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 A transit worker, who wouldn't give her name, kicks back at the Greenwood yards yesterday. (Photo: Michael Peake, Toronto Sun.) |
Stranded TTC riders and gridlocked drivers have only the Amalgamated Transit Union to blame for yesterday's illegal wildcat strike and mayhem on the roads.
While it's expected to be business as usual today, there's no word what penalty -- if any -- workers will face for crippling the system and the city for nearly a full day.
The TTC's 700,000 passengers found the brakes slammed on the transit system over 22 janitors being switched from day to night shift and eight jobs eliminated in TTC budget cuts.
The Ontario Labour Relations Board ruled yesterday that the strike was illegal.
"What the TTC union has done is illegal, unlawful and absolutely unacceptable," Mayor David Miller said. "I never believed they would break the law. I think all Torontonians' faith was shaken a little bit today."
Miller refused to speculate on sanctions for workers. He said he spent yesterday working on getting the TTC rolling.
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Maintenance workers set up picket lines and drivers refused to cross them overnight, but ATU Local 113, representing the 8,500 workers, claimed it wasn't striking but being locked out by the TTC.
"The TTC signed up very senior employees to very junior positions on night shift, cleaning toilets," ATU lawyer Heather Alden told the OLRB. "It was the employer being deliberately provocative."
Alden said the workers all showed up for work at their regular times, but the TTC prevented them from working their old shifts. Anyone who refused to comply was relieved of their duties.
"It's the TTC who said you are fired," Alden said.
But twice yesterday the labour board ordered the workers to "cease and desist" from the walkout, which stopped 1,500 buses, 700 subway trains and 250 streetcars.
The board's vice-chairman Brian McLean heard the noon-time appeal from the ATU local 113 -- the second hearing of the day -- at which the union claimed the TTC locked out its employees, changed their work schedules and dismissed any seniority workers had earned.
'UNTIMELY, UNLAWFUL'
"Employees have responded to management action by engaging in a strike which, given that there is a collective agreement in place, is untimely and unlawful," McLean wrote in his decision released shortly after 2 p.m.
"The union and its members are familiar with the 'work now, grieve later' principle," McLean wrote.
If the TTC is seen to be violating the agreement, then workers should file a grievance, not strike, he wrote.
Union president Bob Kinnear was extremely disappointed but he told his members to get back to work.
"The problems we have at the TTC have not gone away," he said. "Things aren't going to get better."
Kinnear, a rookie president up for re-election this fall, said his members took matters into their own hands -- he was not the mastermind of this wildcat strike.
But Miller didn't buy that.
"This was too well co-ordinated and well organized," Miller said. "You can't have a simultaneous strike at nine different locations by accident. That just strains credibility."
Kinnear said it's not only shifts for janitors, but also maintenance workers, plus driver safety that led to the walkout. But in front of the labour relations board, driver abuse never came up -- only janitors being shifted to nights.
"I never thought it would come to an illegal strike," TTC chairman Howard Moscoe said, noting Kinnear didn't warn him of a strike when they spoke on Saturday.
NIGHT SHIFT
This issue has been simmering for months and accelerated May 8, when the TTC illegally signed up plant maintenance to night shifts without any weight given to seniority.
Miller asked Labour Minister Steve Peters to assign a senior mediator to the case on Sunday. Before anything could be done, maintenance workers put up picket lines.
TTC lawyers tried to get in touch with ATU representatives overnight with no luck. They did contact Paul McLaughlin, a union vice-president, about the OLRB application and to serve him with the papers.
McLaughlin responded "catch me if you can," TTC lawyer Michael Kennedy said. "They were hiding from service as they were shutting down the city."
By 5:30 a.m. the TTC had a "cease and desist" order, but the union refused to accept it, saying it wasn't represented at the hearing. After losing the second hearing, it had no choice but to order workers back . Failing to do so would have been contempt of court.
Buses and streetcars were on the road by the afternoon rush hour and the Bloor-Danforth subway line was back on track at the tail end of the evening commute.
Full service was restored by 9 p.m. last night, a TTC official said.