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I have just caught up on all this news, having not checked the news until now (and being out of the country). But my god! These guys (and gals) have really gone too far. I think there is going to be a real backlash. After all, this is a matter of 9,600 or so people deciding after receiving an extremely generous offer to shut down a city of three million. In the end, the unions are their own worst enemies of course; stunts like this are going to set the stage for a union-busting candidate to win the 2010 mayorals. Then the ATU will really have something to strike about.
 
Well, Local 113 has really shot itself in the foot! One might have said "head" but one suspects that, if there is as head, it has no brain. To withdraw service at VERY short notice, and not even at the end of a shift, is irresponsible and I frankly hope the City withdraws its last offer and reduces any salary increases and I hope the Province declares transit an essential service. Like manyu others, I would not have made either of these proposals last week but it is clear we are dealing with a group of untrustworthy, thoughtless union leaders and though it's their MEMBERS who will suffer that is, unfortunately, their fault for electing them. Of course they had the right to reject a contract offer but not to go home early. To hell with them!
 
urbandreamer said:
Anger should be directed at the TTC's educated senior management--they are the ones asleep at the wheel.
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ummm, shouldn't people's anger be directed at the heads of the union? it's the union that results in $15/hr jobs being paid $30/hr
 
The tragedy is that most people don't know what the cause of this strike seems to be. Basically, the union is angry that new buses and other equipment are covered by warranties, meaning that manufacturers will service them for no cost to the TTC. The union wants the TTC to ignore the warranties, and pay its staff to maintain them anyway.
 
TTC management should be fired.

The province legislating the drivers back to work is divisive and nonconstructive. Let the two sides work it out in the negotiating table however long it took. the drivers have every right to go on strike. they already gave 48 hours last week so the public had ample time to prepare that the contract wouldn't be ratified. The drivers and maintenance workers got screwed by management. Let the capitalist rot in hell. I support workers right to strike and the public should back the union and force management to give them a better deal.
 
Fine, but the union is making it as hard as possible for the public to back them.

The 48 hours notice did not apply. Kinnear even admitted that he was going back on that promise.
 
unimaginative2 said:
The tragedy is that most people don't know what the cause of this strike seems to be. Basically, the union is angry that new buses and other equipment are covered by warranties, meaning that manufacturers will service them for no cost to the TTC. The union wants the TTC to ignore the warranties, and pay its staff to maintain them anyway.
Click to expand...

That is the root of the problem right now that led to the strike. The maintenance workers (the same ones that led to the wildcat strike) are extremely 'militant' and hold a lot of sway within the union. The drivers voted against it to stand by their brothers and sisters - they, from what i hear, were content with their part of the deal (who wouldn't when it guarantees a perpetual increase in salary as neighbouring municipalities have payraises?). The absurdity of the maintenance worker claims is that although the work on the new buses is done under warranty, it is often done IN-HOUSE and billed to the manufacturer.

This strike is exposing a rift in the union and part of me hopes that there will be some sort of reorganization or rethink of the ATU Local 113 and how it operates. What I hope won't happen though is the election of a new president who is even more confrontational and antagonistic after the inevitable ouster of Bob Kinnear.
 
Good analysis. It should be noted that Orion, a subsidiarily of Daimler, is a CAW workplace, so warranty work would be done by well-paid, unionized workers in Mississauga. So it's about protecting the local's turf more than anything. But the worker safety excuse is brought out like last time to disguise the real reasons.
 
Let's not forget why the union feels it can throw its weight around like this: It senses weakness at the top. With Miller and Giambrone in charge, what repurcussions will there be?
 
Hardly. Miller and Giambrone, despite being mayor and board chair, respectively, are doing a very good job at keeping at arms length while working their hardest politically to help. Their job is not to impose an agreement, nor is it to put political pressure on TTC management to make a deal. The management and union executive both said that they had reached a fair agreement last week... to throw that out the window and vote against it is an indication that this is solely and in its entirety, the fault of the Union and not TTC management or the politicians behind it.

In fact, the polticians are acting expediently and responsibly right now and hopefully they can build all-party support for the back-to-work legislation that will be before a very, very rare Sunday sitting of the legislature.
 
There are thousands of service employees in the city who got stranded at their jobs at 12am this morning and thousands more who need to find a way to get to work this weekend. Many of these are minimum wage earners who often don't have cars and cabs can be beyond their means.
 
299 bloor call control. said:
[Miller and Giambrone's] job is not to impose an agreement, nor is it to put political pressure on TTC management to make a deal.
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No Giambrone can't "impose" a deal, but he can represent the City's interests responsibly during negotiations instead of giving away the store. He is the Chair of the TTC and was intimately involved setting the negotiating strategy. And you are mistaken if you think Miller didn't sign off on the City's final offer.

Miller is understandably angry because he went to bat for his union allies. He didn't want them declared an essential service because, supposedly, arbitration is too expensive. He didn't mind giving them a guarantee that they'd be highest paid drivers in the GTA (and let's face it, the province). He's said all the right things and what does he get? A knife in the back, which has embarassed him more than anything else.
 
Blovertis:

If a "generous" deal like the one before the table was rejected, what makes you assume that an inferior one would pass the muster of the rank and file, even if the union supports it? The end result is the same - a strike.

AoD
 
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