My prediction of a short weekend strike was based on a belief that both Mayor Miller and the union leadership needed one. Miller, and many of his staunchest council supporters are well known for their cozy relationships with the unions and union bosses who got them elected and keep them in office. TTC chair-twink Adam Giambrone is equally committed to every union, but especially the unions at his transit commission. The mayor and city council face a gamut of contract renewals this year, just as taxes are rising rapidly, services diminishing and the city infrastructure literally falling apart. A very generous and very expensive - well in excess of inflation - settlement was reached first with the firefighters union. It was a good start; everyone (well almost) loves firemen, err firefighters, and their union is not militant, so a quiet settlement well in advance of the contract expiry was easily finessed without public debate. The agreement set the precedent however for all the others unions, including the very militant police and transit unions. They would demand the firefighters settlement as a minimum and negotiate upwards from there. And the city would have no reason not to give it.
The benefit in a short strike for the mayor would be that he could appear to have been tough on the unions; that he had not given in. Everyone knew the provincial government would legislate an end to any strike and appoint an arbitrator who would take the heat off the mayor. The public, after the inconvenience and hardship of the strike would reluctantly accept the added expense. The union leadership could show the membership that they had taken the city to the wall and used all the tools at their disposal to get the best possible deal until the capitalist Liberals at Queen’s Park interfered in the collective bargaining process. Staging a strike on or near a weekend would minimise the hardship and allow the provincial government to process the back-to-work legislation everyone knew would come.
As the strike deadline approached and the union gave 48 hours notice that it would walk out on a Sunday night, my predicted scenario seemed to be playing out. Monday morning, transit users would wake up to a strike, the legislature would introduce and pass a bill to end the strike by Tuesday at the latest and everything would be back to normal by Wednesday. I didn’t see the essential services train coming.
As most readers will know, a tentative settlement was reached at the last moment and a strike averted for five days. It was extraordinarily generous and will require further increases in fares and taxes, but almost everyone sighed in relief that a crippling strike had been avoided. Then a union insurrection happened, or more accurately, five days were allowed to pass before the settlement was put to a vote to ensure the militants opposing the agreement as not-rich-enough would have time to rile up the membership. A solid ‘No“ vote ensued, the union walked out without notice and thousands of transit users were stranded at 11:30PM on a Friday night. Many were forced to walk for hours to get home, or spend half a week’s salary on a scarce taxi. Thousands more missed weekend jobs or cancelled weekend plans and the importance of public transit in a city of this size was made obvious. Transit is an essential service for health and safety reasons, as well as the economic well-being of the city.
Consider however, how things played out. Within 30 minutes of the beginning of the walkout, the mayor had announced he had asked the Premier for back-to-work legislation AND that he, the mayor was beginning to favour essential services legislation that would permanently remove the right to strike for transit workers. Within those same 30 minutes, the Premier had responded that, in an unprecedented move, he would recall the Legislature on Sunday afternoon to pass back to work legislation. The mayor’s puppy, Giambrone, agreed that essential services legislation may be an idea whose time has come. Friend-of-labour-unions New Democratic Party leader Howard Hampton pledged his support to put the trains back on the tracks before the weekend was over. This co-operative and concerted effort (transit operators were standing-by, in uniform, to resume services even before the legislature had voted unanimously to adopt the back-to-work bill) managed to stage and resolve a strike in 40 hours. This has to be some kind of record and the hardship, while no means insignificant for those who were trapped on Friday at midnight, was not felt by the majority of transit users. The city economy was not severely impacted on a weekend. The union is guaranteed, under labour law in Ontario, that the arbitrator will make an award at least as generous to the employees as the city’s last offer which formed the basis of the tentative agreement. Most importantly, the stage was set and emotions prepped for essential services legislation.
Planned or not, this is playing-out to the unions and mayor’s benefit. The city has initiated a study to review if it should ask for essential services designation for the transit service placing it on par with police, firefighting and ambulance services. With the mayor’s encouragement, I expect a positive recommendation from the study in which the labour aligned city council will concur and the provincial government will comply. The provincial government will be wary of the potential costs but will agree to the city’s request.
The chief argument against essential services designation is that it tends to higher costs resulting from arbitrated contract resolution. But transit in the city is already de facto an essential service. Provincial governments of every political persuasion, NDP, Liberal and Progressive Conservative alike, have ended (in one case precluded) transit strikes in Toronto in the past 35 years. No strike has been allowed to follow its course. Going into negotiations, the union and city alike know there will be an arbitrated resolution if they don’t reach an earlier settlement.
If, as I expect it will, the provincial government accedes to a city request for essential services legislation, pretty much everyone wins:
- city council can blame the costs of subsequent contracts on an arbitrator and demand the province increase the subsidy for public transit because the province made transit an essential service
- transit union leadership can get its members the same generous settlements police, ambulance workers and firefighters get without putting them through the financial stress of a strike. Union members no longer have to budget for a possible strike every three years or face the wrath of disgruntle riders
- the public can increase its dependency on transit with the threat of legal strikes eliminated. This is a good thing that reduces congestion and pollution, improves the air and other quality-of-life indicators and contributes to the economic health of the city
- there is little or no cost-increase because arbitrated contracts are already the norm.
Intended or not, and I am just cynical enough to consider that this may all have been planned (witness the 30 minute time period at 11:00PM on a Friday when all parties came together on a solution) this result probably is good public policy.
