Below is a repost of my Eye Weekly Psychogeography column that appeared last week. The TTC has, obviously, had a bad few weeks (worse than the US Democratic Party’s January, maybe). That’s no fun for them, but it’s good for the rest of us because it’s a perfect storm of complaint, anger, citizen reporting and an election year that has led to movement on issues that have been systemically ignored for years. Earlier in the week The Star’s “Fixer” was incredulous at Chair Adam Giambrone’s acknowledgment that customer service is a problem after earlier denials and just yesterday TTC general manager Gary Webster released a letter to employees regarding this heretofore elephant in the TTC’s boardroom.
It’s easy to be cynical and wonder “why now” — those of us who have been riding the TTC for a long time have all experienced routine events like drivers leaving a running bus or streetcar to get coffee, and certainly management did too. So, how to manage this perfect storm now that it’s blowing change all over the city? Can it be channeled into someplace not-angry and useful, with long term effect (that is, beyond this election cycle)? Perhaps, as I write below, a TTC Riders Union could fill that void. Responses to this column and the past week’s events-at-large have reinforced my call for an ideologically-free union (with no ties to either side of the political spectrum). On the right we’ve heard the usual tired calls to “crush the union” while the left shifts any blame from workers to either management or chronic funding problems (a problem, yes, but not an excuse for bad customer service and broken corporate culture). Both look at the TTC through ideological goggles and, as I write, a TTC Riders Union can’t do that in order to be successful.
Last year in this space I wrote about quitting my near-decade-long TTC metropass subscription. It was a difficult decision, but the routine anger and frustration I felt using the system was tarnishing my experience of Toronto. As expected, the rider rage is largely gone, because now I can abandon the streetcar stop anytime, as I haven’t prepaid for bad service. Now I walk directly to places two to four kilometres away, without any wait-and-see delay. This also is the first year I’ve continued to ride my bike into January (the warmish, desert-dry winter we’ve been having is, admittedly, helping). Once you start winter riding, it’s easy and it can be all done without looking like a fleece and GORE-TEX Mountain Equipment Co-op gear fetishist.
As I mentioned in that column, my living and doing most things roughly within the old city of Toronto boundaries makes this possible, a luxury a lot of Torontonians don’t have, so my escape from the TTC is not an option for many customers. One letter to the editor in response to that column suggested I was being irresponsible by abandoning the TTC, that I should have stayed and worked to make it better from the inside, as if there is some kind of altruism in submitting yourself to the bad machine for the greater good.
There is hope on the horizon though, and it isn’t Adam Giambrone’s “Blue Ribbon Panel” of experts looking at how the TTC can improve its customer relations. That’s a good thing, certainly, but we all have a hard crust of cynicism when it comes to change happening from inside at the TTC, a bureaucracy that some city hall insiders refer to as (with appropriate apologies to the disabled) the “most autistic of the city’s agencies.” TTC management has a habit of blaming riders for problems (whether subway delays or the removal of the “Walk Left — Stand Right” signs) and now, so does its union.
Last week we saw Toronto’s collective rider rage find a rare visible target: that poor fellow at McCowan Station who got caught sleeping on the job by somebody with a camera. It’s a bad thing to do on the job, yes, but he, perhaps undeservedly, became the target at whom Torontonians could finally direct their pent-up frustration with a system that doesn’t respond to complaints particularly well. A statement from Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 113’s president, Bob Kinnear, chastised the picture-taker for not checking to see if the employee was all right (he didn’t say anything about the fare collectors who post hand-written “no-knocking” signs on their windows, but when spinning a story, subtleties often get left out). You, dear riders, are the problem again.
