Simon South

Let me start by correcting something I said on Twitter this morning:

This is not quite true. The union (ATU Local 113) has not called for back-to-work legislation. What they have asked is that the contractors agree to submit to arbitration overseen by the Regional government. However, this kind of arbitration is the typical outcome of back-to-work legislation, so although what I said was technically wrong, I may have correctly captured the spirit of the request.

There’s a lot to say about the last twenty-four hours. Let’s back up a bit.

The Negotiations with Veolia

Yesterday’s meeting between Veolia and Local 113 did not go well. Veolia came to the table with a revised version of the final offer they’d made to the union before the strike, and (at long last) the union turned them down. So much for my hope we’d be seeing Viva buses running next week.

There are two things to point out about the media’s reporting of the meeting. First of all, Veolia has decided to made public some of the details of the rejected offer (perhaps as if to say, It’s not us, guys!). You can read about it on YorkRegion.com. I don’t really know enough to evaluate whether this is a good offer or not, but I will say it does not sound to me as though Veolia is trying to make its drivers suffer. On the contrary, what’s being offered is more than many people can hope for right now, include anyone who has lost their job as a result of the strike and (I would think) the vast majority of the students who are trying to get to classes using the fragments of the transit system still running.

Secondly, we haven’t been told what, specifically, the union found objectionable about the offer. Surprisingly, even Veolia says they’re not sure why the offer was rejected. From an article in the Toronto Star:

However, Valerie Michael, director of corporate communications for VIVA, said it’s the unions who are being obstinate.

In the meeting Wednesday, she said the union was pushing for better benefits, but that their proposals were vague.

They say it’s not acceptable and then walk away, she said. It’s very difficult to move forward from there.

There are two easy explanations I can think of here. First, it could be Ms. Michael is misrepresenting what happened during the negotiations.

Alternatively, it could be the union is still waiting for an offer that brings wages up to what drivers are earning in other parts of the GTA. If so and Veolia has not bought into the union’s argument for this (and I think they should not), it could explain why the offer was quickly rejected.

But it stands out to me that Ms. Michael describes the union’s proposals as vague. If we assume she is telling the truth, surely there would be no confusion if the union were simply insisting on a higher base wage. Is it possible the union is being deliberately coy about what sort of offer it will sign? I am again wondering if perhaps the union has been purposefully trying to avoid reaching an agreement with the contractors at all.

The Call for Arbitration

Remember what I wrote on Monday?

Frankly, I can’t escape the thought that back-to-work legislation might be just what the union is hoping for. It seems to me it has been negotiating in bad faith, framing the issue as being about wages but ignoring concessions on that front so it can pursue a much different goal. While relying on a legislative solution is a risky strategy (no one knows ahead of time what terms will be imposed) it’s likely any arbitrated contract will include concessions to the union, ones that may go beyond what it feels it can negotiate from the contractors directly.

And now, after walking away from the bargaining table again for vague reasons,

The union has written to York Regional Chairman Bill Fisch saying that they will agree to arbitration and end the strike immediately if the companies also agree in writing to submit the dispute to neutral arbitrators.

Here’s my theory: Arbitration has been the union’s goal all along. It probably never expected the strike to go past the two-week mark—the pattern in Toronto was for back-to-work legislation to be introduced within a matter of days. But with enough time having passed for public sympathy to wane and with no such legislation on the horizon, the union is having to take matters into its own hands.

I suspect yesterday’s meeting with Veolia was largely an act to make the union appear to be negotiating in good faith, when in fact it would have rejected almost anything the company presented. With that out of the way, the union now feels free to throw its hands up and ask for what it really wanted in the first place: Government-overseen arbitration, the neutral process that tends to favour unions.

(Incidentally, don’t pay any attention to the poll results published by the union; everyone knows those are so easily manufactured as to make polling completely useless. It is simply a rhetorical device to make the union appear to be acting in the public interest rather than unilaterally.)

We’ll see what the government’s next move is. Despite what I wrote on Monday, I am kind of hoping the strike is allowed to continue even longer. The union told us they wanted better wages and took our transit system hostage to get them. Why should we not hold them to their word and insist they pursue a legitimate agreement on that issue, instead of allowing them an easy and rewarding way out?

Am I off-base about all this? Post a comment below and help me understand better.

Tags: arbitration, contractors, public transit, strike, transit, union, veolia, York Region, YRT

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 10th, 2011 at 2:44 pm and is filed under Public Transit, York Region. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.