Unionized Blackmail in the Imperial Capital

There is nothing that quite so puts other Canadians to sleep as news about Toronto.  The Imperial Capital is well enough known for its smugness and provinciality, a trait somewhat common to all big cities.  The "X-factor" which "the Largest City in Canada" adds to the equation is its desperate eagerness to be something else.  It must be better than other Canadian cities for it aspires to that ultimate ambition, to be American.  Long ago it aspired to be British, more British than Britain could possible have been.  The British Empire collapsed - a fact noticed by Torontonians around 1968 - so the second handers looked elsewhere.  New York, it's psychic model, sees itself as a city apart, not wholly American but some idealized America, that mere other Americans might aspire or envy but can never be.  It's contempt for "flyover country" is of a feudal lord over his serfs.  Toronto's contempt for the Rest of Canada of a middle class house wife for her working class relatives.  This attitude, which pervades every aspect of the city's being and is in many ways a crucial part of Torontoness, is so perfectly off putting.  On and on she goes about her new dress, how expensive and how it was on sale too, utterly oblivious that its in last year's colour and cut.

Patience is asked of the gentle reader then.  The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC), the capital's state controlled public transit monopoly, is faced with a crippling strike.  The union is grieved, as unions often are, that the management, here the city fathers and the odd mother, wish that newer employees make less than their more established co-workers.  A manifest injustice!  Indeed.  As noted in a post a few weeks back fare collectors - glorified cashiers - command a starting salary of about $54,000 per year, several times the market rate for their services.  In the hopes of staving off municipal bankruptcy Mayor David Miller, a confirmed socialist, and his almost as left-wing ally TTC chairman Adam Giambrone, are trying to dim down the lavish pay and benefits.  The head of the union, Bob Kinnear noted that:

"...[w]e regret that this step is necessary and we do not delude ourselves that the public will be on our side. But our alternative is to continue to accept second class treatment in what the mayor says is a world class city."

"We can no longer accept second-class status as public sector workers in Toronto," Kinnear told the media conference in Richmond Hill this morning. "The Mayor has said that this contract is a time for fairness and we take him at his word. It's time to stop treating TTC workers worse than City of Toronto workers when it comes to job injuries, benefits and pensions."

Mr. Kinnear said that TTC operators make less in wages and benefits than in neighbouring municipalities. "Driving a streetcar on Queen Street in Toronto takes a lot more skill than driving a bus on Queen Street in Brampton. A TTC subway operator now makes less than a Mississauga bus operator. Is that fair?"

The angels weep.  Perhaps it is unfair that subway operators in Toronto make less than a Mississauga bus operator, then again it is a subway.  Does Mr Kinnear wish his subway operators to earn a premium for never getting lost?  It does take more skill to drive a bus in downtown Toronto than in whatever passes for a business district in Brampton, a suburb whose sole distinction is having given to Ontario the figure of Bill Davis.  Yet how is this a justification for a salary increase?  On what basis is a Brampton bus driver paid?  For decades public sector employees have fought a race to the top.  One bunch would obtain a wage increase, a fact used by other PS unions to argue for an increase for their members.  This cycle is seen in the private sector too, with one important caveat: productivity.  In layman's terms: You can't make more than you make.  If you create so much wealth, you cannot be paid more than that, otherwise someone else needs to foot the difference.

Mr. Davis, Brampton Billy as he was once known, gave public sector employees the right to strike, the most expensive "civil liberty" in this province's history.  Mr. Davis was fond of saying that the buck stopped with him, even if he never got around to explaining exactly how the buck was being stopped and at what price to the taxpayers.  The buck has now stopped at David Miller's desk - the current Premier, a Norman Bates look-alike with Bill Davis pretensions , is of course evading the issue.  The Mayor is to be applauded for not immediately caving into union demands.  Possessing a well known sense of drama, Mr. Miller is perhaps waiting for Sunday morning, the union's deadline, to cave in. 

The TTC, for those who dwell in the land beyond Steeles, is not simply the public transit system of Toronto, it is the city's respiratory system.  1.5 millions of the city's 2.5 million residents use it everyday.  There is no alternative for most.  A week long strike would literally slow the economic growth of the entire country.  Knowing this the unions knows the strike will last, if it comes, a day or two, and then either they will give or be forced back to work by the province as an "essential service."  This is kabuki theater without the grace and elegance imparted by the Japanese.  The solution?  Let time run back.  The TTC was created in 1921 by the city government purchasing several private transit companies, companies that had served the city well for over seventy years, on the grounds of aiding the common good.  A state owned transit system would be cheaper and more efficient than a private sector system, so the argument went.  The new entity almost immediately hiked rates and cut service.  It is a tradition it carries down to this day, as bits of roof fall onto subway tracks and fare collectors collect sky-high salaries with their tokens.