David Topping at the Torontoist has a good post about the need for people to embrace the TTC and work for positive changes rather than using the current labour situation, including the “million dollar” campaign, as an excuse to bash both the TTC and its employees indiscriminately.
As I’ve said in a preceding post, I think that the million dollar campaign is weak on details, and many have commented on how it makes the union (and its members) look bad by inflating their worth. One huge gap in the analysis is that it omits the value of the billions invested in transit infrastructure without which the ATU members would not have jobs and all of the economic activity they claim for themselves would, theoretically, never have happened. I and all of my readers helped pay for those investments through taxes at all levels, and if we’re going to shut down the TTC, I want my money back.
For its part, the TTC continues to struggle with low-balling the complexity of fixing long-standing problems with service and maintenance, or even of admitting that these problems exist. Politicians, even those who are strong supporters of transit, don’t want to hear that there is so much more to be done with money that isn’t in anyone’s budget.
This may sound like a broken record, but much of what has been achieved in the past decade came from pressure on the TTC to tell us what it could do, not what it couldn’t. The ideas of actually improving service, rebalancing fares and stimulating ridership came because we concentrated on improving the system.
We need more advocacy from within the TTC and City Council, detailed information on the actual state of the system and on what can be done to improve it. Some changes — better service for one — are finally on the street, but there’s a lot more to do. Let’s concentrate on making the transit system much, much better.
Steve Munro 
The ATU has lost a lot of respect during that wildcat strike. Even the leftist Eye and Now magazines railed on the union (and only the union) for this act, I presume it was because their employees relied on the TTC to get to their offices and therefore to have this stunt pulled on them was not fun. Especially for lefties of all stripes.
I took the subway earlier in the weekend to attend a symphony event, and I ran across the $12 billion campaign on several subway cars and station posters. While my fiancee and I agree that the purpose of this is ad campaign is to persuade the three levels of government to invest more in transit (and therefore lining their pockets), we also agree that this smacks of union narcissism that is prevalent within the labour force (i.e.: “We’re Union Workers, We can do Everything, and Much better than the non-unionized goons do”). Already the feedback of this ad campaign at her downtown office is negative as a lot of people, who are also TTC commuters as well, see this as the same “self serving attitude” that they see in all public sector labour unions. The consensus here is that the campaign is only going to lower an already low opinion of TTC Workers.
I hope the union realizes that they are doing nothing to improve their public image rather than shooting themselves in the foot. The timing of this ad campaign already exposes their motives. If this came after they received a new contract then the campaign would receive a more positive light, but for now, the union should not be surprised if they and the public do not see eye-to-eye on this subject.
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Why is it that our workforce and what we make strikes fear in the hearts of people.
Tell me when you buy your homes and see the prices go up and up do you sit in your office and complain about the workers who put up the home? Do you realize how much they make? Home builders’ ads are everywhere.
How much real debate do you get into about how much gas companies make. Sure you probably grumble a bit than you move on. Yet there are hundreds of ads about gasoline, yet you don’t sit around the office and specifically talk about it. I base this opinion on the fact at my workplaces which I judge as average we don’t talk about it.
We are drivers. Any decisions made on how the system is run and it’s shortcomings are made strictly by non unionized management.
Our workers make on par or less with major cities in the GTA or Canada. Mississauga and Vancouver operators make more. Brampton, Montreal and Oshawa are on par. Why they even recently had a job fair for Calgary transit who are pretty close to what we make and they were overwhelmed with the response.
If our ad so offends you, your fiance and her coworkers [can] do what I do when something I don’t like comes on TV, I change the channel.
We’re tired of this attitude because we’re public service workers that it gives people the right to attack us. You know we pay the SAME taxes that everyone else does.
Steve: Note that I will not entertain any further tit-for-tat exchanges in this thread (and even removed one from the above comment).
To Dave R: I will digest your long comment when I have time. You are not being censored.
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No problem – (and my spouse agrees!)
To comment on what Mr. Rocco has written:
(1) In terms of paying the same taxes as everyone else – you do have the advantage that we others (via the TTC) are paying your health tax.
(2) There’s no rule that says people will be paid the same in all cities – and there’s nothing to say that because city x workers get more than you that they aren’t being overpaid.
(3) There are plenty of people looking at moving to Calgary – and many already have. It’s not just that there are economic advantages in what they get after taxes – it’s partly because they don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel here in Toronto.
Especially young professionals looking at where they can have a successful and financially rewarding career are looking to get out. This happenned starting the late ’80s and accelerated into the early ’90s. People were seeing their earning power whacked by big hikes in their income taxes – with no end in sight. At my employer at the time. we had a good-bye lunch every week or so for a talented young professional (mainly engineers, HR specialists and computer scientists) leaving for Alberta, Houston etc.
