The TTC strike:  it’s all David Miller’s fault

The poet Robert Burns had a catchy saying: “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley.” Toronto Mayor David Miller must be thinking about Robbie Burns right about now, as the scheme he so meticulously devised appears to have been derailed by the TTC’s union workers who rejected a sweetheart contract of a 9% increase over 3 years and promptly walked off the job.

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It’s easy to blame the union, which rightfully appears to consist of boorish, greedy bumpkins for whom nothing is enough. But then, the unions have been mollycoddled by the Miller administration since the first day David Miller took office back in 2004, and, as they say: give them an inch and they’ll take a mile. But it’s hard to convince socialist politicians to exercise restraint in the midst of a spending frenzy when they think they’ve bought and paid for their tenure in office by giving away the store to their union buddies. Frankly, I think the union has acted with a great deal of restraint, given that they are aware the city’s coffers are wide open and ready to be picked clean. But then, the union’s beef isn’t about the money the contract they failed to ratify promised them. Who can argue with a raise that’s double the rate of inflation, particularly during a time when a lot of other workers are getting ready for pay cuts and lay-offs? The union membership’s beef is about things like job security and an ironclad guarantee that no work would be contracted to outsiders. They also want to be the highest paid transit workers in the GTA, meaning that at any time other transit workers start getting more money than the TTC’s workers, a raise would automatically kick in to exceed the pay the other workers would be getting. And these unreasonable expectations from the union can be laid directly at the feet of Mayor David Miller. If Mayor Miller and the socialist losers on city council exercised even a modicum of care and restraint in handing out the taxpayers’ hard earned money in pursuit of ensuring that Toronto’s city workers get “a decent living wage”, then we wouldn’t have unions that expect a blank cheque. On the one hand the citizens of Toronto have to pony up more money and settle for fewer of the city’s services in return. On the other, city employees are guaranteed “a decent living wage” by Mayor David Miller, regardless of what that may cost taxpayers. Clearly the mayor is not representing all the people of Toronto, as city workers take precedence over the city’s taxpayers. Even more damning to the reputation of David Miller is that every time he gets into a jam he turns to a higher level of govenrment to solve the problem, often, like this one, a problem he himself created. So Dalton McGuinty has legislated the Amalgamated Transit Union back to work and Miller once again crawls from the cesspool smelling like Coco Chanel. What the city of Toronto needs to do is take a firm hand with its unionized workers to let them know that the city’s financial health is more important than the unions’ greed. Sadly the city will have to wait until the next election for a chance to kick the unions’ shills out of office and start the slow, arduous process of normalizing relations with its workers. Until then the city’s workers will continue to hold the city hostage with unreasonable and unsustainable contract expectations, thanks to Mayor David Miller.