The real hope for customers is coming from the outside: last year a new TTC Riders Union was formed and, while it’s just in its infancy, it has the potential of uniting all riders and focusing their general rage somewhere productive, giving riders a feeling that they have a little bit of power. Even when I quit the Metropass last year — one of the only empowering acts I could have taken — the TTC took one last bureaucratic swing: I was charged for cancelling my pass before my 12-month contract was up. When I explained in an email that I had been a faithful subscriber for 10 years, a functionary at Davisville HQ forwarded the Metropass contract that said the 12-month lock-in is renewed each year. When I asked to appeal, I was told, “There is no possibility of appeal.”
The TTC Riders Union offers the possibility of a unified voice, and a place to channel ambient dissatisfaction into a politically effective tool. The majority of good and sometimes great TTC rank-and-file employees should also welcome this development as incidents like the “TTC Sleeper” might not take off the way it did if the public felt it were being listened to.
There are precedents for this. Most famously (and with the best name) is the New York Straphangers Campaign that has been around since 1979 and is a respected force in city politics, representing all riders as well as producing reports and analysis of the entire system (a sort of cross between an advocacy group and local transit think-tank). Los Angeles has their Bus Riders Union, and some other cities have similar set-ups. With Toronto’s high level of transit use cutting across class and income demographics, our version has the potential to be quite successful.
While an effective and strong TTC Riders Union could bring me back to riding the rocket, it’s the new group’s labour-union association that gives me pause. One of the organizing sponsors of the group is the Toronto and York Region Labour Council. While I don’t doubt the Labour Council is committed to “building strong cities,” individual unions are conservative and inherently self-interested organizations, and the link (and what it represents) on their website to the ATU #113’s website is cause for concern.
First, a TTC Riders union should be non-partisan and non-ideological. It should appeal to both a Bay Street Tory lawyer who lives in North Toronto and those guys who hand out copies of the Socialist Worker at political rallies. If it is going to represent all riders it must be free of any ideological leaning because the taint of dogma will evaporate potential membership.
The other concern is that as a rider, neither the TTC management nor the ATU union is my friend. I want my riders union never to pull any punches when acting on my behalf. Political romantics sometimes evoke the punch Ali never gave George Foreman as the latter went down during the 1974 Rumble in the Jungle. When it comes to the TTC, I want my Ali to throw that punch and then another because you know the TCU’s Bob “Wildcat Strike” Kinnear would never be so compassionate on our behalf and the TTC-bureaucracy brain can be as thick as a punching bag, too.
This is not an anti-union rant. Both my parents were members of the Canadian Auto Workers union in Windsor (my straight teeth are what is known in Windsor as “the Buzz Hargrove smile,” named after the former union president who negotiated the nice benefit packages we grew up with) and somewhere I still have my CAW card from a stint working in a factory. (I’ve yet to make as much money since.)
Yet the conservative, self-interested nature of unions eventually let down my hometown: in the 1990s and into the 2000s, when the auto factories were pumping out big SUVs and Windsor worker driveways were full of new F150s and Explorers, the CAW provided little long-term leadership on the sustainability of the industry and its products. Its members were working, and that’s all that mattered. CAW leadership is as complicit in my hometown’s current troubles as any auto executive is. For the TTC Riders Union to work, its conservative self-interest must have the back of its members and nobody else.
Photo by Cannon Fodder XT.
18 comments
CAW leadership is as complicit in my hometown’s current troubles as any auto executive is.
The CAW isn’t always the paragon of enlightened unionism, but this is unfair and renders your judgment of the labour movement a little premature. Given Canadian labour law, unions have little choice – in the context of collective agreements – but to focus on rights and benefits. You seem to think that unions and management sit down together and plot out common goals and objectives, reaching consensus on the next product lines, etc., but that’s not the case. The CAW might have been able to push harder, but don’t fool yourself: auto executives call the shots, and the union has to follow them. Sure, some unions might be conservative and self-interested, but that speaks just as much to the structural and legal forces that constrain them. Trust me, labour’s been fighting for a say in the running of their workplace (industrial democracy) for ages – and they don’t have much of it.
Despite its faults, the labour movement has been a force for social change and the improvement of ordinary people’s lives. Even though unionization numbers are low, management has to worry about it and can’t completely dick you around.
