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Welcome to the OC

By Andrew Pulsifer

20090121TTCvsOCTranspo.jpg
Photo by m.gifford.

It was a common pastime last year to trade stories about where you were when the TTC made the surprise announcement to strike close to midnight on a Friday. Transit users everywhere tried to one-up their friends with how far from their destinations they were stranded and how long it took them to get a cab, and those stories will be the lasting legacy of the strike. But while there might still be some lingering bitterness towards the TTC, it’s nothing compared to the frustration and exasperation people in Ottawa are feeling towards their OC Transpo, City Hall, and Mayor Larry O’Brien.
There are no heroes in their story, only villains, and the public, as always, is left in the middle. While we had a swift resolution last April, OC Transpo workers have been on strike since December 10. The cab fares add up after all that time, as does the lost revenue for local businesses. OC Transpo workers recently turned down a 7.25 per cent wage increase over three years because the core of their issue deals with the convoluted and difficult-to-explain scheduling and seniority system that management are trying to take away from them.
Turning down a massive wage increase hasn’t gained the union much support, but Transpo management and City Hall aren’t winning much favour either. Short of bringing out the fire hose, City Hall has been trying old-style union busting techniques, such as clandestine meetings behind closed doors and publicly admonishing any councillor who comes out in support of the union. There have been no official negotiations between the two groups since December 23—simply put, nobody is even trying to end this thing. Toronto could have had it so much worse.

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  • http://undefined CanadianSkeezix

    One interesting difference between the Toronto transit and Ottawa transit situations is that OC Transpo, because some of its routes cross the provincial boundary into Gatineau, is federally regulated. So, while the Ontario government has always had a vested political interest in ensuring that any TTC strikes are resolved quickly, through back-to-work legislation if necessary, the stakes are not nearly high for the federal government in the case of an Ottawa transit strike. In this particular case, the Harper government’s approach to the current OC Transpo strike has been a combination of laissez-faire and disinterest.

  • http://undefined davedave

    Until local/provincial/federal governments grow some balls and legislate that public transit is an essential service and have no right to strike, then asshole transit unions will continue to fuck us over forever and ever and ever over jobs they’re already overpaid for and underperform at.
    The Ottawa situation is beyond ludicrous. I don’t understand why citizens aren’t freaking out on their useless city counsellors. I would.

  • http://null Christopher Merlot

    Ottawa is a more car-oriented city than Toronto is, so the transit system is not as essential to the city’s functioning. The TTC can effectively paralyze TO while OC Transpo can only really really really annoy everybody. The students tend to live within walking distance of their universities and those who don’t borrow their parents’ cars to drive in from the suburbs. It’s the working folk there that suffer most.
    I was there for the World Junior Hockey championships and found that getting to and from the Corel Centre (or whatever its now called) was a daily adventure from downtown. Fortunately many of the hotels were running shuttles for people.

  • http://null McKingford

    Turning down a massive wage increase hasn’t gained the union much support
    Except a 7.25% increase over 3 years is not “massive”, and conceivably won’t even keep up with inflation – so as not to be an increase at all.

  • http://undefined Vincent Clement

    Any increase is massive when people are losing jobs.

  • http://undefined Vincent Clement

    If Ottawa is “more car-oriented”, why was getting to and from Scotiabank Place “a daily adventure”?

  • http://null montauk

    I could just as easily argue that when billions of the world’s population are living on two dollars a week, being an average Canadian facing a tough recession is a pretty sweet deal. We can’t always use “but lots of us have it worse” as a justification for sniping at people who are striving for better wages. I’m not speaking for or against Ottawa transit union, but I don’t like the argument that people suddenly being quite poor means that striking shows some kind of lack of perspective or ingratitude. People have been poor all along, in Canada and other parts of the world, and I’m sure that never stopped most of us from seeking pay raises or better benefits.
    Anyway, striking during a recession might involve a lack of perspective, but it doesn’t necessitate it.
    Throughout history people have tried to get better work situations – women during the war, African-Americans during the civil rights movement, etc – and lots of people invalidated their struggle by saying they should be grateful for what they have in these “trying times”, period. So I admit that I have a kneejerk response when someone begrudges the demands or successes of union members just because it’s a shitty economic season. Begrudge them because they’re douchebags, not because they’re trying to crawl away from the pit the rest of us are falling into.