My point is that there is a lot of pressure on the Ontario economy today – it reminds [me] of the late 80’s. (The big kicker will be replacing the power plants that Ontario Hydro ran into the ground prematurely in the early ’90s.)
I’m not adverse to spending more on transit – I’m not adverse to you making a good living. However, we’ve got to get more out of this spending than it likes like the last decade has yielded.
At the end of the day, if people’s taxes go up and they see that there are new and useful services being provided, people will be likely to be happy. If it all goes into higher wages and higher staffing, people with mobility will sit down with their families after dinner one evening and decide that Toronto isn’t holding a good future for them.
Steve: High wages in boom towns are no more a gauge of whether the engineers, etc., who move there are actually worth their salt than union pay in the GTA. Just look at the huge problem with the construction industry triggered by the combination of Alberta’s boom and the Olympics in BC.
I believe that right wingers refer to this as “market forces” where goods and services that can command a good price get it. Frankly, I hope to live long enough to see Calgary flat on its ass, but what’s more likely is that all of Alberta will be turned into a polluted cesspool thanks to the tar sands while Calgarians laugh at we poor suckers who have to pay taxes rather than just digging holes in the ground.
As for the health tax, give it a rest. It was awarded to the ATU members by arbitration thanks to the wording of their existing contract. You do believe in contracts, don’t you, or is this a new conservative philosophy I haven’t seen before?
And please — HR specialists — they should all move to Alberta and sink into the tar ponds. If ever there was a class of overpaid “professionals” whose true value to most organizations is worse than useless, it’s them.
(Sorry for the rant, gentle readers, but there are times that I, like Rocco, get a bit tired of the sanctimonious outpourings of the anti-union, anti-tax crowd.)
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Thanks Steve — what Dave should be concerned with is the thousands and thousands of dollars of his (taxpayers) money that the TTC wasted in arbitration right up to the Supreme Court of Canada.
Simple EASY to read language that was in our Collective Agreement since the 70s.
This is what we in all Unions refer to as the “jealousy factor”, rather than fight a way for themselves to get certain benefits, people would rather dump on anyone else who has it. I wonder Dave did you enjoy your stat holiday this week?
Tell me if Unions didn’t press governments to get this family time in our collective agreements do you think your bosses would have given it to you and anyone else for that matter.
Like you said Steve you gotta love these right wingers, what it’s more akin to jealous rants.
Do yourself a favour Dave stand up for better working conditions for yourself and your co workers, instead of criticizing others.
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Pardon me, but now I’m getting sick and tired of this “anti-right-wing” bias here.
Jealousy? I think not. As mentioned in another thread, while unions were quite necessary in the last century, they were to fight for rights afforded to mostly non-unionized workers. This is because of the huge gap between non-unionized and unionized workers in which the conditions for unionized workers were downright deplorable. To its credit the unions of the heyday did a good job (and then some) to bring working conditions up to such a level that to most unionized workforces, they take for granted. However, many people now think that unionized workforces appear to be asking too much for their own good. How much can an entity afford to satisfy the union’s thirst for more before they go broke?
Of course this leads to my second subject: economics. Why is it that the Big Three auto makers are having so much trouble these days? Two words: labour overhead. Compared to the import automakers, the costs per worker are much higher here than over there, and they are just as well paid as the Big Three. And why do people buy imports anyway? Because the quality of the vehicles is a lot better in imports than in domestics. So if the Big Three have to pay more for an inferior product, what’s wrong with this picture?
Leading back to the TTC, the city’s finances are stretched thin (thanks to mostly the other levels of government). The more the ATU asks for, the more the strain on the city’s finances. While I would like nothing more than for more stable funding from the Provs and the Feds (which in turn would more than satisfy your bargaining requests), you have to realize that in the end, someone is going to have to pay for it. And unfortunately, this usually means through some form of taxation or fare increase, neither of which most Torontonians would like.
Do I like my $52K job? It pays my bills. It gives me interesting benefits I would not have dreamed of. Do you have benefits such as car allowances, gym memberships, emergency travel funds and the like? How about a dollar-for-dollar RRSP? These are the reasons why I stay here in the first place. Do I want more? Of course I do, but I would most likely have to leave this company to get more. Will I ask them for a raise? I already did, and we’ll see what they offer me before I decide my next step.
But really, my friends say I have the best perks possible despite my low salary. You really don’t need union representation for these perks.
Steve: A few observations. First, people buy imported cars not necessarily because they are better built, but because they are better designed including little things like fuel mileage. While the big three cling to a model that focuses on high-end gas guzzlers that need to be replaced frequently, the foreign companies (who couldn’t sell a fleet like that “at home” if they tried) build cars people actually want to buy and which are designed to be more reliable “out of the box”. That’s got nothing to do with unionized work forces and everything to do with a failed business strategy.
