Transit strike starts just as my vacation ends
It's been a good three weeks. Returned to British Columbia, saw an old friend in Seattle, meet new friends in Portland, then spent time in California, Las Vegas, New Mexico and Colorado before heading home.
And now that it's time to work, I found myself at the streetcar yard, with someone who I surmise was Ashley Hutcheson, taking photos at the TTC streetcar yard.
She was doing it for the Globe & Mail, while I was doing it for ACS.
In the culture of the TTC, removing your uniform shirt while operating a vehicle is considered beyond gauche. This operator was roundly mocked for his faux pas by the small crowd of operators milling about the Roncesvalles streetcar yard.
If
I had trouble paying the bills with my day job I'd give freelance
photographer a serious shot. I'm not yet an artist or a photojournalist
- yet, but I seem to have a knack for showing up at the right time in
the right place with my camera in situations where "something" is
happening.
But since the Big Media types also have their own people showing up to cover these stories - or they don't care about the random streetfights I seem to stumble across unusually frequently - you get to enjoy some footage of the early hours of the strike action. Plus I get to editorialize heavily.
Strike!
The TTC Union decided that a 3% a year hike isn't good enough.
Well, that and the risk of having jobs contracted out and other related aspects of life in the 21st century.
I extend them no sympathy for the risks of job losses - almost everyone lives with that, and if you're going to make puppy dog eyes at me I will not respond favorably.
It would be, in theory, a bit hypocritical of me to condemn their demand for higher raises though. On the one hand, I'd be extremely upset if my raise was a scant 3%. But then, I had to finish a 4-year university program, and massive internship, and various exams to demonstrate to the working world I have the skills needed to do my job.
TTC staff, though, don't have those challenges. I do respect their desire to get some decent cost of living increases, but holding the city hostage for even more is pushing it. If you don't like your job, quit. Or do as Homer Simpson does - instead of complaining or quitting, just do enough to get by as a slacker. Some will, of course, argue that the latter scenario is alive and well these days, and it probably wouldn't be too hard to find exampels of it either.
As amusing as it would be to see Toronto shut down by the TTC strike for a week or so, I can only really bank for, at most, a day or two of insanity in the city. Which is far too much for people living from paycheque-to-paycheque, though. They don't even find amusing chaos in all this, just a struggle to scrounge up enough cash to keep the rent paid and to keep from going hungry: it's too easy for pampered salaried workers to forget that some people don't get paid if they miss a day of work.
The CBC Radio 2 ad, "Keep Calm - Carry On" seems especially apt for a strike situation such as this.
Hopefully all this tough talk from the government will fix things up quickly. Either that, or pull a Reagan and replace the 9000-person workforce with all new hires.
The Americans tried their own more recent version of that in Iraq, firing the entire Iraqi Army.
And we all know how well that turned out.
At least most unionists here are unarmed, though.
Surprise strike at midnight
It's funny - check out two different articles at the Globe. One refers to passengers "chanting" outside a TTC station that just closed. The other article went through a more liberal editor who a direct quotation of the angry profanity in as well.
Amusing.
More stupid than funny were the two drunken men, above, who decided that the best way to protest the strike would be to decry the workers' lack of "dignity" (or was it "decency?"), and to then taunt the drivers into throwing eggs at them.
I should make it clear.
The two men walked up to the streetcar yard with two cartons of eggs.
TTC staff immediately thought the streetcars would be covered in yolk in moments.
Instead, the drunkards belligerently asked the TTC workers to take the eggs and to then throw them at the men. In drunken-logic-land, I think this meant that this would demonstrate how the men felt on the inside - that the withdrawal of public transit service was akin to being pelted by eggs.
Ah, alcohol.
There was not much left to document after that bizarre little episode. Almost all the streetcars had returned - many sporting "Not in Service" or "Short Turn" signs. Ironically those signs weren't in view above, but relatively few people ride the last 3 stops into High Park at night anyway.
Some drivers, to their credit, mentioned how they weren't charging fares for the last hour or so of service - knowing that their vehicles would not reach the passengers' final destinations in time.
It's small displays of kindness like that which win unions support.
Breaking the promise to give 48 hours notice before striking, however, appears to have been a huge tactical blunder on the union's part.
The public is angry - seething, really, despite whatever small mercies the drivers can come up with - and as a result a rumoured riot broke out at Kipling subway station. All the police in 22 division were called, so went the rumour, to deal with angry passengers who had swarmed the fare collector's booth demanding refunds. Since this is the end of the month, people were no doubt handing over in excess of $100 to get their May Metropass, the monthly transit pass.
My new camera - I upgraded it from an older model exactly 12 hours earlier - delivered some wonderful shots despite the fact I'm still learning its new features.
The local shop steward - important union guy - makes his statement for CityTV.
It was an amusing night, especially after making a quick circuit of the downtown areas where stranded club kids made their awkward journey home in high heels and other bizarrely uncomfortable footwear.
I'll definitely have to check out the streetcar yard during the day to see how packed it'll look.
It was certainly interesting to see huge waves of pedestrians wandering around downtown. Perhaps next time I'll photograph some of them too instead of waving around masses of pictures of parked streetcars and fast-moving automobiles.
What ironic timing, though, for the Ottawa Citizen to suddenly publish its article about riding the Toronto subway system and wha ta great thrill it is for provincial hicks from Ottawa - which happens to be Canada's capital city, I should remind you all.
Not only does the writer cheerfully confess that her simple love of something as advanced as a train moving underground throughout a city and how exotic it seems compared to the waterways of her hometown, but the newspapers editors showed some weak judgement - or unfortunate timing - by releasing an article on such a wonderful system at the very moment it was harshly yanked offline.