Bus strike could destroy NDP regime
John Horgan is lucky to be premier of British Columbia: his party lost the popular vote and took two fewer seats than the B.C. Liberals in the 2017 election. The NDP largely won with the support of middle-income and lowincome voters in Metro Vancouver, many of whom rely on the transit system to get to work and school. Now the union representing transit operators and transit maintenance staff is threatening to shut down bus and SeaBus service.
Unifor’s chief negotiator, Gavin McGarrigle, has even mused about a one-year strike, despite being offered between 2.4 percent and three percent per year over four years and an enhanced benefit package.
According to Coast Mountain Bus Company president and general manager Mike McDaniel, the union wants more than $600 million more than what’s already on the table and won’t engage in mediation. He has claimed that this would delay major improvements to the transit system. Labour Minister Harry Bains has power under the B.C. Labour Code to order mediation, but that hasn’t occurred.
The last time there was a lengthy bus strike, in 2001, many people blamed TransLink management. The union leader at the time, Buzz Hargrove, shrewdly made the case that TransLink wasn’t prepared to give the hard-working staff a reasonable deal. This time, however, TransLink has countered those arguments in advance by publicizing what it’s offering.
To many people, these offers will seem reasonable, given that a fulltime bus driver with two years’ experience makes $63,589.50 annually with a 37.5-hour week before overtime. Although that may not match a bus driver’s pay in Toronto, it’s beyond what many of the passengers collect in a year. A full-time transit maintenance staffer who has completed a four-year apprenticeship receives $78,175 annually on a 37.5hour week before any overtime.
Nobody is disputing that driving a bus is a tough and sometimes dangerous job. And governments of different stripes have invested a disproportionate amount of money into driverless rapid-transit systems in comparison to the bus network. It remains the backbone of the system, carrying almost two-thirds of its passengers.
But if TransLink’s bus company is offering larger increases than what’s going to other public-sector workers, many people will wonder if this justifies a lengthy shutdown.
The 2001 bus strike finished off the 37-year political career of then TransLink chair and long-time Vancouver councillor George Puil in November 2002. This occurred even though the election came more than a year after the dispute ended. If Horgan and Bains sit on the sidelines this time around, several local NDP MLAs could easily suffer a fate similar to what Puil experienced in 2002.
B.C. Liberal Leader Andrew Wilkinson’s greatest political weakness is that he’s not seen as being on the side of the little guy. He’s sometimes portrayed as an arrogant elitist—a doctor, a lawyer, and a homeowner on the posh West Side of Vancouver.
A transit strike, however, would offer Wilkinson a tremendous opportunity to rebrand himself as a friend of bus riders if the NDP government allows it to fester for any length of time. This is the greatest gift that Horgan could provide to his opponent.
For its part, Unifor is playing a dangerous political game for everyone else in the labour movement by refusing mediation and turning up its nose at a reasonable wage offer. That’s because if the B.C. Liberals were to be elected over this issue, they would likely roll back protections for workers and appoint less union-friendly members to important positions.
Compounding the NDP’s difficulties is TransLink. It appears to be managing the situation far more effectively than it did in 2001, coming across as being transparent. This will inevitably result in more public blame being shifted toward the union-friendly NDP government. That, too, would ultimately play into the hands of the B.C. Liberals.