In the aftermath of Toronto’s brief transit strike earlier this year, the idea of a transit riders’ union gained some support with commenters on a few local blogs. But blogging didn’t lead to action so Toronto remains rider union-free.
Given the angry place from which many who proposed a riders’ union were coming, it doesn’t disappoint me that the talk was empty. If a union had been launched at that time, the major focus would have been on TTC employees. That debate has raged time and again online and in print but, to me, focusing on workers is a red herring. What we need, in the briefest terms, is well-funded capital and operating budgets for our transit system and, from there, we need rider-focused service improvements.
These aren’t revolutionary ideas but it seems like it could take a revolution to bring them to life.
In Edmonton, there is a transit revolution of sorts underway.
As the City of Edmonton embarked on a review of its public transit system with the goal of expansion, residents formed the Transit Riders’ Union of Edmonton (TRUE) in the spring of 2007 to lobby in the interest of transit riders. In an interview last year with Edmonton radio station CJSR FM, one of the unions’ earliest members, Brian Gould, listed off TRUE’s initial mandate.
“Building a transit-friendly city and curbing urban sprawl, keeping the system affordable for those who need it most, planning more efficient routes, extending late night service, reducing pollution from vehicles, ensuring transit police are accountable and in touch with the needs of transit riders, and supporting increased promotional materials to increase transit ridership.â€
Judging by the more than three dozen media clippings on the TRUE web site, the group has filled a major void in Edmonton’s civic consciousness with that ambitious agenda.
TRUE’s largest undertaking to date has been a “shadow report†that was released at the same time as a major consultant’s report on how the Edmonton Transit System (ETS) could expand its operations. According to TRUE, the report commissioned by the ETS was focused on building a fiscally efficient model, even if that came at the expense and inconvenience of existing and future transit riders.
The shadow report, in contrast, engaged a panel of 24 transit riders who range from high school student to low income senior. Tied together by a team of three editors with varying degrees of transit and planning knowledge, the 24 panelists represent the diverse needs and expectations of transit riders, and their unique comments are cited throughout the report to maintain the rider-focused perspective.
The outcome of the shadow report is a compelling read. It strikes me as similar to the work done by Toronto transit activists on the Queen streetcar route earlier this year, though somewhat more populist in its approach.
While it isn’t clear exactly what impact the TRUE report will have on Edmonton city council, this initiative is an inspiring example of a transit riders’ union that leverages the knowledge of transit activists while harnessing the power of the grassroots. It’s the kind of riders’ union I could get behind.
Photograph by THBL.
11 comments
Call me crazy, but I think the best model for a tranist users’ union or association is the CAA, especially its early years. Even today their mission is to be a “Member-driven organization that delivers quality travel, insurance and advocacy services providing peace of mind, safety and value.â€Â
I went through their history (the southern Ontario chapters’ anyway) and adapted it to what a transit users’ association could do. The full list is on the blog post linked to, but some of the best things were:
– Publish first “Official Transit Guide Of Canadaâ€Â
– start putting up signs/directions to help people using the often labyrinthine transit systems
– Lobby for “reciprocity†of monthly passes between all cities in Canada and USA – so owning a monthly pass in one city will allow you to travel in other cities as well
– Organize a British Commonwealth Mass-Transit User Conference, and get someone from the Royalty to be Patron!
Adam –
Focusing on workers is not a red herring. Workers are a cost, and reducing that cost means that money can be shifted to expanding the system rather than expanding already-high worker pay. Cut worker pay by 30%, you can have 30% more drivers for the same cost. That means the system can be expanded.
It’s no different that if, say, the commission was paying 100% above market rate for diesel fuels because it wanted to foster “social justice” for the oppressed diesel distributors of the world. You wouldn’t stand for it then, I don’t know why you’d stand for it in the case of employees.
