Massive transit strike in Toronto

[jetman]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl.../BNStory/Front
Should be fun!
Looks like I'll be rollerblading 18.1 km to and from work. No way I'm idling my car in traffic for 3 hours to get to work.

[SAABotaged900S]

We're having a huge transit strike here too. Our buses, the Bee-Line system is owned by Westchester County and contracted drivers from Liberty Lines, their contract expired in early March of this year, and the union (Transit Workers Union 100) for the LL drivers walked off the job. Currently the stirke I believe is in the 35th day. Over 55,000 daily riders are stranded, and very few people who took the buses substitued the car for a bus, so the arranged park-and-ride carpool system is useless. The problem is we have no other transit system besides Metro-North, and that's a commuter railroad, so stations aren't in walking distance from each other and only serve the main communities. The buses serve the North Bronx and all over Westchester county, which is a rather large county. For example, in the entire county, there are 4 Interstates (87, 95, 287, 684), 6 parkways (Saw Mill, Taconic, Sprain Brook, Hutchinson River, Bronx River, and Cross County), 3 mainlines for the railroad, and 57 Bee-Line bus routes, and has an airport.
A federal mediator has been brought in to try to end this strike, but the union is sticking to the age of retirement. Currently bus drivers can only retire at 62 with full benefits and without penalties, but the drivers want to retire at age 57 without penalty and with full benefits. They have been training new drivers, and in the past 3 or 4 days, about 45 striking bus drivers have been arrested for disorderly conduct because they blocked the training buses trying to exit the facility. The strike has hurt the local economy, people can't get to work, and people can't get to the malls, kids can't get to school, and the police have to make sure that taxi drivers aren't gouging prices for their customers and they are giving police escorts to buses hired by the county for the elderly (for the protection of the drivers and passengers against the strikers)
I hope these driver's get their stuff settled, it's been a pain for everyone to get around.

[duck_man]

Unions suck. They're probably already overpaid but it's never enough when you're in a union! They probably want 34 coffee breaks every four hours, instead of 27.

[jetman]

I doubt their over paid. I think the most they can earn is about $18 an hour, which is not enough to support yourself in this city, let alone a family. It wont last long, they'll legislate them back to work in a few days.

[SaabKen]

Oy, this is bringing back bad memories for me, when in 2001, I was personally caught in a walkout (at the time, I worked as a transit service planner which gave me no choice but to be in the office/professional union that sympathized with the bus drivers union) that lasted 4 months, the longest Canadian transit strike on record. Soon after the strike was over, my job was moved out of the union and the rest was history. I rose quickly up through the ranks since becoming exempt, something I never would have been able to do had I stayed even in a professional union where seniority rules.

[Si]

I think Unions need to tread a very fine line as they're on there way out, the biggest blessing business has had in the last few years are employment agy's, agy staff have very little rights and it easy to get rid of them at the drop of a hat. Sooner or later most of us will be employed by an agy, then I guess you'll see a rise in Unions associated with the Agy's rather than employers.

Also if you take a prime example over here....Rover at Longbridge......during the 70's there was massive strike action and very little production, most of which was badly floored so the name was dragged through the dirt, no one would buy one cos they fell apart/needed constant attention, now look at the business, just gone into Administration, have'nt made a profit as a company in 17 years or something like that, it's easy to destroy a companies rep, very hard to improve it.

[Viscouse]

Strike averted! Whoohoo!

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...transit+strike

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...transit+strike

[jetman]

Yeah, I was sort of looking forward to the chaos though