Sure, people need to hold labour to account, and I understand the desire for an impartial riders’ union, but I think at the end of the day folks have to make sure to at least think twice before making sweeping attacks on the whole labour movement. At least you’re holding management to account too.
Sorry if this was harping on your last two paragraphs, but there’s sometimes a glimmer of anti-union sentiment among the Spacing community.
No “ideologically-free” group will emerge, because none exist. Ideology is something which shapes everyone’s political actions (and inactions).
At least those organised into calls for privatization and socialization are offering proposals. I suspect it is through the interactions of both sides that Toronto’s policy will emerge.
Ian> I worry that often (on the left) thinking critically about unions is interpreted as “anti-union” (glimmer or full on). It’s not. The labour movement has, yes, been a great force of social change (there are plaques all around Windsor and Detroit where events that have shaped modern society have taken place) but perhaps the reality of the labour movement doesn’t always live up to that mythology. I use Windsor and the auto-industry as an example because the broader “movement” & the CAW didn’t provide forward-thinking leadership in the boom times (NDP included). It was quiet on the sustainability of the industry, because everybody was working and making money, when it should have been shouting everywhere at what was coming. I’m not talking about sitting down at a board table during collective bargaining, I’m talking about public leadership (they way unions have for, say, civil rights, in the past).
Poking around the labour movement’s mythology vs reality isn’t anti-union, it’s, IMHO, essential to the labour movement’s survival and continued relevance.
I find the premise of the article very interesting (and the article itself so beautifully written; I’m slightly green with writer envy), but I feel it focuses a lot on expressing frustration without going far enough to help us (the readers) see how a Riders Union could effect change.
I’d love to see a follow up post that delves deeper into how other cities are using “Riders Union”-type advocacy to resolve their transit issues.
I wonder if it’s possible for any organization to exist without having idealogical leanings. And isn’t that a good thing, anyway?
Great article, Shawn! Like many, I’m beginning to question the benefits of the union. It’s almost as if we’re providing a few with excellent wages at the expense of everyone else. I suppose in a perfect world we’d all have excellent paying jobs and excellent infrastructure and transit system. One might even begin to put together a compelling argument that the actions of the TTC union are what’s giving unions a bad name.
My friend and I sort of disagree about the photos/videos of ‘bad’ employee behaviour. She tends to feel for the employee, finding it a bit distasteful and unfair to them and their families, especially when the photo ends up on the front of the Sun. I’m not so heartless that I don’t fully agree with her, but I see this more as pushing back, or a swinging of the pendulum – riders have put up with these kinds of behaviours for a long time and this is, perhaps, a reasonable response. However, I hope that these photos and videos don’t continue with as much attention given to them. I mean, I hope all this ‘gotcha’ stuff calms down a bit.
Finally, I feel that “customer service” is the wrong word. I don’t think TTC riders expect to have a ‘Starbucks experience.’ More importantly I think it would be much better to call TTC riders ‘citizens.’ Citizens have responsibility; customers do not. I’d hope that this would help people take ‘ownership’ of the TTC for it is, technically, ours. A customer may be able to complain about their experience and avoid a store, but he or she cannot ‘get behind the counter’ and help. For example, people have complained about the cleanliness of TTC stations and buses and in the ‘customer service’ discourse, the ‘solution’ is that the TTC clean these things – it’s not our problem or fault. In a ‘citizen’ discourse, possibilities open up – we might see our own behaviours contributing to its dirtiness, that we might have some ‘adopt a station’ program where people can go clean up their local station which would lead to people (hopefully) taking on a civic responsibility. I have the sense that TTC Rider’s Union is within the ‘customer’ discourse – organizing complaints and demanding the TTC respond. I wonder if something like “Friends of the TTC” might be a better approach.
“In a ‘citizen’ discourse, possibilities open up – we might see our own behaviours contributing to its dirtines”.