I firmly believe that if you’re a transit advocate, rather than a “social justice/general left wing/transit” advocate, that you’re in favour of both increased government funding and efforts to drive cost (including labor) out of the existing system. Merging the “social justice” with “transit” agenda reduces the credibility of the transit agenda generally.
already-high worker pay
The funny thing is, nobody who ever uses phrases like this follows it up with a phrase like “as opposed to a much more reasonable $x per hour, or an annualized salary of $y“. Will you be the first, tdotg?
Transit worker pay, while a huge chunk of the TTC budget, is out of our hands as long as York Transit and others are paying the same or more.
Where TTC management need to focus on is issues like overtime. Some TTC employees seem to be volunteering to work huge numbers of hours and are therefore appearing on the sunshine list. Whether that is due to understaffing or employee absence is a matter for TTC to answer.
While some might say that it’s okay that people can opt to work as much overtime as they ask for, some of these guys are regularly double-shifting and you gotta wonder if this is the reason one comes across cranky transit staff – that they don’t have a good work/life balance because they’re set on working huge overtime.
Thanks for the tip on what’s going on in Edmonton…as a former Edmontonian I can attest that that this sort of grassroots transit organization was sorely needed.
What does it say about municipal transit generally that customers have to form “unions” to get noticed? (Assuming of course that such unions actually do get noticed by anybody that can actually have an impact on service.) How much more evidence do you need that customers are totally irrelevant to transit monopolies?
The issue with overtime and the sunshine list that is usually missed in discussions like this is that overtime does not attract most of the costs of benefits such as vacation pay, insurance costs or the employer portion of CPP/UIC (because TTC staff will contribute the maximum on their base salary).
There is also the avoided “capital” cost of training operators, and the underutilization of staff if there are too many people only working to fill in for gaps in staffing.
The fully-allocated hourly cost of “overtime” is much lower than the multiplier against the base rate implies. All organizations with a large workforce and a need for “seasonal” labour work the same way.
A related issue will kick in later this year with the improvement of off-peak services planned for November. As we have more vehicles on the streets for the whole day, we increase the amount of work that can be filled by full shifts. This reduces the effective hourly cost, or to put it another way, we get the operator (and the bus for that matter) at lower cost because we are paying for them already anyhow.
As mentioned in an earlier comment, unless we are prepared to lower transit pay across the board, and then try to attract and keep staff at that lower rate, we cannot unilaterally change TTC wages.
“How much more evidence do you need that customers are totally irrelevant to transit monopolies?”
Customers are also irrelevant to most large corporations. Especially ones that have large market shares.
The only difference in this case is that the customers of transit are also its shareholders (via the public purse and city council). The “union” makes sense: not only would it advocate for good service, it would demand efficient allocation of resources.
Warning. The lady in Durham, who’s complaining to get rid of the bus on her street, may end up on such an “union”.
We seen similar situations where bus manufacturers infiltrated transit companies, just to promote their products or ideas.
“Especially ones that have large market shares.” Well exactly. And the TTC’s market share is never gonna get smaller, so good luck with advocating for good service, and as for demanding the efficient allocation of resources – guffaw!
Re tdotg: Wasn’t there some reporting on the problem the TTC is facing getting qualified new employees already? That means that existing wages are not high enough to attract enough staff. Reducing wages will exacerbate this problem – unionization in this case is largely irrelevant – supply and demand dictate minimum wage levels (for new employees).
Re J: “Customers are also irrelevant to most large corporations. Especially ones that have large market shares.” So this makes it OK for the TTC to treat its customers like dirt? And more generally, the corporations able to consistently ignore customers are usually the beneficiaries of government enforced monopolies or barriers to entry – just like the TTC.
Re W. K. Lis: What’s the problem with “that lady in Durham” from voicing her concerns at a transit user’s group? From the sounds of it, that route may really be a bad idea – perhaps even a result of earlier political pressure by the local town council member ‘delivering the goods’ to local constituents. One genuine plus of the TTC is the rarity of meandering routes through residential subdivisions.