The Strike Stinks in a New Way

Up until now, I’ve not been affected a great deal by the strike by the Cana­dian Union of Pub­lic Employ­ees (or CUPE). Yes, the parks around town, includ­ing the one directly behind our build­ing, are look­ing pretty shabby. The Pub­lic Library and all of the branches in town have been closed for ages. On some of the warmer days of sum­mer, the trash that hadn’t been picked up did smell pretty bad, but our condo build­ing has pri­vate pickup. They had to put a lock on the room with the dump­sters, as peo­ple from out­side the com­plex had been sneak­ing in and leav­ing their trash there as well. While all of these lit­tle annoy­ances got me a lit­tle mad (and a lit­tle sad) as I’d shake my head in dis­be­lief, because the city of Van­cou­ver and the union just can’t seem to work out their dif­fer­ences the way every other city in the Lower Main­land has (even­tu­ally). Tonight, the sit­u­a­tion reached a new low.

Due to a brief stint as a music critic for The Geor­gia Straight, I got on the mail­ing lists for the Van­cou­ver Sym­phony Orches­tra. The VSO nor­mally per­forms at The Orpheum The­atre, a charm­ing, if a lit­tle dated (circa 1930s and 1970s, depend­ing on which part of the build­ing you are look­ing at) Con­cert Hall on Granville Street, well known to many peo­ple in the city. What those peo­ple may not know is the that the Orpheum is a Union hall.

In my In-Box, I read an email from the Press Office of the Van­cou­ver Sym­phony, con­sist­ing the following:

VSO Con­certs Affected by CUPE Strike

Van­cou­ver, BC – Announce­ments regard­ing upcom­ing VSO per­for­mances sched­uled for the Orpheum:

The Clas­si­cal Mys­tery Tour con­cert fea­tur­ing the music of the Bea­t­les with the VSO, orig­i­nally sched­uled for Wednes­day, Octo­ber 3^rd at the Orpheum has been can­celed. Ticket buy­ers are asked to call Tick­et­mas­ter or VSO Cus­tomer Ser­vice for details.

The Tea & Trum­pets con­cert of Thurs­day, Octo­ber 4^th at the Orpheum has been resched­uled to Thurs­day, April 10^th, 2pm, at the Orpheum. Octo­ber 4^th tick­ets will be hon­oured for the April 10^th date.

The VSO Pops con­certs of Fri­day & Sat­ur­day, Octo­ber 5^th & 6^th at the Orpheum have been can­celed. An announce­ment about pos­si­ble resched­ul­ing of these per­for­mances will be forth­com­ing. We urge ticket buy­ers to hold on to their Friday/Saturday tick­ets pend­ing an announce­ment of a pos­si­ble rescheduling.

Before and dur­ing the VSO’s Open­ing Week­end con­certs, the con­duct of CUPE mem­bers on picket lines at the Orpheum resulted in vio­lent and obstruc­tive behav­iour – some of which required police action to mit­i­gate – which, together with other con­duct of pick­eters, has led to the VSO being strongly con­cerned for the safety and wel­fare of our cus­tomers, musi­cians, admin­is­tra­tive staff, and volunteers.

Despite a deci­sion reached Wednes­day, Sep­tem­ber 27^th by the Labour Rela­tions Board, which issued an interim order grant­ing third party pick­et­ing relief at the stage door of the Orpheum The­atre, giv­ing the VSO the right under the Labour Code to con­duct busi­ness at the Orpheum The­atre, we believe that safety is of para­mount impor­tance – a belief that has led to the deci­sions made regard­ing the above concerts.

Admit­tedly, I wasn’t plan­ning to go to the Clas­si­cal Mys­tery Tour, The Tea & Trum­pets con­cert, or the Pops con­certs, but I still feel the sting of these can­cel­la­tions. Arts orga­ni­za­tions in cities (unless they have siz­able donors or gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies) usu­ally have a hard enough time mak­ing ends meet with­out hav­ing to can­cel their few money-making oper­a­tions, like Pops con­certs and other less hard-core art/music affairs. I do go to a far less pop­u­lar series of Con­tem­po­rary music con­certs that that VSO offers at the Round­house in Yale­town, and I wouldn’t be sur­prised if some of the bud­get for those events is par­tially under­writ­ten by the ticket sales from these concerts.

The strike (and who knows what kind of behav­iour the email was refer­ring to; I have no idea if patrons for the Symphony’s Open­ing Night were accosted, threat­ened or even assaulted by pick­eters) has hit yet another aspect of life in the city, and in doing so, has hit a bunch of new lows. A few days ago, I found out that the yearly ‘Ghost Train’, a charm­ing evening ride through Stan­ley Park, mostly for kids and their fam­i­lies was also canceled.

This is get­ting more and more ridicu­lous. I don’t even care whose fault it is, who’s intractable and who’s act­ing like a child; It’s time that the CUPE and the City set­tle already! Fin­ish it, people.