metawidget | transit strike coming up (Reply)

I've seen good unions and bad unions, and the STM maintenance workers union strikes me as a bad union. They went on an illegal strike a few years back, crippling the metro system, and settled out of court with the city for a piddly $2 off one month's CAM. Now, they're at the plate, asking for an inflation-plus wage deal, while city workers are already one-third ahead of provincial ones and the private sector. Their argument: the city is planning on updating their job descriptions to make better use of the people they have, and give them about 6.1% in raises between now and 2010, and this is not enough — they should be liberally compensated for the city trying to divvy up the work so that it gets done efficiently. Demanding compensation from the city for (gasp) management while the city is cash-strapped and offering them raises anyway sounds like a high demand that should devolve to accepting the city's offer or something like it, not something so desperately needed that the public should be subjected to a strike.

I probably won't be in Montreal when the compensation comes out, if it does (the union isn't contemplating walking out illegally this time), but I futilely hope transit-using Montrealers, particularly ones with weird shifts that won't be reasonably accommodated by the rush-hour-only service, get to tear a strip off the union for their greed and sense of entitlement: get them to pay for the days they wreck, one thirtieth of the price of a CAM for every day they're on strike.