Lots of good replies here but I’ll respond to this one. It’s pretty crazy that striking is illegal for federal workers. I never considered Canada a bastion of worker solidarity but our public sector unions are very strong.

In Ontario a few years back, the provincial government said it was going to pre-emptively introduce legislation to prevent one of the public sector unions from striking. The union responded by saying they would do it anyways. This very quickly spiraled into a threat of a general strike not just from the other public sector unions but also private sector unions. The legislation was rolled back after just one week (Decent write-up here).

So it is surprising for me to hear how the public sector unions in the states are so weak and I’m amazed that such blatantly anti-worker legislation was able to be introduced. In Canada, strong unions and stability of work are some major selling points of government employment and I guess I’m surprised government employees aren’t standing up for those benefits. Is there a perception that this will all just blow over in four years and if they can weather the storm, it will work out in the end?