Thank goodness what's happening in Wisconsin could never happen here

[james_davis_nicoll]

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty's government introduced legislation Tuesday afternoon that will strip unionized TTC workers of the right to strike.

Comments

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

I don't theoretically have a problem with certain sectors being designated as an "essential service", as long as there are very strict and functional guidelines that go along with that designation that help to address the issues and concerns employees might have going forward.

A huge portion of the labour economy is not unionized, without the protections and guarantees and assistance that belonging to a union might provide. Does the software industry need unionization? It's not clear to me that it does (or does not).

And we also have existing sectors that are already working under this type of designation, so presumably we have a model for how to address transit workers' issues and concerns going forward. How well these systems works is open to discussion, of course, but it's not at all clear to me that a workers' union is a pie-in-the-sky-all-things-are-good solution either.

At the very least, I would hope that Dalton's legislation has very careful transition planning in place that would address these kind of questions. But wishes are fishes, really.

[(Anonymous)]

Does the software industry need unionization?

Judging by the hours that the software programmers I know work and the abuse that is piled on them by their managers, I'd say yes.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

I've worked in the software industry for almost two decades now. It seems to me that, for the most part, the hours worked by most of the software professionals I know were worked voluntarily. Now "voluntarily" is not a binary situation: in many cases, strong pressure was placed upon them to "go above and beyond" for "this particular release" or whatever. In some cases, these really were exceptional circumstances; in some cases, these were circumstances that became frequent because of managerial incompetence within the company.

However, I think if you balance this kind of "you're a professional, so come in and work on the weekend" against the kind of compensation that most software professionals are offered, it evens out.

Is this exploitation? I'm not sure the answer is a simple one. In some cases, certainly companies are taking advantage of employees who are too willing (through a variety of circumstances, including naivete, job protection, and other things) to be taken advantage of. In other cases, companies are justified in saying "we pay you well to compensate you for the times we require you to give greater than usual effort in order for the company to meet its commitments".

Generally speaking it seems to me that high-tech companies that treat its employees fairly and well tend to become successful havens where employees tend to migrate. Companies that exploit their employees in one fashion or another generally seem to end up with high-turnover, and this gets reflected on the bottom line with an eventual hampering on their ability to do business, and the death spiral plays out its dreaded effect.

That still doesn't stop the attitude: lately I heard (by hearsay) that a VP I once worked for said, in corporate-public (i.e. to a group of employees), "If you're expecting to work from 9 to 5, then you should go work in a bank." The implication being, I suppose, that your compensation (or range of potential compensation, and there lies part of the rub) is superior in the high-tech industry because you're an "industry professional" who must, from time to time, get set such extra tasks as the company determines are necessary. That doesn't stop this statement from being a morale-crushing gaffe on the VPs part (if it was in fact said the way it was, and in the company I heard it was), though, in my opinion.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

I think I should further comment on what I mean by "there lies the rub" with respect to "potential compensation". It is not lost on me that the whole "we pay you better in this industry" is, to a certain extent, a rhetorical canard. What in fact ends up happening is that an increasingly smaller portion of the workforce is rewarded by being compensated in an out-sized fashion with respect to most of the workforce. And, in a largely unregulated environment, working one's way up the pyramid can be based on some extremely shaky metrics that might say they have something to do with corporate contributions, but in actual fact might have nothing much to do with "adding to the company's bottom line".

As a result, it becomes extremely questionable to use this "increased compensation" as a carrot to payoff the "you must work harder stick". In the end, it becomes a vicious lottery. To have some chance at getting better compensation, you might choose to give up more and more of your personal life to throw at the corporation in the hopes of greater reward and advancement as a "team player" and a "top performer".

To me, this kind of rhetorical game is indeed a form of exploitation and a pernicious one. But it's also not clear to me that unionizing would solve this problem: it might just replace one set of performance standards (largely arbitrary) with another set (tenure, for example?) So I'm not sure this form of exploitation is necessarily unique to the high-tech industry, or non-unionized white collar professions.

[nicosian.livejournal.com]

My husband works IT, and companies used to gobble his time as if they were freely entitled. anything less, and when it came to crunch time, you'd be out. having had lots of friends who also work in IT where its crushing hours then out on your ass when the crunch is over, I think maybe some kind of unionizing is a good thing.Exploitive? not overtly, but certainly could be considered so.

Interestingly, when my husband joined the IT team of a major bank, they have normal hours,OT pay, benefits, bonuses and treat staff with respect that almost 2 years in, we still pinch ourselves, "can this be real?"

