It is a line in the sand and it could beach the travel plans of more than 1.5 million people. It was placed there Thursday by
Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113 chief Bob Kinnear, as a direct challenge to the TTC and City Hall.
His warning: a strike will shut down the Red Rocket at 4am Monday if a settlement isn't finalized by a weekend deadline. "We will continue to bargain and we hope that we will get an offer by 4pm on Sunday that we can recommend to our members," Kinnear intones. "If no such offer is forthcoming, we will begin to notify our members not to show up for their scheduled shifts."
It's the culmination of a threat that's been a long time coming. Negotiations have been going on since last month and his nearly 9,000 members have been without a contract since April 1st.
Kinnear is clear that talks have not been going well and as we approach the bottom of the ninth in this game of pitch and toss, he's throwing a final out pitch: let Mayor David Miller return from his trip to China and get involved in the talks or face a crippling walkout that will shut down every TTC subway train, bus and streetcar in the city.
There are several sticking points that appear to be holding up a settlement and while some of them are concrete, a few seem more amorphous. Here's a look at what stands between you and your ride to work next week:
Wages
One of the main stumbling blocks, as it so often is in these kinds of talks. Kinnear complains his members don't earn as much as their counterparts in other parts of the GTA. And he believes the very nature of working in a populated centre like Toronto makes that unfair.
"We do not object to fellow workers in nearby cities being paid what they are, but driving a street car on Queen Street in Toronto takes a lot more skill than driving a bus on Queen Street in Brampton," he claims. "Even comparing buses to buses, would you rather be paid less for driving a bus on Jane Street in Toronto than you would make driving a bus on Main Street in Brampton?
"Our subway operators obviously have to be highly-skilled to perform their jobs, and they are always at risk of trauma from the tragedy of suicides. Something we don't like to talk about, but, nonetheless, is real. Yet a TTC subway operator now makes less than a Mississauga bus operator."
Benefits
Kinnear believes other city workers get better benefits than his people do and he wants the inequity fixed. "We're also second-class when it comes to health care," he charges. "City workers and their families are treated far better in areas such as dental care, optical and pensions. These gaps are not being seriously addressed by TTC management and so it remains - city workers first-class, TTC workers second-class."
Compensation For Injured Workers
This was the major stumbling block at the start of the talks and while the union boss admits progress has been made, he's still not happy. "We came back to the bargaining table a few weeks ago when management showed a willingness to address this injustice. We are disappointed, to say the least, that this has not been adequately addressed," he explains. "There has been some movement on full compensation for victims of assault, but not for victims of unsafe working conditions."
Currently transit workers who are injured on the job make only 75 per cent of their salary while other city workers get their full pay.
Some believe Kinnear is simply playing politics, trying to force the mayor to step in and resolve things to his members' benefit at the very last minute. But Miller, who's still on a business trip to China and won't be back until Sunday, insists he has no immediate plans to enter the fray.
And he's already let it be known he won't allow a fare hike to pay for everything the union is demanding. "As far as I'm concerned, they should be able to reach an agreement without the intervention of me or of the chair of the TTC for that matter," he states emphatically. "The conditions are all there and I think if both sides act with good will we should be able to settle it."
But history may be on Kinnear's side - Miller stepped in to stop another threatened strike in 2005. And the union apparently believes it can force history to repeat itself. "Everybody knows that the mayor calls the shots when it comes to the TTC settlement," Kinnear believes. "He did so in 2005, and he will again in 2008. There should be a sign on the mayor's desk: 'The bus stops here.'"
TTC Chair Adam Giambrone, who also refused Kinnear's demand
last week to take over the talks, remains optimistic. "I'm not getting involved because I have full confidence in our bargaining team," he assures. "The chair is not the one who should be doing the negotiations. It should be our director of human resources."
In the event of a strike, Giambrone, who doesn't own a car, figures he'll probably ride his bike to City Hall on Monday.
That's not an option that everyone can use, especially those who live a long way from their workplace. The strike would paralyze the city, create all day gridlock and leave 1.5 million riders stranded.
And for now, the clock is ticking. When it goes off before your alarm clock on Monday, it will be an early wake-up call for commuters, who once again are in the middle of a dispute that disrupts their lives and leaves them all stressed up with lots of places to go - and no real way to get there.
- If a strike happens, the ATU won't be walking the line alone. Another local has been in a strike position since April 1st and has vowed its members will also walk out in a show of solidarity. CUPE Local 2 represents nearly 500 TTC electrical, signal and communications workers. "We expect that if ATU and TTC reach an agreement prior to the strike deadline, the commission negotiators will immediately make themselves available to us to resolve our outstanding issues and avert job action," president Mike Santos promised in a statement Thursday.
See unedited video of Kinnear's press conference In The Raw
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Previous TTC Strikes And Lengths
1952: 19 days
1970: 12 days
1974: 23 days, the longest in the system's history
1978: 8 days
1989: Workers stage a slowdown that, while not a strike, severely impinges on service. Strategy includes following every rule to the letter and subways crawling in and out of stations with agonizing slowness. It does little to endear the union to passengers, who take a hostile attitude towards their actions. It lasts 41 days.
1991: 8 days
April 1999: 2 days
May 29, 2006: One-day
wildcat walkout ends with buses running by the afternoon rush hour, but the subway staying shut for the rest of the day.