A source familiar with TTC contract negotiations has told Spacing that the proposed contract voted on by ATU Local 113 members on Friday had no new language on contracting out work currently done by unionized workers.
The source speculated that the No vote was due to deep divisions within the union executive that is rooted in Local 113 President Bob Kinnear’s election from the floor of the union convention, instead of as an establishment candidate.
As described to Spacing, the talk among disgruntled rank-and-file members is that the maintenance work currently covered by warranty, but done by TTC workers and covered financially by the manufacturer, might be taken from TTC workers and given to workers making less at the manufacturer’s plant.
However, this is not in any way, shape or form the case, according to our source.
Instead, Spacing is told that TTC management takes great pride in the fact that a private sector company finds it less expensive to use TTC workers to do warranty maintenace than their own mechanics.
photo by Christine Mullen
19 comments
So Spacing either has sources inside the union, or…
…or management, or city hall, or all three.
Like any news organization, we try to have lines of communication open with many sources. but if they don’t want to be revealed but we find the info of importance we’ll keep their identities anonymous.
So Local 113 decided to take the entire city hostage not because of anything in the proposed new contract, but merely for an internal power play at the union executive level??
(Incidentally, I believe the spelling you are looking for is “rooted”.)
What is really ridiculous here is that the issue of the contracting out of warranty work was NEVER brought up prior to the tentative deal. Deal breaker issues, such as the full pay for operators off work recovering from an assault, are in the spot light. If management does not agree to such a demand and a strike occurs, we might be upset at the strike, but we know why it was occurring.
Don’t make a deal for all the things you were making a fuss about, and get a few extras, then turn it down because you thought of something later on. If the problem is that the union executive was too thick to know what its members wanted in this contract, then the procedure is to turf them out, and vote in a new executive who will ask for what you want NEXT time the contract is up for negotiations.
So this was voted down because Kinnear recommended it and so it was an opportunity to topple him with the strike acting as a defacto no-confidence vote?
So it seems, Miles.
That union members pulled this stunt becuase of union politics is loathsome.
Interesting that I was going to make a comment about the sourcing of this article, which causes me the same frustration I’ve had from reading the same type of story in the Star – and it is the first thing 2 other people noted.
Like any news organization, we try to have lines of communication open with many sources. but if they don’t want to be revealed but we find the info of importance we’ll keep their identities anonymous.
This is actually not responsive to the first two comments, nor to my complaint.
I don’t think anyone quarrels with the need news organizations have for anonymous sources. But as much as possible, the reader needs to be given context for the sources, even while they remain anonymous. After all, sources don’t always arise out of pure public interest, and often have their own agenda.
In this story, it is very difficult to understand how further describing the source would jeopardize his/her anonymity. Is it a union source? A TTC management source? Telling us which does nothing to compromise the identity of the person; but at the same time it would go a long way towards helping us understand the story line. For instance, if a *union* representative is your source, then I’d feel a lot better that the union executive didn’t think the issue of contracting out was meaningful. If it’s a management source, then the readers can determine for themselves how much this is motivated by self-interest. And, if it’s simply someone at City Hall who’s read the language of the rejected agreement, then they might not really be offering any real insight into the contracting out issue that isn’t obvious from what’s on paper.
The source is a union-friendly person from City Hall who is informed on this matter. I approached them and anonymity was the condition of them speaking. I can’t be any more specific than that.
This was posted under Spacing because I sent in the story from my Blackberry.
Thank you for that, Adam.
I don’t think anyone is asking that anonymity be compromised, or that more information than you’ve just added be provided, but this additional information helps the reader make their own assessment as to the source’s reliability, credibility, and/or motives for providing anonymous information. There’s no reason this could not have been included in the story (not intended as a criticism, btw), and I would encourage it be done as much as possible in the future.
Hey McKingford. I get it. You don’t trust the source. Deal with it. Go read something else.
From this report and the one in the Globe, everyone’s anger should really be directed towards these guys:
http://www.atu113.org/contact.html
(in particular the executive and the maintenance stewards)
They are the ones who held the city hostage over their petty power games.
I’ll be critical. It seems ill-advised to grant someone anonymity when they are merely offering speculation (see the first line of the second paragraph).
DR,
You either consent to anonymity or you don’t cite anyone (you don’t get to condition anonymity on whether or not the information is useful; rather you consent to keeping the source anonymous and have the option to use their info or not). Without the source, there’s no story.
But you are right, that with the amplification of the nature of the source we learn that the information provided may not be terribly meaningful. For instance, from the description, it could be Adam Giambrone (chair of TTC, from City Hall, pro-union, and presumably kept abrest about the negotiations). Or maybe it’s the mayor. It may well be the case that Giambrone or Miller would never contemplate contracting out maintenance (hence him expressing, anonymously, but the maintenance workers can’t be satisfied with the political inclinations of whoever chairs the TTC at the moment: they want specific protective language in the bargaining agreement. Had the source been from the union itself, I think the story changes pretty dramatically, as it give some pretty important insights into the failures of the union bargaining committee to communicate with their members.
I never said I didn’t trust the source (so no, myron, you simpleton, you don’t get it at all); my point is that the nature of the source has important implications on the nature of the information provided. If I read a news story about dissension within the federal Tories caucus, it’s a pretty important story if the anonymous sources are Tory caucus members; if the sources are Liberals, then the story doesn’t carry much weight.
There are 40,000 people working for the City. The source could/should very well be a well-informed staff member, which is what I assume it is since I doubt Miller and Giambrone are so reckless as to talk smack. They leave that to their operatives like any half-intelligent boss does.
I trust Spacing enough to make the call on whether to use info from a source that is reputable and is not trying to manipulate this mag/blog. Its interesting to discuss this, but it seems like any time you use an anonymous source on a web page with comments the talk will turn towards the identity of your source rather than debating WHY THE 65% DECIDED COULD THEY CARELESSLY ABANDON TORONTONIANS (all caps intentional).
The real focus of the comments should be on the real topic at hand.
McKingford,
I understand how using an anonymous source works. I guess, like you, I’m just objecting to how this one was used. The source is apparently offering speculation about what they think the motivation of a large group of people was. Instead of promptly posting this at a time when emotions are running high, I think it would have been prudent to take this bit of information and try to get confirmation from other people closer to the situation, like actual union members. The source’s information may be accurate, but it might not be. And none of us, not even the author of the post, is in much of a place to judge its accuracy.
Looks like Spacing’s source was reliable after all, they just didn’t have the authority to talk. Here’s the Star article quoting Gary Webster who says pretty much exactly the same thing.
The union might have voted to reject the agreement but there was nothing in that vote which changed the 48 hour commitment. That was all Bob K and his executive.
As for the Bill passage – were I in the legislature I would have limited my remarks to “we know why we’re here” and called the votes on each stage. Instead McGuinty, Tory, Duguid et al stretch it out for half an hour for the sake of having their names and waffle in the Parliamentary Record.