I’ve got a jar too, but it definitely doesn’t fill up at anywhere near the rate yours does. My pay is direct deposited and every place I shop will take a card. I could either go to the ATM to get cash, use it to pay for things when I don’t have to, collect these small amounts of change, and take it all back to the bank eventually, or I could just not bother with any of these things.

I almost never have cash on me. It’s debit or credit always. Here’s my thought process on paying with cash. If I buy something that costs, say $4.55, and I hand over a $5 dollar bill, that item has really just cost me $5.00 because what am I realistically going to do with the 45 cents in change?

Anything I can come up with would be speculative, but here’s my take:

• The talk around the picket line was that the bargaining group for the Treasury Board was really good at playing hardball, and the union may have felt they weren’t going to get a better deal.
• The strike pay battle chest was rumoured to be about $40-$45 million nationally, which sounds like a lot, but at $75 per member, per day, it’s exhausted in 1-2 weeks depending on how many people actually hit the picket line. At eight days, (for the TB group at least), I could see the union wanting to start wrapping things up.
• The ratification vote required that you either vote to ratify or vote to not ratify and go back on strike. People may not have necessarily liked the deal, but there were likely many not prepared to give the union another strike mandate.
• The deal includes the pensionable bonus plus near two years of retroactive salary increases. That’s money in peoples’ now (or in the coming months at least). People are hurting these days, and that sounds a lot better than a mythical percentage point or two additional raise maybe 6-12 months further down the line.

If the union had just taken the deal offered before the strike I probably would have begrudgingly voted to ratify it and I would be far less bitter than I am now. I have become far less trusting of the union, who has tried to tell the membership that this is a great deal and it was all worth it. I know people aren’t happy, but most people jusy want this over.

Hopefully negotiations for the next agreement don’t get as far as a strike vote because I’m far less likely to support a mandate. Thanks for my leave without pay PSAC.