Union demands safety audit after subway station attacks
Shawn Bredin was at his job as a TTC bus driver in the early hours of Sept. 19 when he experienced an awful kind of déjà vu.
The father of one was coming out of the washroom at Eglinton station when someone attacked him with what he thought was homemade pepper spray, then struck him several times.
It was the second time in a month Bredin, 33, was assaulted in the exact same spot. The first time, the attacker had thrown sticky liquid in his face. This time it burned, and left him temporarily blind.
“It wasn’t until after I got home I began thinking well ‘hell, what if this person tried to finish me?’ ” Bredin told the Star Wednesday. It’s that thought that makes him terrified about the risks associated with his work.
It also brought back memories of August 2016, when he was slashed in the stomach with a knife while on the job. Thankfully, a back brace he wears minimized damage from that attack.
In the wake of the assaults on Bredin and what is described as mounting concerns about safety monitoring, the TTC worker’s union is de- manding the employer do more to protect the safety of workers.
Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113 Wednesday called for an immediate safety audit of TTC stations.
TTC media relations representative Stuart Green told the Star safety is “paramount” to everything the TTC does, though he did not say a full audit of all TTC stations would take place.
“The unfortunate reality is that we have far too many of our operators get assaulted,” he said.
“We have ears open,” he said about the concerns raised by Local 113. “If there are safety issues that need addressing we have an entire department that’s focused on that entire thing,” Green said.
TTC Director of Media Relations Brad Ross said in a statement that the commission “pursues the prosecution of anyone assaulting an employee vigorously.”
Kevin Morton, secretary-treasurer of Local113, said part of the concern is that construction changes within the TTC system could open up opportunities for ill-willed people to conceal themselves in stations, then launch attacks like those made on Bredin.
“These people are coming into areas of the TTC that they’ve never been able to access before,” he said.
He called Eglinton station a “mess” and said the TTC should make safety audits a routine procedure upon any engineering or construction change to stations. Simple and relatively cheap fixtures like mirrors, Morton said, could help reduce the risk for operators without much cost or installation time.
Bredin, who’s taking time off work on a workplace injury insurance plan, said a safety audit would be a good start. Yet what he wants to see is greater respect for TTC workers.
“The general public doesn’t seem to view us as human beings,” Bredin said. As a father and husband, he wants to be able to go to work and expect to come home to his family safely.
Green said an assault on an operator happens about once every one to two days, and can range from aggressively thrown items to life-threatening attacks.
As of July 31, 146 attacks on operators took place in 2017.