A recent move by ICBC to seek essential services designation for the first time highlights a creeping trend in public sector bargaining: the equating of services that are convenient, important and necessary to the functioning of society over the long-term with those that are essential or critical to us over the shortterm.
What's essential is in the eye of the beholder.
There was a time not too long ago when "essential service" meant just that - usually involving life and death. You could count on the fingers of one hand who that might apply to - hospital staff, police and firefighters.
But as government coffers got squeezed, the definition of essential grew. These days, "essential" includes activities that are not just life or death, but those the public would find annoying or inconvenient to lose, those that would cost money or generally result in anyone being ticked off for more than a couple of days.
Once they're deemed essential - or there's even a request to consider that - workers have little ability to apply any pressure. Usually the government is happy to legislate a settlement - as postal workers, airline pilots, and teachers have all discovered.
Nobody likes to be inconvenienced. But our race to the bottom is surely hastened when filing an insurance claim, getting a report card or being able to travel at spring break is deemed equally critical as emergency surgery.
When everything is essential it erodes important workers' rights with an unnecessarily heavy hammer - and cheapens the definition of that word.
