One more thing out of the way

You know what is worse then leaving all of your friends and family and moving across the country, to an unknown place where nothing is familiar? Losing your job too. It sucks the big one. That is what happened to us. I haven't really posted much other then on twitter about this, and my tweets didn't come until weeks after the fact.


We moved here, and arrived on Monday. Dave worked a camp job and was flown in and out of the job site for 2 weeks at a time. I drove him to the airport Wednesday. Said goodbye and had a slight panic attack about how I was going to manage once his parents went home and I was there all alone with austin. Thursday afternoon I got the dreaded call from Dave. They have to lay off some people, we don't know yet who or when exactly.....


Let me interject here and say, Dave is part of a union. It isn't as simple as I'm moving here, lets go work. He has his membership in Ontario and was working in Alberta on a travel card. Being a travel card in the Alberta union puts him low man on the totem pole. He gets a job after all the Alberta union guys have their choice. If they don't want it, then the travel cards can take them. Totally makes sense. Since we were moving here Dave applied for his membership to be transfered to the Alberta union. Of course, it isn't as easy as saying, please transfer my membership. They have to make sure that he is dedicated to transferring and he's not going to jump ship within a few months. Again, makes sense. So there are so many hours he has to work here before they will transfer his membership. Then, there is a few weeks worth of paperwork then we're good to go. Now, back to my story......


So, Dave calls and says they are doing layoffs. He is a good worker, but they can't fire a union guy (person) and keep a travel card. Believe me, we had this issue with his last job. So he called back to let me know that afternoon, yes, he's on the chopping block. He has to go to work friday morning for a few hours then he's back on the plane home. There really isn't anything he can do as all the travel cards got laid off. It sucks. He has been going into the union hall every day they have calls in hopes that there are enough jobs and not enough union members to take them. So far, no dice.


I've been getting really frustrated and upset. What kind of Karma do we have to deserve this? I don't recall doing anything bad to anyone recently. I just don't get it. For those of you following me on twitter may remember this tweet

It sucks. It really does. Day after day of holding out hope when he leaves this house at 8am only to be home at 10:30 without a happy tone in his voice saying guess what honey, I got a job. I might cry when that actually happens.

Now, he knows he's getting close to the hours needed to transfer membership as he's been working here in Alberta for over a year now. However he just kept being told "nope, not there yet." It was getting frustrating. But, we had a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel, they've approved him for membership. The paperwork was started and we just had to wait a few more weeks.

We got the call today. That awesome phone call saying all the paperwork has been signed by the appropriate parties (aka the union in Ontario) and now he has to go sign it tomorrow. Such a big weight lifted off our shoulders. Not only does he now get job options above the travel cards, but he can be name hired. Meaning if someone likes his work they don't have to get a random guy from the hall to work, they can hire him instead. YAY!! Still, he doesn't have a job and he's heading into the union hall again tomorrow to wait and see if he can get one, but things are looking up a little bit and one more obstacle is out of the way.

We just keep taking it one day at a time, and the days turn into weeks and this saturday? It will be one month of him being off work. I don't know how much longer this will take but I'm hoping and praying that the light at the end of that tunnel gets off it's dimmer switch and starts burning at it's bright and sunny setting.