And yeah, companies that treat staff like crap tend to see much higher turnover. His previous job led people on with the "no raises for you peons," long after he'd left.

But then I sort of suspect that some companies pay considerable lip service to "staff are an asset" and instead repeatedly think staff are merely expendable when the mood suits.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Saying "staff are an asset" is precariously close to saying "staff are a fungible good". Ironically, it seems that so many organizations mean precisely not to seem to say the latter when they say the former. But simply by saying the former they logically imply the latter. Marketing speak for the win. Again.

[nicosian.livejournal.com]

true. I'm just talking casually here, not in a strictly exact academic/business thinking sense.

Lets call it for lack of better word to come to mind, ok?

I have people work for me on occasion and I damn WELL know that without them I'm working even harder on my own, ( basically forgoing breaks of any kind) and it flummoxes me that places I've worked for think that perpetually squeezing more labor out of people is the key.I don't ask people to do work that i wouldn't do myself. Asset in the way that without them, I'm working an event for 10 hours with no food or bathroom breaks. Asset because they help my booth not get shoplifted senseless when its busy. Asset because they keep company. I don't think its a hassle or a "if I didn't have to have staff, I'd have bigger profits!" Sure it would, but it makes for a less pleasant event for me too.

Having worked myself for companies that walked the walk, its night and day from the companies that just acted like "if ONLY we didn't have to have people, the business would run better' crap.

the height of it for me was a boss begging for double shifts, (16 hrs, over night) on short notice, and then giving me the riot act for being short 2 bucks at the end of the night, or the ones asking me to stay till 11pm, and be back at work at 6 am. I did so believing this made me look like a team player, and a go getter. All it got me was more grief.

which is why I work for myself now.I'm not interested in working for companies who can't be bothered to treat people like human beings. fortunately i have the liberty now of choosing that. Lots of people don't.

In the case of TTC, perhaps people see the unions as sheltering less stellar employees, but the working conditions are crap, and they take more abuse than we'd like to think. I've been through long transit strikes, and this won't upset my life, but I support any worker's right to demand better conditions. I've done it myself, not in striking, but in making sure the damn labor code is enforced. ( and won, both times.)

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Thank you for that.

[auriaephiala.livejournal.com]

Well said.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

It's reminiscent of the Dilbert cartoon in which the PHB explains that employees are the company's primary asset, that like most assets they depreciate over time, and that they can now pick up their Certificates of Depreciation.

Human Resources

[niall-shapero.livejournal.com]

We wouldn't call them human resources if we didn't think we could strip mine them...

:-)

Software Engineering and Unions

[niall-shapero.livejournal.com]

Those who do not have power will be exploited. Those who have power will typically exploit those who do not. If there are no unions, then we will end up going back to the way things were in the 19th century. The existance of unions tends to protect all workers, although everyone can come up with individual incidents of union abusive behavior.

(As background, I've been an engineer, a manager, and a lead engineer - the latter two categories for 17 of the last 25 years, and I've been in software engineering for 34 years).

[jsburbidge.livejournal.com]

The counterpoint to this seems to be the Quebec Crown Attorneys (recently ordered back to work after a strike):

"The imposed settlement, which also covers about 1,000 other government lawyers on strike, is especially hard for the prosecutors to swallow because they had never sought the right to strike. During negotiations in 2003, the prosecutors requested binding arbitration, but instead the government imposed the right to strike. They exercised the right for the first time on Feb. 8, and after two weeks on the picket line – during which essential services continued to be offered — they were ordered back to work."

The worst of all possible worlds -- and it has happened with the TTC before -- is to have the putative right to strike but regularly have legislated back-to-work conditions which impose settlements below those which would be granted by arbitrators. The Quebec settlement seems to be particularly egregious given the gap between Crown salaries there and elsewhere, the lack of support, and the resulting difficulties recruiting new prosecutors.

[realinterrobang.livejournal.com]

This is the kind of thing I'm afraid of with the TTC and other transit companies around the province. I'm in the same boat as anton_p_nym; we both live in the same city, and we both had to deal with a lengthy transit strike. I was pretty sympathetic to the strikers, though.

I also think Rob Ford needs to eat several bags of dicks and I'm not surprised that the TTC is striking now, considering that if Ford had his way, there most likely wouldn't be any public transit in Toronto anymore.

[jsburbidge.livejournal.com]

They aren't currently striking; this legislation is an advance blow before the agreement comes up for renegotiation later this year.

I've lived through several (at least 3) TTC strikes and survived.

