Ottawa Mayor -vs- Ottawa Reality
Ottawa Mayor Larry O’Brien: the city is “committed” to reaching a negotiated settlement with the Amalgamated Transit Union.
Ottawa reality: No new talks are scheduled to end the six week strike that has shut down OC Transpo bus and O-Train service.
I’m not a big fan of the Union’s position on this, but Mayor Larry is a first class lying boob.
Babble about “replacement workers” that, if they could be found, would take months to train and get into place.
Talk about settling while refusing to talk.
Force a meaningless vote on the contract offer the Union had already rejected.
What a whole lot of nothing.
I say, privatize the whole thing – get the city out of the public transit business, let comapnies, individuals and groups of all sizes provide bus and transport service to the city. Let them compete and let them open routes that are needed but neglected (Barrhaven direct to Kanata anyone?).
Screw the idiots who mismanage our city and screw the union. Give me other options.
Mike, what is it about you libertarians that pulls you to so many “Screw Everybody!” solutions to life’s challenges?
Pretty much Peter, because so many of life’s challenges are presented to me as a false dichotomy between two equally unpleasant choices.
Here’s how it would work if we had 3 or 4 or even 5 transportation organizations or corporations running transit in Ottawa. Each company would have to deal with its employees fairly or risk losing them to another company or risk the workers forming their own cooperative. If there was a strike, the people of Ottawa would be able to choose to take a different company’s transport options. Yes it might be a bit more expensive or the routes might not be as conducive, but the could still get around. The only one’s affected by the strike would be the workers and the company, and that would put pressure on them to settle.
Other companies could come in and provide service where the striking company fell down. Companies would compete on price, number of buses, number of routes, comfort of the stops, comfort of the buses, alternatives to buses (light rail?) etc, with each surviving company finding it niche.
In the end, we have good service, lots of choice and best of all, it costs the tax payer nothing.
Instead I am being told I have no choice, that it is either the City or the Union and no other options.
No thanks. Getting rid of the City government’s monopoly on providing bus service will solve this entire issue in the long run. I want real choice, not the made up choice I’m being offered.
Geez, Mike, I’m supposed to be the one who is URQ, but you’re making me get in touch with my inner marxist. There may indeed be a case for some privatization here, but I’m not sure it would mean that the lion would lie down with the lamb and peace would reign evermore. I’m a big believer in the market and I value choice for things like cars, fruit juice and pills for erectile dysfunction, but I’m not convinced it automatically works so hummingly for essential services in a modern city, especially those that are more essential the lower down the socio-economic scale you go. Should we contract out the police and fire services too?
No doubt I’m showing my age, but in my youth libertarians tended to be rather intense marginal weedy types who like to quote Ayn Rand endlessly and argue about the tyranny of public libraries. Now you are all over the place, left and right (although on different issues), screaming the mantra “CHOICE, CHOICE, CHOICE!” at every turn. Ah well, the old order changeth I suppose, but you might want to take a lesson from the failures of the old left and be a little cautious about rote, all-purpose ideological solutions.
I despise Ayn Rand, FWIW.
That being said, I see no reason why any government service – be it health care, police, fire, transit – can’t be done via private, competing organizations. Those organizations need not be money-making, for profit corporation either – they could be not for profit organizations, cooperatives, or volunteer organizations (like most rural fire services are) that provide the service. Why is allowing the government the monopoly on such services good? Especially in situations such as Ottawa’s transit where we have had no choice but to accept crap service at ever increasing prices. What if your city government doesn’t provide good police services. Or ambulance services? Can you get that better service somewhere else? Nope, because for some reason we think ONLY the state can provide them.
I used to be a member of “:the old left”. I’ve never dug on Marx, though at one time I might have called myself a Marxist. I just got to the point where I saw that for all its good intentions, a lot of the stuff the “left” would do to fix issues caused other issues, or, inadvertently, cause the issue they were trying to fix to get worse, not better. All because they thought that forcing people to pay for monopoly services and enforcing it via strict authoritarian methods was the better approach.
Sorry, but I think those ends can be met without the authoritarianism. That is why I advocate for personal choice – free people making choices is always better than the alternative.
How come we can express lack of confidence in a Prime Minister and shit happens but when we do for the for the mayor nobody listens? What are we supposed to do with a mayor who insists he is right and everybody else is stupid?
O’Brien arrived in office with the arrogant, mistaken, but all too common assumption (especially among certain URQs) that the Private Sector will always do everything better than the Public Sector, and that City Hall needed to be run more like “a business”.
I don’t know how many times I’ve heard that mantra – but it’s always a sign that the speaker simply doesn’t understand the nature of government or the public sector.
I own a business, and my job is simple. I make money for my shareholders. Within the constraints of the law and my own ethics, that’s the measure against which all my decisions need to be made.
Within the public sector, there’s an entire spectrum of stakeholders who have to be identified issue by issues, and whose interests have to be defined, prioritized, balanced against the needs and interests of other parties. There are financial constraints. There are other political systems and interests at play, and MY system (e.g., municipal, or territorial, or sectoral) has to function in their universe. I cannot simply point at a bottom line: in the public sector, I have juggle ALL those variables, find a path through the tangle, and make it work – and then be evaluated by an electorate.
O’Brien’s laughable “zero means zero” stance was pure private sector. The rules are a lot simpler there. Many businessmen frequently express great contempt for public servants and politicians – in reality, they usually can’t function in that world.
Very well argued, but why would your analysis not also support the proposition that you can’t or shouldn’t equate private sector and public sector unions?
It seems to me that the function of a union is the same, regardless of the sector:the protection of its workers and the advancement of their interests. No?
But surely the complementariness of labor relations in the private sector makes for a different game, just as decision-making and governance in the public sector runs on different principles. A strike is basically a gambit as to who will suffer more from a work stoppage. The union stops the flow of the owner’s revenue and market share as the public moves to competitors or alternatives. But in the realm of essential public services, government does not have a bottom line or market share and can’t go broke, and the public can’t make substitutions. There isn’t one person who works for the City who is going to suffer so much as a dollar’s loss because of this strike, but there are many folks who aren’t responsible or involved in the slightest who are.
The strategy may be different, but the goal is the same; to get the best deal one can with the minimum level of trade off by applying the one lever a union has: the withdrawal of service. In the corporate world the goal is to impact the bottom line: in the public sector, the capital on the line is political.