Next, although you as an individual may be able to negotiate for better compensation, working conditions, benefits, etc., this is at least partly possible because you and your work are individually identifiable. This is not practical for thousands of operators and mechanics, and indeed any sort of merit pay scheme for large organizations invariably becomes fouled up with nepotism and ass-kissing. In my own shop (which has union staff), we have an ongoing problem that those who are working on high-profile projects that attract management’s attention are praised disproportionately to those whose regular job and hours of (paid) overtime keep the systems running. We have been through a few rounds of job evaluations, and big problem is that the skills associated with technical jobs in IT or in Engineering are not recognized as being as relatively important as soft skills like (surprise!) running an HR department.
Large organizations, public and private, wrestle with these issues.
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Unfortunately for Stephen Cheung’s latest assertions, auto workers in Japan are unionized. Just a couple of weeks ago, Toyota agreed to a $24K annual bonus demanded by its union. Yes, the North American “big three” have pension problems, but the biggest source of car imports (Japan, Germany) are not low-wage, low-benefit environments. The shifts in the competitive landscape have causes that aren’t nearly so black-and-white.
Also, I’d point out that most employee benefits (including all the ones he mentioned) can be purchased privately. If you’re being underpaid by $10K to keep access to $5K worth of benefits, your employer is getting a great deal at your expense.
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I didn’t bring up the wages in other cities and wanting to move because of them – or the health tax – that was Mr. Rocco. People are not just moving to Alberta.
It’s a bit simplistic – to say that you want to send the HR specialists away – these are the people who help negotiate benefits packages with providers. I’m sure there are people who cast aspersions on the value of your work – as an IT person I believe you mentioned.
It’s knee jerk to rant against Alberta – do you really know much about the oil sands projects? Ontario and especially Quebec have used their northern regions to harvest econmic resources – which have changed large areas of the environment too.
When 50-60 thousand professionals leave a province over a roughly half a decade – it’s not healthy for the province’s competitiveness.
There are “better working conditions” in terms of vacation and working hours in many European countries – including France, Spain & Germany – that have lower rates of unionization than Ontario and Canada. Technology and efficiency allow improved quality in these areas rather than unions.
Steve: I know it’s a knee-jerk rant. I just felt that I as host who get to read all of this (including the parts that don’t get published) was entitled to a little rant of my own. One point about the oil sands (and the energy sector generally) is that smug Albertans have low taxes not because their business model is nherently superior, but because there is a worldwide demand for what they have in the ground. Ontario has resources, but not in as much demand relative to the money they might bring in through royalties and the overall fiscal needs of the province.
Europe has a long history of union activity some of which, notably in England, was bound up in class warfare and an absolute refusal to deal with the death of old industries. In France, the railway system was shut down by a nationwide strike. Yes, there are unions in Europe. Are they too powerful? Who am I to say, but Europe hasn’t gone bust because of them. As for technology and efficiency, nothing is stopping us from implementing these in Canada but a reticence to invest in new production methods without getting a big handout from the government.
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Just to follow-on a bit on what Mr. Rocco has written.
Firstly, I enjoyed my long weekend – thanks.
2nd – I’m not the one ranting – it’s a fact that people are leaving the province at a high rate. The are doing it for much the same reason as you will likely strike against the TTC next week – you want to get ahead/stay ahead in economic terms. Don’t fault engineers with masters degrees with 6 or 7 years of university training for moving to make a better living. You have the same M.O. in your talks with the TTC.
3rd – this has nothing to do with jealousy for me. (Just curious – would you consider that TTC workers ‘not wanting to fall behind’ those in Mississauga and Brampton constitutes jealousy.)
We’re losing about 15,000 people a year to interprovincial migration – I guess at least 2/3 of these have university education – say 4 years (probably really more on average. Per year, university education costs (full cost) about $15,000 per year.
If 10,000 university grads leave the province each year for 4 years, this works out to:
4 years * 10,000 grads/year * 4 year program * $15,000 / year
= $2.4 billion in human capital leaving the province
(enough to run the University of Western Ontario for 5 or 6 years.)
That’s before the negative impact to the productivity of corporations and organizations is taken into account.
Steve: This entire analysis ignores the question of whether the migration is caused by a contraction of the “old economy” jobs in Ontario at a time when various industries are booming in the west, as opposed to people driven away because tax policies and working conditions in Ontario force them out. You cannot ascribe 15K/year migration to our tax system or the effect of unions.
A similar problem, at the other end of the economic scale, afflicts Atlantic Canada where there simply aren’t enough fish to support economies that were already not as strong as those in central Canada. People migrated west because that’s where the jobs were, and unions had nothing to do with it.
