Simon South

We are now on day 19 and there is still no clear indication of when the YRT strike will be over.

Yesterday three York Region MPPs, Frank Klees, Peter Shurman and Julia Munro, held a media conference at Queen’s Park where they called for back-to-work legislation to bring an end to the strike. (These are the same MPPs who issued an earlier statement.) They also called for the essential-service designation granted to Toronto’s transit system to be extended to all transit systems in the GTA.

The same day, Labour Minister Linda Jeffrey announced the provincial government is not considering or discussing back-to-work legislation for the striking drivers. So for the time being, at least, that avenue has closed.

Many people will be upset by this news. However, I think it is a wise move by the government (and, happily enough, is what I’d wanted them to do). I believe the union has been hoping for back-to-work legislation for some time. Regardless, we know they are now hoping for arbitration. And as counterintuitive as it seems, I have reason to think the union may be hoping for essential-service designation as well. Why should the government give the union what it wants?

Here’s the thing: I no longer believe this strike was ever about wages. I believe it has been a staged protest of the public-private model for transit used in the region and an expression of the union’s desire to negotiate with government instead of business. This explains why the union has been so shy about resuming talks with the contractors, it explains why the only rally was held outside Region headquarters and not the buildings of the companies it is allegedly protesting, and it explains why the union is now so earnestly calling for arbitration—anything, anything at all to establish the idea that the Region is whom the union should be negotiating with instead of its actual employers.

Clearly the MPPs get this. Union President Bob Kinnear showed up at the media conference yesterday to push his request for arbitration. But the politicians weren’t buying it:

And there’s no end game here involving getting Fisch to the table at all? Shurman said. C’mon Bob, you can’t suck and blow.

If what I believe is true, we’ve been lied to and manipulated by the union, who called a strike under false pretense (the wage gap) and have held both drivers and riders hostage for nearly three weeks while it pursued its own political ambitions. Are you angry yet? Let the government box the union in. Force the union to do the one thing it seems to least want to do—negotiate with the contractors directly on the wages issue—and let it be content with whatever it can accomplish on its own.

Perhaps it will not be so eager to shut down the transit system next time.

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 11th, 2011 at 11:51 am 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.