Think banning TTC strikes is a no-brainer?

Marcus Gee, The Globe and Mail:

Designating the TTC an essential service could cost the city - and taxpayer - more

When Mayor Rob Ford comes to city council this week with a proposal to ban transit strikes in Toronto, many Torontonians will be cheering him on. Hundreds of thousands rely on transit to get around the city every day, so when transit workers walk out, as they did briefly in 2008, the city suffers.

That is why Mr. Ford has made it one of his early goals to have the TTC declared an essential service. But imposing a strike ban could work against two of his other important goals: better customer service and lower costs for taxpayers Consider cost first. It seems logical that when you rob unions of their biggest weapon, the right to strike, then the gains they will be able to wrest from the employer will be smaller. In fact, research shows that taking the right to strike away from public-service workers results in richer settlements that cost the taxpayer more.

With no threat of a strike, union and management often drag their feet in negotiations. When talks bog down, the job of reaching a settlement usually goes to an arbitrator. Arbitrators like to be fair and arbitrated settlements can be generous. Police and firefighters each got settlements of around 3 per cent a year in recent contracts.

A C.D. Howe Institute study that looked at more than 6,000 contract settlements since 1976 found that declaring a service essential led to higher wage increases and pay levels. It calculated that the TTC could face a $6-million annual increase in its wage bill if strikes were banned. In its own look at the issue, TTC management found that if the TTC had been deemed an essential service when it negotiated its 2005 agreement, the cost would have been $11.2-million higher over the contract’s three-year term – not a result designed to please a cost-cutting mayor or those who voted for him.

Even deputy mayor Doug Holyday, a veteran waste watcher who contracted out garbage collection when he was mayor of Etobicoke, worries about the cost of a strike ban. He told city hall’s executive committee last week that higher contract costs, compounded over decades, could end up costing the city tens, even hundreds of millions of dollars. “I’m suggesting to you that we don’t have that kind of money."

He will vote for the motion to ask the provincial government to make the TTC an essential service, but only because, as Mr. Ford’s new deputy, he doesn’t feel he can break with the new mayor so early.

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