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Matt: The statements I made were based on conversations that I had with two friends who formerly worked at the Daimler-Chrysler plant in Brampton several years ago. They left their jobs due to issues they had with their union, not company management (issues that I will not get around here). I appreciate your correction, but the point was not that the import automakers are not low-wage low-benefit environments.
Also for your $10K for $5K assertion, you don’t know the half of it. For starters, I contributed about $4000 towards my RRSP. My company provided their own contribution of $4000 as well. The Car allowance that I get can also be used to purchase a new car at my discretion, I get $500/month (they keep track of what I do not use so I can use that towards my car purchase). All told, it adds up to $10K of extra benefits. Our company has about 10,000 employees worldwide. I’ve heard of bigger companies with even bigger benefits than mine.
Steve: Through conversations with the two former Daimler-Chrysler (now Chrysler on its own), they informed me of certain things. For starters, despite the fact that the Import autoworkers are being paid as much, if not more than the Big Three, the actual cost-per-employee is still less, and substantially. Whether or not these other import automakers are union represented, I am unsure. Either way, one of the topics that came up is innovation, or rather lack of it. The former D-C workers contend that part of the reason why the Big Three cannot innovate is because the budgets for R&D departments are quite low. Their beef is that apparently D-C cannot afford to increase the R&D budget because their costs are already so high, with non-management budgets already lean as it is. They point the finger at the high cost per unionized employee at each of their plants. This does not mean they want wage cuts, but they believe that the costs of unionization must have something to do with it.
On this final point I wholeheartedly agree. But with a twist: I read about two single-factory towns in the States suing I believe it is the Communications, Electricians, and Paperworkers union because of one very simple fact: their factories were previously non-unionized, and when someone came up with the bright idea of union representation, their first contract demanded much more than the company running the factory could afford, so it was shut down. The factories themselves paid its workers quite well before unionization but it is apparent that the cost of unionization was too much to bear, and now the two towns have no industry to employ its citizens.
The whole point is that it is possible to pay its employees well without a union. Dofasco was one of them, and I refer to its Wikipedia article: “While several unsuccessful attempts have been made to organize by the United Steelworkers of America, union negotiations at Stelco have influenced wages and benefits at Dofasco.” By doing so, any company does not have to deal with the expensive costs of unionization. If the TTC were to upgrade its management practices so that they would not need to have a union, it would save a whole lot of money, money that could be used for better service. But I will digress and say that this is nothing more than a pipe dream.
Steve: Getting rid of the ATU (or any other union) does not automatically roll back the cost base the TTC has unless everybody takes a big cut in pay and benefits. This doesn’t fit your model.
The problem in the auto industry (and this is a North American issue, not just an Ontario one) is the extremely generous pension benefits. Remember that the US model had far lower social benefits for seniors than Canada, and having a really good pension plan was and still is a vital concern south of the border. The Big Three were more than happy to fund this because it made for worker loyalty (gotta keep that pension) and money was rolling in the door. Then that little problem of “competition” crept in with a work force that didn’t have the huge overhang of pension benefits.
A related financial problem for our whole industrial and commercial society has been underfunding of pensions. When times were good, companies operated on the pay-as-you-play basis, and even managed in some years to have current employees’ pension contributions totally fund the current expenditures. However, as work forces aged and downsized, the draw on benefits went up and the revenue stream went down.
If pensions had been fully funded from day one (something many companies are still struggling to achieve), money would have been diverted from profits into the pension plan in a location beyond the reach of bankruptcy actions. The auto industry preferred dividends to fully funding its liabilities, and wound up right where they are today. There is a parallel in rust belt companies that failed to reinvest in their physical plant and then complained about competition from newer plants with lower production costs. I still remember touring the last working open hearth steel mill in Pittsburgh in the 70s — it was amazing to see, but an indictment of the mismanagement of the industry.
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The point of the rough analysis is that Ontario has a competiveness problem at present – an one that won’t go away anytime soon.
Yes – part of this is that equalization favours non-renewable resource producing provinces. (The formula was recently changed to include 50% of these revenues in weighting the provincal revenue in the equalization formula – which has been a huge political issue.) Equalization is built into the Canadian constitution – so adding this to the political pressures – we’re likely going to have to keep living with it.
Demand for resources is increasely driven from India, China etc. – so this factor isn’t going away anytime soon either in terms of keeping the Canadian $ at the level it is.
This means that Ontario needs to be very aggressive in looking at how it can compete – or our key human resources will migrate away. This is no different than those old steel companies whose management you’d like to indict – you can’t ignore the economic environment.
(Note – The US Social Security benefits for retirees are actually substantially higher than the CPP/OAS combined.)
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