I feel the same way, Mark, and it extends beyond the messes to the interactions between employees and riders. It is true that there are a *lot* of elementary “customer service” failures on the TTC, but at the same time the solution is not for operators, collectors, and everyone else to paper over the systematic problems with TTC operations (and funding, and, and, and) by simply absorbing all of the negativity they generate and serving with a smile. Garbage in, garbage out, as they say…
As for Shawn’s hope for a non-ideological riders’ lobby, setting aside the philosophical question of the very possiblity of being “non-ideological” in any pure sense, I’d like one too but am not sure what prospects there are for one to emerge. What constituency is there for brokerage between the two relatively divergent clusters of opinion on how to move forward, and what potential solutions might emerge from such brokerage other than an incoherent hodge-podge of compromises unlikely to gain political traction? In the first place, we would need some core of activists who are (in the minds of the more polarized observers) “untainted” by pro- or anti- union activism, and I do not know of too many people with in-depth knowledge of the issues who fit that description who have expressed much interest thus far.
“Friends of the TTC†might be a better approach.
I could join “Friends of the Toronto Public Library”, but I don’t think that is really the kind of boosterism this kind of project calls for. “Friends of the Toronto Transit Commission” might get together and fund-raise for fanciful station improvements (like the recent Museum upgrade that attracted so much private funding?) and public art in stations and so forth.
It is a bit tough to get individual advocates to maintain a credible group over an extended period. And it’s natural to develop formal, or informal, affiliations with other groups. The big challenge is to endure without solid funding, and at least one person willing to volunteer a lot of time.
However there are local precedents for effective transit advocacy groups, including Streetcars for Toronto and the Rocket Riders.
From 2007:
https://spacing.ca/toronto/2007/12/01/streetcars-for-toronto-35th-anniversary/
Another model (which had very little funding) is RUN. The intent was to facilitate the creation and cooperation of passenger-oriented transit groups.
http://railusers.net/index.php?link=home
Probably the most difficult leap for any Riders’ Union to make is to get beyond the pet peeves of a few founding members who always get together in the same bar or meeting room to a broadly-based public group pulling together experiences and desires across the city. Organization on that scale takes dedication and outreach through existing communities, and, yes, even some sympathetic politicians.
“Sympathetic” has a special meaning in an election year where the desire to make the TTC look bad may have more to do with PR for a transit saviour, or alterately for someone who wants to give the system away to anyone (private sector or Queen’s Park, it doesn’t matter) who will take the problems off of their hands. Altruistic politicians are hard to find.
While I have no sympathy at all for front line staff who presume they are untouchable no matter what their behaviour, I hope (and my own experience confirms) that these are not the majority of the workforce, or even a substantial minority.
There is a TTC culture that assumes all problems are external, or failing that, insoluable which is almost the same thing. If the organization cannot accept that it screws up, then the front line staff get the message that nothing will change. This demoralizes the “good apples” and empowers the rotten ones.
On the public’s side, we need to demand more accountability from the Commission through meetings held at times people can actually attend. I have been at almost every TTC meeting since late 1972, and that chewed through more vacation days and lieu time than I can count. The TTC accepts deputations at its meetings, but holds a tight rein on who can speak to the point that the chair can get downright surly if he doesn’t like your message.
More people need to depute on common items, and they can only do this if the meetings are held when citizens can attend. That’s one outreach program I would strongly urge on the “Blue Ribbon Panel”.
The TTC needs to actually listen and make visible changes. I’m not talking about notices to operators, I am talking about physical improvements people can see like actually cleaning vehicles and stations (all of them, not just the parts that are easy to get at), working on improved line management so that vehicles arrive on time (or on a predictable headway) and actually go to their advertised destinations. One telling comment in recent budget discussions was the info that some major lines have no management at all. No wonder the service stinks.
