Nearly a month ago, TTC workers went on strike for the weekend. Mayor David Miller asked the provincial government to enact back-to-work legislation, which was unanimously approved by MPPs.
At the time, a wide range of Torontonians voiced their opinion that the TTC should be declared an essential service. This means TTC workers would not not allowed to strike and a contract would be negotiated between the parties by a mediator.
Now, with a little bit of time and space to contemplate this topic, we want to know what Spacing readers think: should the TTC be declared an essential service?
photo by Tanja Tiziana Burdi
17 comments
Of course it should. Many people depend on the ttc as their primary method of transportation.
Not as long as I’m paying taxes. There’s no “I” in “team”, but there sure the hell is a “massive increase in wages over what they would have gotten if they were allowed to strike, every single time they go to the negotiating table” in “essential service”.
If it’s declared an essential service, can we have 50% of its operating costs paid for by the provincial government again?
As much as I love public transit, I don’t think it should be essential. That status should be reserved for police/firemen/etc – services for there really *is* no alternative, and for which lives would be at risk if the workers striked.
Of course it’s not essential. It’s not even convenient.
Without the TTC, the Toronto that I love could not exist. It is not just the health of individuals — it is the health of the city. TTC is its lifeblood. It enables us to get from place to place. It enables us to live, and to work, and conduct commerce, and to have fun. TTC is paramount to our city’s existence. Of course it is essential.
If we are to increase transit’s modal share to a sustainable level, it needs to be absolutely, unquestionably reliable. It always needs to be there, with ample capacity, with ample frequency. It’s a bargain no matter how much we pay for it. So make my TTC essential.
I don’t think the TTC should be an essential service. It does not save lives like EMS. People won’t die because it’s not running.
At the same time, I don’t think we should live in a society where it’s acceptable to strike. They should do what most other people have to do if they don’t like their job – quit. We’re not living in an age where the TTC management is evil and wants to abuse their staff. From what I gather they’re rather proud of the work they do.
Many low income households who do not own cars (and/or cannot afford to get one) really do depend on the TTC to get to work and such.
The people who have a problem with making the TTC an essential service make me laugh… when the gov immediately legislates them back to work… we’re already treating them as an essential service… just without the convenience of ZERO strike time.
I think a compromise might be possible, where they may strike but *only* on say 72 hours notice. This gives companies a chance to arrange carpooling etc. A situation where transit employees can strand people, many of them teenagers, kilometres from their homes because they weren’t fortunate enough to catch a news broadcast is entirely unacceptable.
That said – WheelTrans should be made fully essential. People approved for WheelTrans can’t walk or bike or carpool (not many people have accessible cars) and often have trips that are unwise to defer. This was recognised in part by WheelTrans staying open for dialysis but I would simply make them essential.
All labour politics aside, I think the TTC needs to be an essential service simply because it is. It may not be for you or me, but I’ve talked to alot of people who would have missed school, might have lost jobs, missed important medical appointments etc., because those people did not have an alternative other than walking.
The reality is that as gas prices continue to rise (and they will) Toronto has to be navigable. For some of us biking, carpooling, walking etc., are possibilities – but for many Torontonians (because of age/health/distance/income ..) they simply aren’t viable options.
@Mike Haddad – but it was ATU113 and their hired gun Marilyn Churley that told us people would die (from smog and additional car crashes), and the taxpayer would sustain 12bn in losses including over 300m in health costs, without the TTC.
Out of their own website, ATU113 made the case for TTC being essential.
http://www.octa.on.ca/forum/viewmessages.cfm?Forum=20&Topic=1837
ANY service provided by any level of government is by definition essential. If you can identify a service being provided by the government that is not essential, they should not be providing it (or, it should be contracted out).
A big argument against declaring any service “essential” is that it tends to cost us more because arbitration tends to favour the union side of things. Besides the fact that this ignores that some of the time the union and management can actually negotiate a contract without the need for arbitration (just like sometimes a contract is negotiated for non-essential services without the need for a strike), this ignores one piece of reality: we essentially already have the “costs” of essential services without the benefit of no strikes.
The TTC’s union has the right to strike since the service is not declared “essential”. When they go on strike, the move to back-to-work legislation is quicker and quicker each time (if there is a next time, it wouldn’t surprise me if it is passed before the strike starts, given the trend). Back-to-work legislation forces them back to work and into arbitration – the SAME arbitration that we use as the excuse to NOT declare the service “essential” in the first place.
So, if we are paying the price for a “de-facto essential” service, why do we have to put up with the strikes?
Why does it have to be an all or nothing deal?
The union can be given a limited right to strike.
The province can declare work hour operations to be essential, while the union can shut down the system during evenings and weekends during a strike.
This way most people can still get to work and keep the economy going, and we don’t have to take away the TTC worker’s right to strike.
Calvin, I think your first paragraph makes a poor argument. The “essential service” designation really means “uninterrupted service”, which is obviously required of police, fire, ambulances, the power grid, etc. But there are all sorts of services provided by government for good reason that are interruptible: libraries, schools, almost any administrative function, etc. Permanently shutting these down would cause great harm, but a temporary shutdown for a strike is manageable.
That said, I do agree with your second point: any TTC strike in future won’t last long before legislation and arbitration, and both sides know it. Why not get this reflected in the law in advance? I’m not convinced it will be more expensive — everyone says it will be, but no one seems to have the data from other places or other jobs to back that assumption up.
i live in scarborough, my low-income family has no car, and my school and job are downtown. i missed two days of work because of the TTC strike. And while i do not resent their strike, i do resent that the plight of low-wage workers is invoked in the service of the argument for making the TTC an essential service. i resent that the downtown core has become so unaffordable and that so many low-income people have to live so far from their jobs; i resent that so many of those jobs are so awful that a person can get fired for missing a day or two due to a strike. i resent that dalton mcguinty has the gall to call the TTC “essential” while he perpetuates the funding model (or the utter lack thereof) put in place by mike fucking harris (i resent that harris exists, and that he ever did). i don’t see why my right to get to my shitty job needs to come at the expense of the very good job protections TTC workers have, one of which is the right to strike. and i think that people would derive greater benefit from the TTC if they stopped condemning the workers for striking, woke up, and tried holding the government accountable for starving the living shit out of vital public services. if there’s a better way to let that government off the hook than denying TTC workers the right to strike, i don’t know what it is.
“I don’t think the TTC should be an essential service. It does not save lives like EMS. People won’t die because it’s not running.”
Try telling that to the single mother who needs to get to work in order to feed her kids. Nevermind that this last strike was on the weekend, but what if the mother does work during the weekend?
Essential service indeed.