I’m going to put fried eggs on top of chocolate pudding. Bold doesn’t mean good, and status quo doesn’t mean bad.

Initially, I was perplexed by how the majority of attendees embraced these buzzwords without asking what practical application they would have. They grumbled about “the insiders and elite” of the party being the cause of all evil, but the two leading presidential candidates were as inside as you can possibly get. As I caught on to the sense and function of the convention, I understood what was happening. It wasn’t about logic and pragmatic decision-making, it was about the psychology of identity and trauma.

Pretend that the Liberal Party is an individual, and consider how traumatic the May 2nd loss was, especially after 6+ years of being insulted and belittled publicly. A person who suffered through an experience that challenged their ego and self-esteem so profoundly would still be affected by the event 8 months later. So the party came together to reassure itself and repair its ego.  The change that they all rallied for was to change from losers to winners. And can’t we all get behind change like that?

Another huge part of the convention was reconnecting the members to the leaders, past and present. Faith in the leaders (and by extrapolation in the party itself) had become absent and worn out, and the members needed a chance to feel appreciated and listened to. Re-forging that bond between troops and generals was incredibly important, and the event was designed to do that. It was fan service for the loyal party members.

I wouldn’t want you to think that I was somehow disillusioned or jaded by the convention process. The more that I interact with groups of people and watch how they direct their own lives, the more I understand how much power emotion has over our minds. I know that the psychological element of the convention was much more important than policy book-keeping and constitutional bickering. Politics is a competitive sport, and the party had to get the fans back on side and excited.

As a side-note, I’m currently of the opinion that all human interaction is some kind of sales pitch, and that’s not a bad thing. We share information and test our knowledge by trying to convince others to adopt our perspective. So don’t attach any stigma to the term “sales” because we’re all looking for a little buy-in.