informing us of all our former work-mates and acquaintances no longer among us.
Now, it's a one-page two-sided begging effort for a worthy cause unrelated to anything relevant to our former shared working experiences at the old Megawatt Manufacturing and Union Busting Consortium, better known as B.C. Hydro.
In this one, we're asked for fifty dollars for a book telling us the story of the developments on our two main rivers devoted to hydro-electric projects here,
which many of us were personally involved with as these were first built and placed in operation. There's a previous book costing $35 called 'Gaslights to Gigawatts' covering this same material plus earlier history of the coming of electricity (and the coming of me) to British Columbia, in which I made a couple of brief contributions. So why would I buy another one with less coverage in it?
I worked at the original Peace River Project and also at the construction site as the first of the big Columbia River dams were built, so I don't need the book.
"Been there and done that." Ain't going back!
B.C. Hydro pushing almost a thousand of us into early retirement in 1988 left
me on a poverty line pension ten years short of 65 and the government's pension, and thus losing out on both ten years wages and ten years contributions to the Canada Pension Plan, and the health care plan premiums they promised to pay on my behalf as a condition of that special deal they've unloaded onto the main provincial government, but they haven't added that value onto my pension, even though it is money I am owed because of their "carved in stone" deal at the time we signed on the dotted line to accept early retirement. They can't find me when they owe me something like the fifty bucks a month they no longer contribute on my behalf to the provincial medical services plan, but they can find me instantly whenever they have a fund-raising drive and want donations. I could tell you what I think of that, but if I did, then Google would probably terminate my blogging privileges for excessive profanity.
B.C. Hydro has never seemed to understand that its workers are not only union members ( or were back in my day) but also its consumers and taxpayers and voters involved in choosing the provincial government from which it takes its directions. In my time, there was always a war going on between the unionized blue-collar workers who kept the lights on and the white-collar supervisory staff who barked the orders and presented their ample butts to us for the obligatory butt-smooching. If we didn't play that game, we were told that God would get us for that, and so would they. Some of us were not amused. And you won't read the gruesome details of any of that in those fifty-dollars-a-slice books they are flogging to collect donations for the Children's Hospital. But you should, because that's an integral part and parcel of our B.C. Hydro history, without which the story is far from complete.
I should add here that I've been asked why our Hydro rates are so high, and one of the answers would have to include the fact that during all of my experience working there, we usually had about three Chiefs for every Indian, ostensibly so that some of them could immediately step up to the control boards or grab a tool pouch to fix something in the unhappy event that we wage-slaves walked out on strike. And whenever we did, it usually took weeks to get things back to normal after all that temporary supervisory replacement help had fumbled its way through until we returned to work. This put a definite strain on all that obligatory butt-smooching. Or as I impetuously explained to one supervisor, "I'd love to kiss your ass, Chief, but frankly I'm having a problem with all that, because I can't figure out where to start - from here it looks like you're all ass!" He replied, "God's going to get you for that!" And I said, "He already has - I'm here, I'm trying to carry the bows and arrows for three of you Chiefs, and still keep the lights on in my spare time. How could it get any worse?"
Well said Ray...
ReplyDeleteI believe I now understand why I like you and I like reading your blog...
Whatever you do...
Whatever you try...
Whatever your comments are...
I know that you give them 100 percent of yourself...
@ Uncle Ron -
ReplyDeleteThank You, Sir!
I've never believed in going only halfway while alienating myself from a source of income, especially when that income had some world-class assholes attached to it, all barking loudly for attention.
The reason I got lumped in with all those rabid unionists our Hydro wanted to be rid of wasn't because I was one of those unionists. On the contrary, I was also on their own shit list because I didn't like their game either. I was included on Hydro's list because I'm a manic-depressive and they'd rather flush those down the drain than offer any special considerations to our painfully-obvious afflictions. By their own admission, I was one of the best control-room operators they had, but I had too much baggage in the form of mood swings and temper tantrums for them to fit me in with their so-called 'normal' employees, so I had to go.
One supervisor of the big downtown
operations crew did say, however, that if he had six more like me on the switching crew, he could happily do without the other 18, except when I "lost it" because I'd gone off my meds. But all's well that ends well, and I'm well rid of that whole problem. Time marches on, trampling everything underfoot.
Here Here...
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