I'm ambivalent about the category of "essential service" when it's expressed in purely economic terms (I was never a big Law and Economics fan). There's a whole range of private domains which have few enough players (worldwide) that a cessation of services would have a serious impact on a lot of people (manufacturing of certain medicines, for example, or medical isotopes); but they aren't regulated in the way "essential services" are. "Markets always correct", but they take their own sweet time doing so, and people get hurt in the interim.

Like many other Rob Ford moves, this is a knee-jerk and not thoroughly thought out move. Its likely effect will be to give him an extra charge against his budget for the next few years.

[joenotcharles.livejournal.com]

My definition of "essential service" is "do people die if this group strikes"? Doctors, firemen - obviously. Policemen - less obviously, but probably. The TTC - no.

[dlacey.livejournal.com]

A lot of people can't get into work though and therefore don't get paid. Usually these are the people that can least afford to lose wages.

[joenotcharles.livejournal.com]

Do they die?

[dlacey.livejournal.com]

Not being able to pay rent or feed your children? That's nothing? People commit suicide over less.

[joenotcharles.livejournal.com]

I didn't ask, "Is that nothing?" I asked, "Do they die?"

So if you're saying that transit strikes drive people to suicide, I guess transit workers are essential. I'd like to see some actual statistics on how common that is, though.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

Suicide? Not often.

However, it does interfere with patient health; many elderly with low incomes rely upon public transit to reach primary care physicians or treatment clinics. The loss of Wheeltrans in particular leaves folks in desperate straits.

I was lucky; I didn't have any chronic or life-threatening illnesses, and was in reasonably good physical condition. I could afford to take cabs and carpool to reach work during our month-long transit strike. (Though I spent more on cabs during the strike than I did on transit for the next five months.) I didn't miss doctor or dentist appointments (though I likely would have had to reschedule a few had the strike lasted longer) and I was within walking distance of my grocery store and pharmacy.

Let me put this in automotive terms; a transit strike is as limiting for transit riders as if workers picketed the driveway of every commuter.

-- Steve still doesn't know what the right balance is on this issue, but thinks it's far less straightforward than a knee-jerk "solidarity forever" or "fire 'em and hire a new batch" reaction.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

That last point about Ford's preferences on public transit I find particularly chilling these days.

[jwgh]

Meanwhile, the superintendent of the city I live in just decided to give every single teacher a pink slip for budgetary reasons.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Uggh. Yeah, i heard about this, and I heard rumblings from friends in the US teaching profession that these kinds of tactics were going to become more and more common. 8(

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

We used to have that in Ontario, with some boards. They'd fire everyone in June, and hire back those they needed in September. That was eventually ruled illegal, but it took a long time.

With the Tories likely getting in, I suspect that the next 4-8 years will be pretty brutal for public education in Ontario. (A friend of mine in politics says Hudak makes Harris look like McGuinty, which is discouraging.) On a personal level, I'm close enough to retirement that any freeze or rollback in wages will affect my pension — which is paid for by me with no taxpayer money whatsoever (and based on my salary at end of career).

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Oh. Hell.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

As someone who suffered (and I mean that, it's not ironic) through a rather lengthy transit strike, I know I'm biased in this. Still, I have to say that the ATU has a tough job convincing transit riders that bus drivers are not essential and an even tougher job convincing Torontonians that they're being hard done-by right now with the incredible PR faux-pas they've committed lately.* I'd also say that transit strikes disproportionally affect lower income households, especially those with mobility challenges, so the social left will be highly conflicted between workers' rights and social welfare.

Google turned up this argument on whether the TTC or any other transit system qualifies as essential. I find it interesting that under "essential service" legislation TTC workers would probably find better pay than they do today with the right to strike in place.

-- Steve just wishes there were fewer bad actors in the whole mess, on any and all particular sides of the issue.

* Specifically the dozing/texting workers bit, and that riders feel compelled to go public with photos of this happening instead of taking the issue up with formal complaints.

[rfmcdpei.livejournal.com]

There's also the non-trivial lack of faith in the union's willingness to be a good faith partner--the wildcat strike on weekend in 2008, through just as people were trtying to get home on Friday night and with 15 minutes' notice, was a spectacular own goal.

[fsandow.livejournal.com]

Technically, it wasn't a wildcat strike, but given that the union had publically promised 48 hours notice before any action, it was even worse for them in terms of PR. I don't recall there being any significant backlash against the city and province when they passed back-to-work legislation less than 48 hours later.

[jsburbidge.livejournal.com]

There's a long history of toxic relations between the union and TTC management, of which that strike was just one of the more obvious examples, and it goes back a long way.

