Quote:
Originally Posted by YOWetal
This is not at all an accurate narrative of what the bus strike was about. It was about overtime. OCTranspo employee were able to choose to work overtime thus increasing their wages substantially. Many had gotten used to this and asking them to agree to end it was like asking to take a massive pay cut. The city (rightly in my opinion) thought they were gaming the system and was tired of having so little control over their costs. It was not about safety for either side.
|
What's the very first thing on this page, set up by the Union themselves?
http://www.ottawatransitstrike.com/m...mments_01.html
Quote:
13.5 spread time and min 7 hrs booked time
- There is no reason why such a long spread is necessary. Same goals can be achieved with 12 hour spread.
- Drivers (on their day of work) will not see their family in the morning or evening. If they are lucky they will kiss little Tommy on the forehead at 8 - then reheat supper that was missed. This will only last so long, as most wives, partners will give up on this routine eventually and no-longer prepare that plate. Worse they may leave and create another dilemma. No one to help with homework, supper, chores etc... Always at work when needed at home.
- As if the above isn't bad enough - doing that still will not allow the drivers to book enough hours on that day thus forcing him/her to work 1 or 2 weekend days to make up the necessary minimum hrs booked work. Again more time unavailable to home, family etc.
- Why would the City not be willing to concede a little on these numbers? Because they have every intention of piecing together daily work of 3.5hrs at each extreme of 13.5hrs and forcing drivers to work 1 or 2 weekend days to accumulate 80hrs of work. If they conceded to 7.8hrs - at least then operators would have the option/ability to book 5 day work weeks.
- Within the language - there is nothing to prevent the City from creating a day of 6 x 1.5 hr pieces over a 13.5 hr day - paying 9hrs. You would be gone all day and traveling all over the city on any different run throughout.
- The city wants the pieces as small as possible ( originally tried 6hrs) and as far apart as possible to create part time - combo jobs. ( I experienced this at UPS)
|
As far as the Union members were concerned - and they're the ones who were striking, after all - overtime wasn't entering into it.
The City's concern - paying out lots of overtime - and the Union's - being forced to accept a longer daily spread without being compensated for it - are two sides of the same problem. The problem is you're just focusing on the City's side of it, yet it is the City that has the power to fix it.
There was a lot of overtime going on, true... but you know why that was? Because of our messed-up BRT system that requires it. It was very difficult for OC Transpo to schedule workers' days to start early enough to get in early morning express runs from the back-of-beyond (the drivers first have to get to the garage, then drive out to the suburbs since we don't have any garages in the suburbs
) and then to end them early enough in the evening while still delivering evening peak period runs so that a spread of 12 hours wasn't breached. The more sprawlly the city gets, the worse the problem gets - further to go out, further to come back, and, ironically, high suburban ridership also makes the problem worse. Both require more drivers to be working at the extremes of the spread, with nothing to do for the rest of the day - which is why the city was also trying to reduce the hours worked to 6 hours all the while it was trying to increase the daily spread. We basically have way too many drivers doing line-haul work. Once an express bus driver has toured the neighbourhood and heads onto the Transitway, that bus is losing money and the longer it has to drive to get downtown the more money it loses. Other cities avoid this because they have hub-and-spoke. Where we have a driver doing all of two runs in the morning, requiring several drivers to cover each suburb, other cities have one or two drivers covering each suburb and one train operator collecting passengers from several feeder buses. It's far easier to schedule staggered hours within the 12 hour spread if you're just doing feeder service.
For example, one driver's workday can start at 5:00 in the morning, work for 4 hours until 9:00, resume work at 13:00 and end at 17:00. Another could start work at 7:00 in the morning, stay on until 11:00, resume work at 15:00 and end at 19:00. Others could start at 5:00, work until 13:00 and go home, with someone else coming on at 11:00 and working until 19:00. The peak hours get covered, and everyone stays within 12 hours. A similar situation will exist on the trains. But try that with expresses and it won't work - the guy who starts at 5:00 in the morning is also needed past 17:00 in the evening as there is no one around to replace him. You also need more than one operator to start work early in the day, because with the first guy now inbound to the city centre, no one is in the suburb doing collector service. BRT requires a disproportionate number of hours to be worked in the peak periods, making staying within the 12 hour spread very difficult, so difficult, in fact, that it led to a lot of overtime. And low morale problems. And high turnover.
OC Transpo management can't really fix it in and of themselves, but their historic lack of support for system conversion to LRT also shows they weren't interested in fixing it, either. They designed the Transitway system and they're the architects of this problem, though the chief architects have gone on to promote this dubious system elsewhere in the world. Every year we waste dicking around with the current intensive BRT system is another year that high financial and social costs are incurred. Basically, we should have a transit system where not one bus crosses the Greenbelt unless it's going in for an overhaul. Decentralize the bus garages and extend LRT across the Greenbelt. We'll likely need fewer operators, but with turnover and retirements that won't be hard.
Linear Mode
