Making Sense Makes Good Sense

Rev. Gretta Vosper is a United Church minister who has won the right to continue to lead her congregation while preaching that there is no God. After the United Church dropped its case against her, she said, “It’s going to be wonderful. We’ll be out from underneath that heavy cloud. Now we’ll be able to really fly.”

Fly to where? To do what?

Even those who aren’t religious can see how contradictory it is to have an ordained minister of a Christian church who is an atheist. It’s like having a firefighter who sets fires and teaches others to be arsonists.

Within the field of labour relations, CLAC has been working against similarly contradictory positions in a number of areas. In BC, the NDP government has introduced community benefits agreements, which sound wonderful but in fact limit all public infrastructure projects to only NDP-friendly unions, who only make up 15 percent of the workforce.

How can projects benefit communities and underrepresented groups such as women and Indigenous people when they cut out 85 percent of the workforce, which includes women and Indigenous people?

In Ontario, CLAC has been pushing for over a decade to allow full-time firefighters to volunteer as firefighters within their communities. Firefighters are being fined and penalized by their full-time union for volunteering as firefighters on their time off.

Also in Ontario, CLAC has been pushing for dramatic reforms to long term healthcare as homes cut staff and hours when more care is drastically needed. When everyone recognizes that patients aren’t getting enough meaningful attention, how can homes be cutting back on staff?

Cognitive dissonance is the psychological term for the mental discomfort (psychological stress) experienced by someone who simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values.

An atheist minister. Community benefits that don’t benefit 85 percent of the community’s workforce. Firefighters who are not permitted to fight fires in their own communities. Fewer caregivers when more care is needed.

These are all good examples of cognitive dissonance. When goals conflict, they are bound to lead to strife, inefficiency, and failure.

“Trying to achieve both [conflicting] goals simultaneously undermines people’s ability to achieve either goal,” says Peter David Stroh, an expert in systems thinking. “Performance may decline because the pressure of competing expectations produces side-effects such as poor communication, reduced cooperation, and decreased productivity.”

For people to work effectively, they need to have clear goals to follow. Goals that make sense and do not compete with each other.