When I was a very junior Legal Editor, many years ago, I had the task of digesting loads of labour arbitration cases. There's nothing to sour somebody on both sides of the labour-management divide than doing so, but I still remember some of the TTC cases as being particularly irritating.

[rfmcdpei.livejournal.com]

That's the difference between Ontario and Wisconsin: Wisconsin, it has allies.

[maruad.livejournal.com]

I assume that legislation will be introduced to repeal the voting rights of women and people who do not own land. It just makes sense if we are reverting to the 19th century.

On a possibly unrelated note, on Sunday I received a book as a gift.

http://www.penguin.ca/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780670067312,00.html

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Wait-- Ontario has a Premier?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

What did you think it had?

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Had I ever given it any thought whatsoever, I would have guessed maybe "Prime Minister," with "Governor" being a distant second.

They didn't teach this stuff in the schools I attended, nor did I pick it up from watching Canadian TV transborder leakage between the ages of 8 and 13. Now if Astroboy* had battled the Premier of Ontario, I would have paid attention.

I used to read almanacs around that time, but if they mentioned executives of provinces, I must have bleeped right over them.



* The Friendly Giant didn't battle the Premier of Ontario either. To the best of my recollection.

[realinterrobang.livejournal.com]

Shame. We really could have used The Friendly Giant to smush Mike Harris...

[dewline.livejournal.com]

The Giant wouldn't have smushed Harris. Not literally.

He'd have been very polite at every moment in his dealings with Mr. Harris. And very clear about the consequences for Mr. Harris of not behaving honourably towards the rest of Ontario as a whole.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Thematically, wouldn't he have been set up against David Crombie, Toronto's "tiny perfect mayor"?

[fsandow.livejournal.com]

There's really no comparison between the TTC situation and Wisconsin. The TTC legislation can be found here (http://www.ontla.on.ca/web/bills/bills_detail.do?locale=en&Intranet=&BillID=2453) and clearly provides for binding arbitration. That's the standard solution to the problem of essential services, and in my opinion is a fair solution as long as the arbitration procedure is fair. Just as with actual court litigation, the idea is to have the parties negotiate for a result they can both live with rather than submit to the uncertainty of the arbitration.

This is, as far as I know, broadly similar to how Ontario has dealt with its police officers, firefighters, emergency health services workers, and other essential employees for decades, without anyone criticizing it as an assault against democracy. The real issue in all this is whether the TTC is truly essential.

Regardless, Wisconsin is a totally different situation. The state is nominally leaving its employees with the right to collective bargaining, but so completely neutering it that it's meaningless. All the power will rest with the employer. As mentioned above, the Quebec prosecutors situation is a much better point of comparison.

Just as an aside, it's a constant source of annoyance to me that media stories discussing legislation don't include links to the official text of the legislation. It seems to be assumed that their readers either don't have the interest or the ability to for their own opinions from the primary source.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

CBC manages to link up properly on occasion, but you're right about the need for all news services to adopt this as part of "best practices" from now on. Something to e-mail the relevant authorities in our various nations about. Regularly, until it's adopted.

[http://users.livejournal.com/krin_o_o_/]

Will the TTC drivers be able to seek sanctuary by driving their vehicles across the border into the country of Quebec?

[joenotcharles.livejournal.com]

I never noticed before how much Dalton McGuinty looks like Anthony Perkins.

(The resemblance of Rob Ford to Baron Harkonnen has been much remarked on, though.)

[timgueguen.livejournal.com]

I presume you mean the actor, and not the one who runs the so-called Family Research Council in the US.

[joenotcharles.livejournal.com]

Guy from Psycho, yeah.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Anthony Perkins c. 1975 compared to recent photos of McGuinty...?

Yeah, actually, now I can see it myself.

[lpetrazickis.livejournal.com]

I generally believe that transit should be at least as reliable as asphalt, since it's primary competitor is government-subsidized asphalt. I'm perfectly happy to have my taxes raised to ensure this state of affairs. Unfortunately, that's not quite what Ford is aiming for.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

I'd love to see to see some discussion about whether declaring something an "essential service" means it would have to start receiving some bloody funding from the province.

[jsburbidge.livejournal.com]

It's quite clear that it does not mean that.

This is Dalton McGuinty handing Rob Ford rope with which to hang himself, while simultaneously guarding his flank from Hudak and the PCs, who are his principal challengers in the upcoming election. Burdening himself with an extra charge on the provincial government isn't in that playbook.