CROSSINGS

Some of you might find this interesting but I technically have been crossing a picket line to go to work for many, many weeks now. I work in the same building that serves as the head office for Rocky Mountaineer, a company that runs trains to popular destinations. Since the end of June, the company has locked out their onboard train attendant employees. Their story can be found here.

Anyways, the locked out workers have been picketing in front of the building on the sidewalk for a long time now. The company has hired extra security to keep an eye out on the picketers. I have not witnessed anything dramatic happen. The picketers don’t hassle any of the people coming and going from the building. They seem quite respectful, at least to me. Some deliveries have been affected though. A few courier companies with unionized workers have refused to cross the picket line, so alternate arrangements have to be found in those cases.

It is somewhat amusing (if you can find amusement in people not being able to work and get paid) that there is a picket line in front of a video game studio. My industry will probably never been unionized. It just wouldn’t work. There are times and I’m not saying every studio does it, but sometimes studios press their employees to work a bit harder during crunch time to get the game done. With a unionized environment, either crunch wouldn’t happen or it would cost the company a lot of money. The game would then take an eon to finish or it would be prohibitively expensive to make.

I hope it works out for everyone in the end.

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