“Fuck TTC, Fuck TTC!” chanted one group of disgruntled riders outside the Davisville subway station.
So the Toronto Transit Commission is on strike. They went on strike last night, leaving many thousands of Toronto commuters stranded on a Friday night. And commenters at blogTO are pissed, obviously:
Torontonians with a backbone. Cute. Egregiously false, but cute.
Three words, friends: FIRE. THEM. ALL. Failing that, because David Miller is a pansy, two more words: PRIVATE. TRANSIT.
You know, living in this hell hole of a city, there’s a lot to be ashamed of. This takes the cake, friends.
That wasn’t me, by the way, but it could’ve been me. And over at Spacing.ca:
It’s incredible, to hear all the transit-advocates, on one day bemoaning higher fares, and on the next, encouraging people to not “trample on the rights of TTC workers.” The reality is that if the TTC outsourced all its operations, and therefore cut its labor cost in half, it would have hundreds of millions more dollars every year to provide quality service. Fares would go down, routes would go up – new routes my even get built. Is the rights of 9,000 rude, overpaid people worth what we’re passing up as a city by paying toll booth collectors $100K/year?
If other transit systems (including YRT) do it, what is there to say the TTC shouldn’t do it, also? I’ll tell you, the drivers on VIVA are far more friendly than the rude TTC employees on any day of the week.
And one atypically-nonretarded commenter at The Globe and Mail offers this suggestion:
I am willing to sacrifice and walk to work for an hour each day if that means it will teach the TTC workers a lesson. They provide awful service (particularly the older generation of drivers and booth workers) while making more money than they deserve for mostly sitting on their asses or taking breaks in the middle of busy streets while traffic and passenger concerns take a backseat (no pun intended) to their needs for a cup ‘a joe. Every Torontonian knows how much the level of TTC service has dipped over the last two decades and it’s due to a powerful union making their employees feel invincible so they can get away with doing far less and making more money while providing less than acceptable public service.
I am a Liberal and I understand the importance of unions, but I can not sympathise with the TTC employees’ union one bit – not after this selfish and cowardly act. If they were worried about angry public sentiment before, they certainly haven’t helped themselves any going forward. They will receive a lot more abuse from the public for a long, long time to come and they voted for just that.
Interesting comments from a “Subway Operator” on Steve Munro’s blog:
I was shocked when I found out from Bob [Kinnear]’s phone call that the members voted against the contract. 3/3/3 increases, upgrades to benefits, and most importantly, no concessions.
However, this wasn’t good enough for the maintenance department. They want guaranteed lifetime jobs.
The commission is buying new vehicles and like all new vehicles they have warranties. The maintenance people don’t like this as they think they will be laid off because the company manufacturing these vehicles will be doing the repairs that are covered under the warranty.
I do not support the maintenance department at all. Everyone knows the maintenance department is a joke. They are always complaining about how hard and tough their working conditions are. Yet they might work 2-3 hours out of an 8 hour shift.
(I’d link to the Transit Union’s web page, above, but, gee, it’s not working today, either. Funny, that.)
And this… THIS… is just fuckin’ hilarious:
What if the TTC just disappeared? Thanks to Toronto’s transit workers, we totally fucking know.
5 comments
Crazy thing is the total lack of services.
We’ve had strikes for public transit services here. What generally happens is that *hardly any* buses or trains run, but people aren’t left stranded, because the unions know that enraging the population isn’t actually going to help their case…
that video is misleading us to assume that the ttc union
is the same entity as toronto’s transit system .
the city’s people have the right to mass protest/vote to force privatization , so we are rid of the lazy parasites who hold us for ransom .
i would love to see our horribly slow streetcars scrapped and replaced with electric buses . then we could be rid of tracks on our streets and the traffic congestion reduced .maybe this could free up enough money for more subway lines.
-what city with a subway system has no line connected to its international airport?
How does this make sense?. There is more than a billion dollar project which won’t help Toronto for the next few years. The way it’s paid for is with a special fund for projects to boost manufacturing now. Oh yeah, that fund is added straight to the national debt.
Fed Largess Minister John Baird tells Miller to f off, Miller capitalises and it happens and streetcars worth $1.2 billion are bought. I love it when rules aren’t followed at all.
Thank goodness Toronto didn’t need any work done on parks, bridges, sewers and roads or anything else that could help the unemployed and help the city right now.
Toronto made sure it cannot get access to the federal anti-recession package. So instead of getting funds, the city will be giving funds to an area far away from Toronto from 2011 to 2018 for the streetcars. And tying up funds from Ontario that could be earmarked for Toronto then.
Thankfully Toronto did not need any work done on roads, day care centers, sewers and bridges or anything like that. And in fact the city did not even seem to want to get their very expensive and much balloho’d streetcars.Karen Stintz, a Toronto Councillor said: “If this were the one project we wanted to fund, it would have been important to speak to the minister in advance to ensure that this was the right project. It certainly appears that that didn’t happen, which is unfortunate.”
Its way to unfortunate that torontonians, and other cities, rely so heavily on public transit. So no matter what the customers complain about, the transit workers win, because they always have the “hey, want us to stop working? Fine, see what you’ll do without us” card. Its complete corruption.
I heard that a ttc bus driver got the crap beaten out of him the day after the recent strike. I don’t see why the ttc worker was suprised. Hell, he just heavily inconvenienced a million people for a couple days, and costed millions of dollars in revenue for other companies, and perhaps made negative impacts to greater concerns.
So ttc workers, don’t be a child and “half poke” the public and claim “i’m not touching you! i’m not touching you!” and then cry when the public gets angry.