Transit Strike Over

At last. At long last. On Thursday April 12th the City and the transit union finally came to agreement. They started regular service on the following day.

As near as I can tell, what the union got was not as good as the deal they turned down near the beginning of the strike. The language around shuttle usage is no longer in the collective agreement, but is in a letter of understanding. So what did they stay out for? It certainly wasn't the pay. Maybe there's something in the subtleties of the shift work details that made it worthwhile.

Meanwhile, every Calgarian was at least inconvenienced, except the chauffeur driven Mayor Al Duerr, and some endured massive disruption or financial hardship. Even the taxi drivers hated it. They want to get their customer to the destination and get onto the next customer. They don't particularly make money sitting in traffic. Everybody did a lot of sitting in traffic, waiting. Traffic has been getting worse as the city grows; everybody expects that. We understand and accept that traffic is temporarily worsened during road construction or repairs. But it wasn't surprising to have travel times double, any time of day, anywhere in the city. Even out of the way routes were clogged.

I don't know if we'll ever find out the full financial costs. They're supposed to tell us, but any city accountant involved will first be charged with covering management's ass, and presenting the costs in a city acceptable way. The taxi voucher scheme was a scam from the get-go. They were paying a contractor to shuttle people from several parking lots. Lets not even get into discussing that issue, but suffice it to say that it would have been quicker to walk. Some parking lots were opened as "free parking", but we suspect that the city was paying the owners of the parking lots. Some of the city owned lots had reduced rates, so there was a loss of revenue there. The billboard buses weren't running, so there was a loss of advertising revenue. People that had purchased bus passes were given prorated refunds. The people that operate the little kiosks in the LRT stations could well have been driven into bankruptcy. After all, the city would probably still charge them rent, but the stations were locked. Even the pro-business Labour Relations Board found that the city has been misrepresenting costs, so there is reason to doubt any city-produced figure. Given all this, the city's books should be reviewed by a reputable external auditor, and a report made to the taxpayers.

We still haven't heard if the Mayor is going to run for reelection this fall. I hope he does so we have the pleasure of voting him out of office. There's been massive incompetence throughout the city organization; mostly at the senior administration levels, but also at the elected council level for letting things get away from them. It seems that the actual legal employer is not city council, but Dale Stanway, an appointed official. Where is the accountability to the electorate that supplies the tax money?

We need a fresh new council to go through this whole issue and send the appropriate heads bouncing into the scuppers. This whole affair has been a disgrace from start to finish. I can't wait for the next union to give up waiting for the city to start good faith negotiations on their overdue contract. The cops are overdue, but are in a binding arbitration process, since they are forbidden to strike. Local 38's contract expires at the end of 2001, and I think that Local 37's expired at the end of 2000. Just what we need. A strike by the outside workers during Stampede, or during winter.