On the front line, I think ATU 113 could do itself a big favour by launching and managing a customer service initiative. This needs to openly address the fact that some of their members are less than perfect, and needs to face inward on their own membership, not outwards as a public relations exercise. If nothing else, enlightened self interest, the desire to have some hope of public support when the 2011 contract negotiations get under way, dictates that ATU take a visible role.
All the great and valuable stories about TTC operators assisting the public, about their public spirited way of making Toronto a better place, about their professionalism in safely carrying riders around the city, can be blown to pieces by one example of flagrant misbehaviour. Just as riders remember all the times they were late for work quite vividly, while forgetting the days nothing went wrong, it is the bad experiences that get the headlines.
Don’t assume every rider is just waiting to pounce with their camera. The novelty of this sort of thing will wear off quickly in the press and even in the blogosphere, and only the truly outlandish experiences will be reported.
Sadly, we have all been forced to do this through public media because the TTC as an organization is less than responsive. That style goes back decades, although some attempts at change do show through. However, Brad Ross and his handful of staff can’t run a shoestring complaints and info agency via Facebook and Twitter.
On management’s side, don’t settle for “70%” achievements. Translating that to people who take the standard 10 commuter rides a week, this means that 3 of those trips, on average, will be disrupted. There’s a good chance each of these will happen on separate days, and this quickly translates to “the TTC never works”.
Though Shawn’s article makes some good points, it misses the big picture. Sure the Transit Workers are a bad union and must accept responsibility for their workers conduct and lack of productivity but they are not the big issue. The big issue is political leadership that has let Union leadership and members believe they can get away with bad conduct and service. When the political careers of the TTC leadership of Giambrone and Moscoe before him are based on Union support it is only to be expected that the ATU and CUPE will exploit the situation where the politicians hold the Union’s support as more important than the public interest. This is exactly what has happened under Miller and Giambrone’s leadership and Shawn’s questioning of the Union at this point is a meaningless bit of repositioning to let his political allies off the hook. Shawn’s piece is in support of Giambrone’s cop out last week that he was not responsible for the mess at the TTC because he was only the Chair. This sad excuse for failed leadership should be the subject of this article not an apologia that someone else(the union) is to blame. No bloody way, Giambrone and Miller are directly to blame for creating a bloated culture of entitlement within the unions. Sadly, Shawn’s reflection is too little too late as Spacing’s unquestioned past support of Miller and Giambrone has irreversibly compromised progressive causes that are now discredited by association with fiscally irresponsible NDP politicians who cannot separate themselves from the self serving interests of the public service unions.
I ask Spacing Editors again whether they think the Miller created private sector Building Trades unions monopoly on Toronto public tendering of construction projects is good for the City of Toronto.
With the TTC, it’s all about their Union. Over the years, they’ve accumulated so much power that no one will dare challenge them. Giambrone or anyone can say this and that but the Union tells its employees that it’s all smoke and mirrors and they can ignore the marching orders. An example of the power is that a TTC employee was guilty of 3 grievances of verbal assault from its own employees as well as many many complaints from customers. This employee was not fired. Instead, they removed him from the booth, stuck him behind a desk, changed his title, and he got a raise. Enough said.
I feel very strongly that service unions have lost their ways and have become somewhat hypocritical- they fight for their rights against being treated unfairly, but yet they have no standards of their own on how they treat the public and the quality of work that they provide.
So its o.k for them to fight on how they are treated by their management but gosh, if the public doesn’t like how the ATU is treating them, too bad?!
Steve’s suggestion that the Union take ownership and start setting standards is a good one..but seeing the TTC’s reaction today with their work-to-rule, how likely is it going to happen?
Is the blue ribbon panel going to be Giambrone’s Gomery? 😉
The sad thing is that, despite all the PR that these are “isolated incidents,” riders know that this is not the case. I won’t get into all the details about my worst experience with the TTC, but when I called to complain the rep’s focus was to get me off the phone ASAP, not my satisfaction (if it is any consolation, my worst public transit experience was with York Region Transit, and it was not handled much better. Though in my experience, I find I am more likely to encounter a rude TTC employee than a rude YRT one).
