Calgary Transit workers, Local 583, is making life miserable for Calgarians by using transit customers as strategic pawns in their contract conflict with the City. Admittedly, "Work To Rule" is a very effective tactic, and some unions use it well. Teachers' Unions can cancel after school activities, Postal workers can cause mail to back-up and be delivered late, and other unions can cause some inconvenience. The purpose is to demonstrate that they provide a valuable service, "Work To Rule" serves as a taster of what could come to pass if a strike were to occur.
But transit is a completely different animal. The Transit Union has to take these into account:
(1) Their pawns, transit customers, are heavily numbered with conservative-minded voters. I'm not breaking new political ground by saying that conservatives are not exactly best buddies with unions as a whole. Am I safe in saying that?
(2) They are coming dangerously close to hypocrisy: they want to be seen by the public as essential, but they don't want to be labelled an "Essential Service" by the Province. As you undoubtedly know, Unions providing an "essential service" may not strike.
(3) The pendulum of popular opinion is swinging against the Union. Want evidence? You can talk to some transit users, read the editorial section of your favourite Calgary newspaper, or do a blog search on "Calgary Transit" and see what public opinion is. Another tidbit: Ipsos-Reid recently surveyed Calgarians: 69% thought transit strikes should be banned (note that very few of the respondants were actual regular transit users).
But you seem like a good bunch of guys and gals, so I'll help you out. Here's what you do.
What you do is you push it a bit further. On Thursday, you're going to get another deal tabled. What you do is you take that deal, then you proceed straight to the media with a sad face, like your puppy was just run over, and say (write this down):
"Its a sad day for our Union. Because we have the best interest of our users at heart, we thought they've been put through enough. We feel we are forced to take this inadequate offer on behalf of Calgarians." Then after this you offer a stern warning that you won't be so kind the next time around. Don't say it quite like that, sugar it up a bit. Try to look like the good guy, because there's alot of people that want to squash your right to strike like a bug.
Trust me on this. I'm not just a transit user, but also a union member.
5 comments:
"squash your right to strike like a bug"
wow harsh words... simple but true words. There doesn't seem to be alot of patience for the union worker striking for more pay when if they would stop and realize how much it costs them to do it.
Can you ever really monetarily recover from a 'strike', who makes up the pay you lose? What about the respect that is lost?
Seems like way more losses than wins here...
-hmmm .... now doesn't that sound familiar...
To get a glimpse of their culture, check out their website:
http://www.atu583.com/
What kind of tone do you see? A collaborative one? An open, ready-to-discuss issues one?
Didn't they just have a strike like 4 or 5 years ago? (2002?)
Those greedy bastards just want to suck the life out of the community they serve. I bet at the table discussions, their argument is that Calgary is growing so fast, Oil&Gas money everywhere, high inflation, blah blah blah...
Well, everyone else who lives/works in Calgary has exactly the same thing to deal with! At the end of the day, you're still just a bus driver... that task has not become more complex, harder, more taxing, physical, mentalling straining, than is was 4 years ago, and 4 years before that, and...
Greed is a b1tch, man.
I'd be curious if most members could afford another strike so soon after the last one. The Union Executive still get paid during a strike, so they are the one's who are usually so "gung-ho".
This city cannot withstand a transit strike. We've already got road-ragers all over the place stuck in traffic—imagine adding all the abandoned transit users to the road? If the transit union walks out they should just keep on going.
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