01:30 - 26.04.07
Discovery
We're looking down the barrel of a transit workers' strike within the next two weeks. Negotiations having been going on for quite some time, but I think both sides were treading softly so as to not push any of our university/college students over the edge as they were writing their final exams. Most of them travel to their classes by transit, you see. The effects of not being able to get to those exams would have had devastating consequences for some of them - even a whole lost year of schooling. Not that the pressure is off. Early June is when final exams for junior and senior high students normally occur. About one third of our secondary school student population relies on transit to get to classes and then work afterward. The drivers have already cancelled some of those daily busses - when there was a shortage of drivers during their work to rule campaign. Oh and then there is the Stampede coming up fast for July. Our heaviest tourist season. The city fathers and mothers aren't going to be too popular if they haven't found a resolution to the blocked negotiations by then. There is a shortage of drivers, counting into the hundreds, right now and they haven't had a substantive raise in a number of years. The problem is that the city is also negotiating wages and benefits contracts with a number of other city service departments. As the transit wages go so will the others. It may be an expensive summer for taxpayers, but one has to expect to pay for essential services. They are an investment toward the quality of life in this city and they should not come at the expense of the people who provide them be they bus drivers, police officers, firemen or emergency services, as well as all those infrastructure service providers like road and sewer repair, parks and community/family enhancement services.
The last transit strike started in February 2001 and lasted six weeks. I had just started working with the records management firm that provided me with assignments for the next five years. It was two months after the 2000 federal election I had administered and I had just recuperated from a bout of mononucleosis that I likely caught from a voter who visited our offices. Seems election periods were not very healthy times for me. Anyway, at that time there was no way that I could walk to the workplace because of residual weakness from the illness and the distance as well - from my home to the downtown core. My Dad offered to pick me up and return me home each evening for the duration - his workplace was just up the escarpment from where I was working. That was the only way, short of taking a rental unit in the core, that I could have followed through on that assignment. This time around, with near zero vacancy rates in the city, I don't think even that option would be possible now. For example, some of the construction companies building apartments or office buildings right now are providing their workers living space in the buildings they are constructing, just so that the workers aren't forced to sleep on the streets. Actually I think that is very clever solution - at least for construction workers who are single. I don't want to ask my Dad to do the driving again. The distance he has to travel and the additional traffic that will be caused - at this point in time there are 250,000 passengers on transit every week day - are too much of a burden for him. Grant you I still don't have a job offer but one has to come soon - right? For an interview I can still take a cab - ouch with respect to the fare though. However day to day travel during rush hour will depend on whether any cabs are available. With many people like me in the city who don't have vehicles, I suspect that those cabs will be fully booked. There is also the issue of whether one can afford the cost. I've already talked with my sons about their own travel plans and all are facing challenges in that respect too. I hope city council takes the impact on workers like us into account as well during their negotiations.
Consider the environmental costs/damages of not having transit service as well there, eh Mayor Bronco. It isn't just greenhouse gases that are at issue. Even worse will be the amount of smog and particulate matter in the air. That is identified as a cause for a number of deaths due to heart and respiratory disorders don't forget. Small children, the elderly, and the medically compromised are the most likely victims. I would expect that each member of council would have at leat one family member or friend in that category that they should be taking into consideration too - don't you? I don't mind paying the extra taxes if it saves even a couple of lives.
My lungs are already bothering me without the effects of a transit strike, but I am pushing hard to get more of the boxes and closets cleared away. There seems to be some deadline to meet, although I can't think of a conscious one. In my workroom I now have horizontal surfaces without tottering piles of paperwork on them. I haven't seen the top of my desk or my work table for years. I was beginning to think they were figments of my imagination. Guess not. I found more treasures of a technological sort as well, so my efforts were doubly rewarded yet again. Stair-climbing helped clear out the dust blown into my lungs and the cats enjoyed chasing up and down after me. Guess it's all good after all. Good night dear diary.
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