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Not precisely true. Labour regulation has a lot to do with whether you can unionize; and collectively bargain, a lot more private-sector employees used to be union.

That's not only a function of labour regulation, but the shift in jobs to retail and unions being under represented in that space historically; as well as challenges that have to do w/changing workforce demographics.

Franchising and contracting out really complicate efforts at collective bargaining.

That's why California's move to impose sectoral bargaining for Fast Food workers has huge implications.



Healthcare faces some unique challenges......but a lot are quickly resolvable. Practical Assessments for foreign-trained professionals are employed in 7 provinces across Canada. The standards is 12 weeks to approve unsupervised practice.

Ontario is not one of those provinces. We sideline a lot of qualified, competent people in the process.



Never. Accepting defeat and mediocrity is apathy, and antithetical to my nature.



The in-house workers are now as cheap, or cheaper, simply because they changed the size of the trucks they use, reducing deadhead time.

On the other hand...........this resulted in certain externalities on designing new buildings to allow for City-sized waste hauling trucks.

One must be careful about 'efficiencies' and whether or not one simply shifts expenses from one pocket to another.
Right but those efficiencies came about because of the fact that they outsourced half the city.

This is the same with the way Metrolinx is operating GO trains. Maybe using a different contractor for different routes will give you measurements to compare the performance. Right now we don't know what we are doing wrong or if it's just a matter of circumstance.
 
^There are studies that have shown that public sector unionisation traditionally tends to “pull up the floor” - ie wages for the lowest-level jobs tended to rise the fastest in union environments - partly due to internal pressures for equalization within a bargaining unit, and partly because labour arbitrators have a soft spot for such workers.

This is why contracting out in government began with ”services” jobs - the comparison between government workers with pension and benefits to private sector workers earning minimum wage with no benefits was seen as the lowest hanging fruit - getting those workers off government payroll made the accounts look most favourable the fastest, even if overall contracting out was not that desirable.

I see the pendulum swinging back the other way - there is a realization that gig jobs (eg Amazon warehouse jobs, temporary agency employees, Uber drivers, retirement home PSW’s and food service workers) need to “make a living wage” doing that work, and the wages should encourage retention rather than incenting people to find something better. The “covid danger pay” increments that were paid to health care workers and PSW’s was all about retention.

I suspect the shakeout will continue. ML is only one small player in that. The risk for ML is that by positioning itself at the bottom of the food chain, they become the training ground for other operators, leading to a revolving door. The solution may have to be raising wages so that GO crews stay with GO and other operators have to do their own intake hiring and training.

- Paul
 
Everyone from the private and public sector is having problems finding good people to work. Metronlinx is no exception, but maybe they can try some out of the box things to make the job more attractive. It's not always about money.

Also a bit off topic but do Hamilton and London crews take a cab from their base to their train in the morning? Does that deadheading time get counted as part of their duty hours?
London crews take a van from Aldershot, not sure about Hamilton.
 
This is the 3rd time in so many weeks I'm riding on Lakeshore east and the passenger alarm is not in service in certain cars as per announcements.

Shouldn't this be a basic requirement for the car to be in service?
 
London crews take a van from Aldershot, not sure about Hamilton.
London crews are based in Kitchener. They take a van to and from there, not Aldershot

Hamilton crews are either based at Shirley Rd. or at downtown Hamilton. If they begin or end their work elsewhere, they will be given access to a van to get them to where they need to go.

Dan
 
Announcement tomorrow. Not sure if it's service related though.

Stan Cho, Associate Minister of Transportation, will make an announcement. He will be joined by Phil Verster, President and Chief Executive Officer of Metrolinx, as well as Peel-area MPPs Kaleed Rasheed and Hardeep Grewal.
Date: Thursday, September 22, 2022
Time: Remarks at 9:30 a.m. A media availability will follow.
Location: Mississauga, ON
Livestream: A recording of the announcement will be available online after the event.

 
Could it be fare integration between GO, TTC, and 905 transit systems?? 😲

You kidding? Only the associate minister is showing up, along with two other stooges from Mississauga, and Verster. Perhaps money for a study for the Milton Line, or finding yet another thing to name for Canada’s most overrated mayor.
 
You kidding? Only the associate minister is showing up, along with two other stooges from Mississauga, and Verster. Perhaps money for a study for the Milton Line, or finding yet another thing to name for Canada’s most overrated mayor.
Let’s be real, Milton is as far off as fare integration.
 
You kidding? Only the associate minister is showing up, along with two other stooges from Mississauga, and Verster. Perhaps money for a study for the Milton Line, or finding yet another thing to name for Canada’s most overrated mayor.
I'm not always right. It's just a guess. Two of the MPPs attending this remark represents ridings in Peel that borders Toronto, and in those ridings, there are often riders that have to pay another fare if they want to transfer to TTC at VMC, Humber College, or Kipling station.
 
You kidding? Only the associate minister is showing up, along with two other stooges from Mississauga, and Verster. Perhaps money for a study for the Milton Line, or finding yet another thing to name for Canada’s most overrated mayor.
Given it’s only the associate minister, my bet is its one extra bus a day or something
 

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