Bright Bus Stickers
I’m rather irritated. Three times each week, I travel out to Laval to give English courses. Over the past few weeks, I’ve noticed the pressure tactics being used by the employee’s union, and it’s quite offputting. First there were the bright orange stickers plastered all over every bus. (Who has to clean that off?) “No metro in Laval unless an agreement is reached”. Then after the announcement of the new metro stations opening April 28th in Laval, the stickers were changed, “It’s Urgent to have a contract in April”. (I know I should have taken pictures) Each time I travel out to Laval, I have to think about what I will do if a strike occurs. I will have no means of getting to work, and in my business, if I don’t work, I don’t get paid. And this is why I’m irritated. I have no control over the situation, and yet I stand to lose the most from a work stoppage. Thankfully I wasn’t teaching in Laval this week when they took a two hour break, um, safety check. Uh huh. I am not anti-union but I don’t believe that workers should be permitted to stop public transportation. It is essential in keeping the city running. The last time the STM went on strike for 5 days, I lost five hundred bucks. I was reimbursed $5 on my next metro pass purchase. The sad thing is, my final recourse will be to buy a car. And then I’ll join the millions of others clogging the roads of our fair city. Did I mention I’m irritated?
I understand your frustration more than most, since I don’t have a driver’s license. That being said, the best way to ensure that a strike doesn’t happen is to support the union; otherwise, the employer will use public anger as justification to stall negotiations.
As for who will clean up the stickers, in this case they are other unionized employees who are committed to the principle of solidarity, and who would probably take stickers over vomit any day. Wouldn’t you? ;-)
Public transportation is an essential service and they should not be allowed to strike. Holding the public hostage is not the solution. These people get paid a fair wage. They should think about those that make minimum wage and have to take the bus to get to work just to earn $8 an hour compared to their $20+.
Um, and just how do you suppose they got that fair wage? (Grins.)
From what I understand, the drivers’ union is asking for a 12% total pay increase, or approximately 3% per contract year. For someone making the grand sum of $20 per hour, that works out to an annual pay raise of 60 cents, or 20 cents more than the rise in the cost of living.
Given how essential they are to the life of a city, I’d say that bus drivers are worth at least that much. Of course, YMMV.
That’s true, Vila, but you have to admit that public transit strikes disproportionately hurt the poorest and most vulnerable members of society. Captive transit users are generally the poorest commuters and they often have less job security. At best, a transit strike costs them money. At worst, it will cost them their job.
Transit strikes make no sense because they place the burden to respond on the public, not the transit company. Strikes actually save transit companies money because they no longer have to pay employee salaries, fuel costs, etc. which more than makes up for any loss in revenue. You could said that it’s the public’s duty to pressure the government/transit company to resume negotiations, but I think that this is unfair to those members of the public who are economically hurt by the strike. It’s absurd that workers with complete job security and $20/hr. wage expect $8/hr., non-unionized workers to do their dirty work for them.
Strikes work best in the private sector. Some public services are just too important to mess with. There’s a reason that firefighters no longer have the right to strike: last time they did, arsonists torched dozens of buildings in the city’s poorest neighbourhoods.
I believe that there is a legitimate discussion to be had about whether or not public transit constitutes am essential service, and I don’t dispute that the right to strike of certain employee groups (e.g. firefighters, ER nurses, police) is outweighed by the life-and-death nature of the services they provide.
However, you’ll understand if I quibble with you about your blanket characterization of minimum wage earners. My mother worked as a cleaning lady for minimum wage for several years, and, not being able to afford day care, she often brought me to work with her in the evenings. Despite her income level, she instilled in me an appreciation of collective bargaining as a basic legal right, and she never once complained about the inconvenience of strikes.
The thing is, absolutely everything affects minimum wage earners disproportionately: every hydro increase, every transit fare hike, every real estate surge, to say nothing of the cost of computers or internet access. And yet, we would never think to demand that laws be changed to acknowledge the plight of the poor in these other regards. You’ll concede that there’s a contradiction in there somewhere.
In any case, I hope that readers understand that low-income earners have the same diversity of opinions on these matters that other groups do. Unfortunately, they don’t tend to be very well-represented in the blogosphere, so my two cents will have to suffice. (Grins.)