The Pallister government is the worst part of my life. 🧵

The year I graduated, they axed the tuition rebate, stealing $15,000 from me.

When I found a job, they cut education funding each year adjusting for inflation, which directly caused my job to become itinerant. 1/12
Being an itinerant teacher blows. It's twice the work for the same pay. You manage two programs instead of one, and you wind up feeling like an outsider looking in to two schools rather than a valued part of a single one. Your ability to form effective relationships suffers. 2/12
When they closed ERs in Winnipeg, it nearly killed my dad during his heart attack. His ambulance would have had a short trip to the ER at 7 Oaks Hospital, but instead it was routed to HSC. If he had died, his death would have been ideologically motivated murder by the PCs. 3/12
They then demanded I forgo cost of living raises as part of Bill 28, stealing $15,000 over 30 years and blunting my pension. When the courts told them to pound sand, they appealed and illegally told my employer they couldn't give us a contract without Cabinet's permission. 4/12
For the record, we're now 3 years without a contract. A 4th is looming. I digress.

During COVID, they had to be bullied into mandating masks for some students and intentionally obfuscated school outbreaks by manipulating definitions and declining to publicize outbreaks. 5/12
When vaccines were deployed, they told essential workers and teachers to wait their turn despite overcrowded classrooms and inadequate ventilation as a result of years of underfunding. Taken on its own, this is callous. With context, it starts to look like class warfare. 6/12
When they announced they would reform education, they cribbed notes from right wing US lobby groups and codified in law illegal infringments on my right to strike and my right to a free and fair arbitration process, which is how teachers in MB resolve labour disputes. 7/12
Now Pallister wants a thumb on the arbitration scale by forcing adjudicators to consider "government's ability to pay" when negotiating teacher contracts. This means the province can blow the wad on cuts for the rich, then play the pauper when it's time to pay teachers. 8/12
Today, Pallister let me know that he thinks it's great that education is underfunded because it offers an opportunity for teachers to dig into their own pockets to make up the shortfall, as though it's my responsibility to end child poverty and fund Manitoban education. 9/12
Today, he also let me know that he intends to make my landlord richer by phasing out the Education Property Tax Credit. My rent will stay the same (or increase if my landlord replaces some doorknobs), and I'll lose the paltry $700 tax break I get each year as a renter. 10/12
If Pallister and his collaborators were ejected from office tomorrow, I would be significantly better off from every standpoint I can consider, and I know there are literally hundreds of thousands of Manitobans who can say the same even more truthfully than I can. 11/12
Something has to give. We can't wait two more years. The best time to stop Pallister's wholesale robbery of Manitoba was five years ago. The second best time is now. Hunger strikes. Protests. Blockades. Pickets. #GeneralStrike.

I'll see you all there this summer. 12/12
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