Friday, June 02, 2006

TTC Strike

A couple days ago I refrained from commenting on the TTC strike because I had a lot of updates to post up on the blog. But I have to say something about the strike that occurred, especially since the strike was highly annoying and illegal. I understand if you want to strike and you’re in a position to do so; but a wildcat strike that is illegal and severely inconveniences people who you want to support you isn’t the best approach to achieving this.

As far as I understand the strike was a result of the maintenance workers walking off the job because they weren’t happy with a shift change. Now I know there are other issues such as driver and operator safety that have been in the news lately but it wasn’t them who went on strike. Seriously if my boss came in and said that I have to work from 4 till 12 am or some other ungodly hours I would grumble, do it and look for something else if it really didn’t suit me. If your labor agreement says this is something that can’t happen then let the union deal with it through an arbitrator. A wildcat strike on one of the hottest days of the year is not a good way to get peoples attention. This point is drilled home by the fact that once the busses were up and running a driver was beaten with a broom handle. This wasn’t the drivers fault yet they’re the ones who are now placed in more danger because someone didn’t like what was happening in their job. Just stupid if you ask me.

So what would have been my solution? Assuming this had lasted more than the day that it did? Fire em, all striking employees are fired and allowed to apply for their old jobs. Reagan did it back in the 80s and it worked then, the TTC is an essential service. The gridlock that a service outage causes is more than a nuisance, it’s down right dangerous. If you think about it more people on the roads driving and walking which means there’s more of a chance that something absolutely asinine is going to happen. Tempers will flare and the net result is people are going to be more than just inconvenienced. But that’s a what if and thankfully that didn’t happen. What I did find amusing was the fact that the Union was posturing that their members that striked shouldn’t be punished or there will be action… if I skipped out of work for no real good reason I would expect at the very least to be chastised and to loose that day of pay. When you inconvenience 800,000 TTC riders there has to be some repercussions for your actions even if you’re trying to make a point; people have to realize that even when they aren’t the ones calling the shots they are still responsible for their actions.