Wizards vs Goblins

I’m going for the “Most Misleading Headline” championships. This one might be hard to top. But it’s a lot more interesting than “Analysis Of Canada Post Labour Dispute Settlement”

Over the past week there has been a problem at Canada Post in Saskatoon. An anti-abortion group, the Centre for Bio-ethical Reform, has been distributing flyers with graphic images of aborted fetuses, graphic enough that they couldn’t be published in the news article. Many of the letter carriers refused to distribute the flyers.

I procrastinated enough writing this that the dispute now has a resolution: the protesting posties don’t have to distribute the flyers so long as they can find compliant coworkers to cover for them. This is a pretty terrible temporary compromise that won’t hold up to legal scrutiny and will fall apart as soon as the patsy posties protest, so I’m going to show where they went wrong.

So to start off, I should note that I have a lot of sympathy for the protesters here. It sounds like these flyers are pretty awful, and I don’t disagree with their opinion at all. But they ought to deliver those flyers anyway.

That Canada Post needs to get those flyers delivered is pretty obvious. They are a public service, they can’t go engaging in viewpoint discrimination. We don’t need to jump off that slippery slope, not when _______(party you dislike) is __________(in power / about to seize power / not yet fully vanquished / only mostly dead).

The issue of individual employees, though, that’s a little trickier, and to really appreciate the problems with this solution, I need to look at what I’ve thought about contrasting cases in the past.

Pharmacists don’t want to distribute contraceptives? Well, good for them, but that’s the job, so they need to find some other job. Teachers don’t want to teach evolution? Well, good for them, but that’s the job, so they need to look elsewhere. Medical workers don’t want to get vaccinated? Well, good for them, but they need to find a job that doesn’t involve being around other people.

I’d hate to oppose these protestors just for the sake of consistency. A foolish consistency is, after all, the hobgoblin of little minds. But not all consistencies are foolish, and I think this one is grounded in some pretty sound principles. If you have a job dealing with the public, you need to fulfill the responsibilities of that position with all the public, not just those you personally agree with. You have to leave some of your personal opinions at home.

It goes the other way, too… workers shouldn’t need to accommodate the prejudices of their customers. That’s why when traveller requests a male customs agent, or a patient requests a white nurse, I think you should tell them to get stuffed.

So I just can’t agree with this deal that Canada Post has reached. It sucks when I have to oppose people on my side just on general principles, but sometimes those general principles are important. Sometimes the principle is a useful consistency, and the side you’re on is the foolish consistency. When you run into that scenario, well, it’s time to choose between what is right and what is easy.