Kathleen Petty: "I'm well, sir. How are you doing?"

Tony: "I'm not doing too badly at this point. The shock's a little bit over now. Initially, this morning at 9:00 o'clock two computer techies came into my office and told me they had to shut my computer down. That was the first official notice that I was being let go. Five minutes later my manager and the assistant deputy minister of the organizational development division of the Public Service Employee Relations Commission (PSERC) came in and gave me the bad news and my letter of termination."

Kathleen: "What did he say to you?"

Tony: "My assistant deputy minister is the person who actually did the speaking. She basically told me that my program, the public service awards, which I've been responsible for running for the last year, was being cancelled and my services were no longer required. I wasn't very polite because I don't particularly like my assistant deputy minister. I think she doesn't have any real people skills. Of course, this has been telegraphed to me for about two weeks that I was going to be terminated so I was mentally prepared to go. I don't like it. I'm not happy about it but I'm going to go on from here.

Kathleen: "This has been telegraphed to you for two weeks?"

Tony: "Well it's more like body language. The people in the know above me have more or less been treating me as a non-person for the last couple of weeks. They'll walk by you in the hall like you don't exist. I read between the lines really well and I read the writing on the wall really well, too. For me I've been mentally preparing myself to go for probably three or four days now but I was still quite devastated this morning."

Kathleen: "You've been downsized before?"

Tony: "Yes, I was downsized in 1984. I worked for a credit union here in Victoria that lost a bunch of money and fired all of its lenders on the same day so this is not the first time for me. It's the second."

Kathleen: "This is a new job for you. You had another job where you had something like 15 years seniority?"

Tony: "Yeah, I was a financial officer "6" in the Ministry of Finance, revenue division, and I was there for 15 years and I was literally in the highest possible union job you could have so I would have been on top of the bumping pile. On February 17 of last year I took this position on PSERC in management and I'm an easy target today. I basically have no security in that respect."

Kathleen: "So Tony, what do you do?"

Tony: "Right now I'm on the pile of redundant employees who are available to take positions from people who take early retirement and from people who take the buyout that's being offered. Right now, people are being offered three weeks pay for every year they've worked in government up to a maximum of 52 weeks to walk away from their job. So, if somebody walks away from a manager-level job in government, in theory I can take it. But I'm probably one of a thousand or two thousand managers who will be queued up for those jobs, so the competitions going to be fierce."

Kathleen: "I was talking to George Heyman (head of the B.C. Government Employees Union) just a short time ago and he seemed to indicate that what you're in for is an era of really massive confrontation between government and labour in British Columbia. Is that what you anticipate?"

Tony: "I can probably see that, although it's hard to say. I believe the unions are going to react very badly to what's happened today and I can certainly understand why. I mean, this is a pretty tragic situation for thousands of people to be losing their jobs. The people you see behind me are all union workers and I support them 100 per cent in their efforts to try to retain employment. But the fact of the matter is the government's decided that's what they're going to do. I think the die is cast for a lot of us."

Kathleen: "Tony, I'm going to have to leave it there but I wish you the very best. Thank you very much for talking with me."

Tony: "Thank you Kathleen. It's been a pleasure. And good luck to everybody in B.C."

P.S. On March 27, Tony was rehired by the government as an investigator with the Financial Institutions Commission, based in Vancouver. He commutes back to Victoria on alternate weekends and says his new job is great and fits his work background almost to a tee.