Union Leaders And City Politicians To Be Commended.......

....for donating their brains to medical science.

Silly rules make CUPE strike a no-brainer

By ALAN PARKER

Here's a Zen riddle, Toronto-style.

If a unionized public work force is legislated back to work every time they exercise their right to strike, doesn't that logically mean they are performing an essential service?

The present structure, as it applies to unionized city employees, hideously distorts the normal process of collective bargaining and actually encourages those workers to go on strike.

Do you think there is a snowball's chance in hell that the 24,200 members of CUPE Locals 416 and 79 would be walking the picket line right now if they didn't know -- know for an absolute certainty -- the strike would be over, by legislative decree, in three weeks or so?

If the members of a "real" private-sector union were to go on strike right now, in this economic climate, they would be doing so in the very real knowledge they could still be out when the first snow is flying -- and maybe even when the last snow melts.

Now that takes guts. And it means the members of that union feel what they are striking for is so important they are willing to risk everything.

The members of CUPE Locals 416 and 79 risk nothing.

They take two or three weeks off in nice weather with reduced pay and go back to work with a tan and the sweet knowledge all their perks will remain intact. And they know going in that this will be the outcome of their "strike."

I'm not quite sure why any member of a "real" private-sector union would have any feeling but disdain for the CUPE city workers masquerading as genuine strikers.

So let's get back to my starting point.

Either the unionized City of Toronto workers perform an essential service or they don't.

If they do, then they should not have the right to strike and should follow the same rules that apply to public employees in other essential services. The same standard should apply to the TTC as well.

If they don't perform an essential service, then they should go on strike in exactly the same circumstances as every other non-essential service. Knowing they are in it for the long haul, that there are no assurances what will happen at the end of the process and, most importantly, there is no befuddled white knight named Dalton McGuinty riding up to save them from themselves with back-to-work legislation that lets everyone off the hook -- except the poor, tax-paying blighters who have suffered through an unnecessary two- or three-week suspension of the services they pay for and need.

Right now unionized city workers have their cake and eat it too.

They can go on strike to put themselves in an advantageous post-strike situation but they do not have to suffer the many unforeseen consequences of a real strike action.

I'm not actually blaming the union for this.

CUPE is just taking advantage of a Mad Hatter's Tea Party set of rules created by the deep thinkers of City Hall and Queen's Park.

- Read Nosey Parker's blog at blog.canoe.ca/parker