I’m going to have to blame the management and political climate on this one. If it weren’t for these exposes, the TTC would continue to give a rat’s ass about customer satisfaction. We can blame the union, but it is only doing its job: playing defense attorney to its members. It is up to management and even political leaders to put the union in its place and make sure customers come first.
For the record, I’m not giving a pass to the union. But like a spoiled child, do we blame the child or the parents for giving in to his every demand?
I can understand the writer’s and the public’s frustration with the TTC but I’m in agreement with Ian’s post (of 1:53pm) that there seems to be a few too many digs being taken at the union (ATU 113) both in the article and the public. The TTC may have a problem with the customer-service skills of some of its front-line employees. The TTC has legitimate issues with respect to some inadequate funding by the senior levels of government. But its core problem seems to be that its dysfunctional corporate culture. Its management and governance levels all too often operate with a “daddy knows best” attitude. Little if any organizational learning seems to take place after major screwups come to light. The requirement that the Commission be responsive and accountable to the public frequently gets little more than lip service it serves don’t seem to understand that the Commission has a duty to be responsive and accountable to the public it was created to serve.
With all that ails the TTC, I find it baffling that anyone is willing to accept that it mostly comes down to a “customer service” problem. For me, this is little more than a variation of the tactic organizations often use to avoid looking at serious problems by blaming “poor communications”. The sad part will be if this move ends up getting the TTC off the hook so that it avoids addressing the issues… my fear is that that’s will likely happen.
I would lay about 70% of the problems of the TTC at the door of management, and particularly of the political overseers. The decision to take measures to prevent the “hoarding” to tokens before a fare increase boggles the mind; any first year business student can tell you that a transit system doesn’t lose money by selling a whole bunch of fares up front. And then the TTC political leaders decide to renege on their paper tickets, and of course the workers have to deal with the resulting public anger.
I put 20% of the blame on the few, very few bad workers at the TTC; the 1-5% who visibly have no interest in actually doing their jobs, or who set out to make any member of the public unfortunate enough to deal with them feel six inches high. They share the blame with union leaders who, right or wrong, have let the public believe that the union will protect any member, no matter how badly they do their jobs.
The remaining 10% goes to the public, although the TTC management structures make it hard for the public to effectively make changes, and I refuse to balme some little old lady for holding up a bus because she didn’t read the article that said the TTC management planned to charge her extra for using her senior’s tickets.
Though I support the general principles of unionism, I was really disappointed with Bob Kinear’s statement today. He used some pretty heavy rhetoric to turn the problems back on the public. He painted citizens as some vindictive, camera-wielding menace to public safety. He made it sound like people are demanding the unreasonable, and characterized Gary Webster’s letter to the employees as “whining.” He even suggested that the picture taking is going to give employees cancer and liver damage. This misdirection (“spin”) would make Protagoras proud.
Above I suggested TTC riders be considered citizens, not customers, and that an organization could be something like “Friends of the TTC” (I know there’s a history to “Friends of … ” in Toronto and elsewhere). I think both of these ideas can counter or disrupt Kinear’s characterizations of ‘the public.’
Citizens do, and have, exhibited responsible judgments: no one is suggesting that employees can’t have breaks or use the washroom, but we drew the line at that ‘7 minute mid-route coffee break.’ We’re not trying to violate human-rights. Rather, it seems ‘we’ are asking the TTC to take responsibility for the jobs they have and as fellow citizens. We don’t want to be the customer who’s “always right” (an absurd truth-system!) but engage each other respectfully, have reasonable questions answered, be friendly, etc.
Rather than an oppositional union, an ‘us’ opposed to ‘them,’ organizing as “Friends” might draw on our sense of friendship. We support our friends and help them when they’re in trouble. We intervene with their interest in mind when we think they’re making some bad decisions. Sometimes that’s simply holding up a mirror for them.