Now the teachers are back at work – they did not seem to get exactly what they wanted, but at least some of it. I understand that the nurses are going to be next. What about us seniors/pensioners?
Perhaps it’s time for the pensioners to go on strike!
From what? The only thing we can go on strike from is all the volunteering we do, such as perhaps baby sitting grandchildren… and all the other volunteering functions we perform.
I’m lucky that in all my working years I have never been put on the spot of having to go on strike; I think it is a bad (although sometimes perhaps necessary) way of trying to get what you want. Somehow it feels to me like a temper tantrum. Whenever I accepted a job, I accepted everything that went with it, as per the arrangement. If I didn’t like that anymore, for some reason or other, I would look for another job.
And now I’m on CPP and OAS, and they do not come with raises of more than a few cents most years, but prices keep on going up a lot more.
And I consider myself still one of the lucky ones, because some people get even less than I do, while most get more than me. It is, indeed, harder and harder to make ends meet (the ends keep on going further apart). I would not mind getting a part time job, but who is going to hire an 83-year-old with a mobility problem? Would TransLink have a job for me? Is that fellow there who gets more than half a million really worth more than 20 of me? At the grocery store and at the gas pump I have to pay the same prices as he does!
Yes, I am lucky, because I own my condo and only have to pay the monthly fees and whatever extras may crop up, but no ridiculously high rent. And I have a very small pension from the years I worked in Europe before immigrating here, but there are more and more things that I’m interested in that I have to drop because I just can’t afford to continue with them. Fortunately my location is such that the four places I regularly go to (church, gym, volunteering, grocery store) are only about two kilometres from home and further I just don’t go anywhere anymore. At zero per cent financing (over seven years) it was cheaper for me to buy a new car than to keep my previous one (over five years); my lack of mobility is such that I could not possibly go anywhere on foot, so my car is definitely not a luxury.
Hanny Kensington,
Chilliwack.
