Year: 2011

This post will be basically a “why me” whine, don’t read if that bothers you…..I’m hoping to get it out of my system.

This post will contain discussion on unions.  Do not turn the comments into a political discussion on “those evil unions,” I don’t have the energy to deal right now, I’ll delete them.

The job my husband does, for the company he works for, requires him to belong to a union.  Their contract is up as of Midnight August 6th, tonight.

Now, neither of us was entirely thrilled about being part of a union when he got the job in the first place as its not really possible to tell from the outside whether the (private, not public) union in question is decently run or badly run, but the pay and position was a massive step up from where he was so we decided he’d take it.  Barely a year after he took the job the contact came up for renewal, and all things considered the renewal was relatively painless.  The union threatened to strike, but didn’t cause they reached an agreement without to much fuss or bother.

Fast forward 3 years.  We’ve known since January that this contract renewal was probably not going to go nearly as smoothly.  With general public opinion running against unions in general the company decided it was going to stand its ground, and started issuing proclamations as early as January as to what it was going to do in the coming year, regardless of the union stance on those things.

We started setting aside some extra money, basically the puppy was our only big splurge, we’ve bought a couple new books, and a couple new games, and other than that most “extra” money (is there really such a thing when you own a house and have pets?) went into savings.  This has meant delaying several projects on the house that we’d planned to do this spring/summer.  It meant that the grand we had to spend on my root canal and crown after I broke a tooth hurt.  It meant when Apollo turned out to be a much more social dog than is usual for the breed, and his breeder recommended we consider getting a 2nd dog as a companion for him to help with some of his issues (and then offered us a 2yr old bitch that had been just returned to her due to the owner’s health, at no cost to us other than transportation), it was something that we couldn’t even consider.  And when just in the last two weeks I had the opportunity to possibly consider 3 other dogs (from three different sources, all either rescues, or otherwise in need of a “forever home” asap) as possible companions for him I had to close my eyes and explain that I couldn’t seriously consider it till we knew what was going on with my husband’s job.

Now unless they end up striking for an extreme length of time we’re not in any danger of loosing the house, though if they end up striking for more than a week my husband already has a temp position lined up to supplement our savings.  My job is not capable of supporting us alone, though its possible I could pick up a 2nd job if needed (I’ve done the two job thing before though, it sucks and if I can avoid it I’d prefer too), but managing such a schedule around the puppy’s needs would be a bit problematic.  It does mean that my application for a pistol license is going on hold till further notice.  That $100 isn’t much, but in the event of the extreme side of things it’ll pay for a couple weeks of groceries, or several weeks of animal food.  And even if it had already been spent spending the money on a gun would be out of the question.

The union has made it clear it plans to strike, but can still call of off any time between now and midnight, so maybe I’m over reacting, but maybe I’m not.  Arg.