On the Fourth Week of the YRT Strike
We are now on day 22 of the YRT strike, which marks the beginning of the fourth week since the buses stopped. There is still no end in sight.
Despite the events of last week, everything is essentially the same as it was seven days ago. The York Region MPPs’ call for back-to-work legislation was denied, and I think we can assume the union’s call for binding arbitration has been or will be denied as well. What progress can we hope to see this week?
The Government is Actively Doing Nothing
During the past three weeks we’ve heard very little from either Region councillors or MPPs about the strike. Many people are accusing the government of doing nothing
or ignoring the people,
but I suspect neither of these things is true. I think it’s just as likely the government is pursuing a strategy of actively waiting out the strike, knowing the union’s position will naturally weaken as time goes by. As a commenter on Facebook pointed out yesterday, no Conservative or Liberal politician would want to be seen as interfering with private business anyway.
Despite the damage the strike is causing to residents, the government has little incentive to budge or to bow to the union’s demands. We’ve just had a provincial election, so MPPs (who control back-to-work legislation) are safe in their seat for the next four years. Similarly, Council has three years left in its term. If politicians believe letting the strike drag on is in the Region’s long-term interests, I think they have little to fear from the public in doing so. The public will have forgotten all about the strike in three years’ time.
As a result, I predict we will see… nothing at all from the government this week. It will maintain its position of waiting for the union to resume talks with the contractors. If the government does take action, it will be in response to a new proposal from the union as it tries to avoid coming back to the table. And the action will be to deny this, of course.
The Union’s Next Move
I honestly do not know what options the union has at this point. It clearly does not want to continue negotiating with the contractors; it claims it has not made much progress there and I doubt it will. But its hope of winning greater concessions through arbitration has faded and as time goes by, its position weakens. At least two of the contractors (First Transit and Veolia) claim they made generous
new offers before the strike started. If the union waits too long to sign, it may discover even that generosity has vanished.
Perhaps the union already has in mind another way to avoid returning to the table and will propose it this week. At the same time, its leaders must be considering the possibility it’s time to settle. Their larger goal has been to get the public questioning the private sector’s involvement in transit. If they accomplish that, they may very well consider the strike a success even if they make only very small gains in workers’ compensation. So I predict we will see an even stronger effort by the union to get its anti-privatization message out, especially over the next few days.
What options do you think the union has at this point? Post a comment below and let me know.
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