The transit strike
I still don’t think the right of older drivers to pick their own schedules and rack up overtime is worth striking over. I predict that the rank and file will see it my way and vote to accept the latest offer.
I think the fact that union president André “No!” Cornellier doesn’t want union members to be allowed to vote on this offer is a very good reason to ask them to vote on it.
Cornellier says allowing a vote will split the union, because only a few hundred drivers are actually affected by the scheduling issue. (There are 2300 drivers.)
I say, “Hmmm.”
It’s mortifying for me to find myself in agreement with Mayor Larry and Rona Ambrose, but nobody can be wrong about everything. Not even Larry and Rona.
Come on, get it done. We’re sick of it.
For a lot more strike talk, including plenty of input from drivers, visit the OC Transpo Community blog.
For a reasonably neutral account of what’s going on, see http://www.cfrb.com/node/851282.
21 Comments
Ya, this is the best thing ever to happy to Mayor Larry. For the first time, the majority of people are not against him. It will be interesting to see how the vote goes. All the strikers they interviewed said they’d vote with their union, but I imagine they’d have to say that in public. And ya, how can Andre actually justify all this when less than 10% of employees are affected? And affected in a way that will only take away their unfair advantage? It’s crazy.
I certainly hope the strike ends soon. Because of work and various errands, it has left me walking for about an hour and a half a day, most days.
That may be healthy and pleasant when one is not in a hurry, but it can be a huge time drain when there are urgent things to be done.
I think this is a huge setback for unions, to allow management and government to interfere in what is essentially internal union business. The members of the Local chose the members they wanted to represent them at the bargaining table. When the offer was put before them, they voted 98% to reject it. The only real change in the subsequent offer was a quarter of a percent pay increase. Their chosen representatives rejected that offer without putting it to a vote because the almost identical earlier offer had been rejected by a landslide. That makes sense to me.
What doesn’t make sense is for the federal government to take sides and to wield its power to intervene in a legitimate collective bargaining process.
The strike is inconvenient, yes, and I look forward to the end of it. But not this way. It’s wrong.
What’s wrong with voting, zoom? How can we know what the majority of drivers think if they aren’t allowed to vote? We know what Andre “No” Cornellier thinks, but we don’t know what the rank and file members think.
What if Stephen Harper stopped having votes in Parliament? He could just say, “Well, the voters elected us, and nothing’s any different now than it was then, so you don’t need to keep on voting all the time.” There would be no way to find out if the members of the house of commons had confidence in the government if they weren’t allowed to vote on anything. Same thing with the union members.
Given that this is a public sector union, I think the situation is quite different from what it would be if Microsoft or Nike’s employees were on strike.
The union gets its power here from inconveniencing the public at large. As such, a higher level of government oversight seems appropriate.
This issue got discussed at considerable length on my blog.
Robin, that’s just it. They DID vote. They voted 98% against the City’s offer. The City subsequently upped their offer by a quarter of a percent, which was deemed too negligible by the union’s bargaining team to warrant another vote. When you get 98% saying no, a quarter of a percent isn’t going to change the outcome.
Milan, I checked out your discussion over there – very impressive!
zoom, I just think there should be one more little vote. Maybe some of them have changed their minds. Plus when a leader refuses to put something to a vote, it suggests that he’s afraid he’ll lose. See: Stephen Harper prorogues Parliament.
Zoom,
If you think the second vote will have the same outcome, why not let them hold it?
To some extent, this seems to be a conflict between a few senior bus drivers and the rest of the union.
I don’t like the divisive tactics used by the City against the union. The City has been trying very hard to drive a wedge between the union’s rank and file members and its representatives. I hope the union will stand strong against O’Brien and the City, but it’s hard to maintain solidarity when you’re on a cold picket line and public opinion is against you and Management is driving that kind of wedge.
If the difference between the city’s current offer and the one the union representatives want only matters for a minority of drivers, it doesn’t seem like allowing a vote within the union is the artificial creation of a ‘wedge.’
Presumably, the union members are best placed to decide for themselves whether accepting an offer or persisting in the strike is the best approach for them.
With Christmas bonuses what they are, now is the start of when there’s a gap in drivers’ automatic pay deposit.
I’m a little late getting back to this discussion. I have nothing against a second vote being called, but only if it comes from within the union itself (ie the members). This demand for a second vote came from Management and the federal government.
And the public. This strike isn’t a private matter between the city and the union.
Do you think the public’s going to be royally pissed off if/when the union votes to reject the City’s offer? All this time will have been wasted trying to force them to vote instead of at the bargaining table.
I won’t be. I can’t speak for the rest of the public. I want to know that the city’s offers are actually communicated to the union, and I think having a vote should help with that. I don’t trust André Cornellier to correctly assess whether anything has changed or not in this offer, because I think he’s a thug with an agenda of his own. So is Mayor Larry, of course.
I want the whole process more public. I don’t share your faith in unions zoom. If it’s a no, I hope both sides will be back at the table immediately, and that they’ll stay there until they get it done.
I agree with you on that Robin. A NO outcome should be a clear signal that it’s time to stop playing around the edges of collective bargaining and get back to the table.
Yes. Both sides.
I just heard the news that 64.4% voted no. That’s a lot different than 98%! I think this vote was well worth while, if only as a measure of the trend toward yes.
Now there is hope that the strike will someday end.
(Correction: the 64.4% number is one that’s been fiddled by Mayor Larry. It represents the percent of all union members, not the members who actually voted. 75% is a more accurate number. This is an example of how uncomfortable it can be to be on the same side of an issue as the mayor, but it doesn’t change my point.)
It was Larry who said 64.4% voted no. In fact 75% voted no. Larry decided to include the abstainers with the yes votes. Idiot.
It’s not at all surprising that the number would drop from the original 98% after a month of striking. Some of the striking drivers could no longer afford the luxury of voting no.
Oops. I don’t know how I missed that correction to your post. My apologies.
If some of the drivers are having a hard time paying their mortgages, that’s good. That means progress can be made. The public is also having a hard time getting to their workplaces and doctors appointments during a cold snap.
This strike is like a couple of beat-up boxers smashing each other in the face until one of them is bleeding too much to go on. Too bad it’s not management that’s bleeding, its the innocent public.