2006 Toronto Transit Commission Wildcat Strike - Aftermath

Aftermath

Immediately after the strike’s end, several members of Toronto City Council, along with countless commuters, saw recourse in the idea of enforcing strict disciplinary penalties against the union and its membership. Toronto Mayor David Miller, contrary to pro-union inclinations of the past, introduced the idea of prosecuting the Amalgamated Transit Union; a strategic move that paralleled the opinions of his constituents. If such a route were to proceed, it had been suggested that individual fines for the over 800 mechanical and janitorial workers who started the picket lines would be one of the prosecution’s top priorities, behind charging the union itself. This externalized approach to dealing with lost revenue was inspired by a similar event that erupted in New York City during the winter of 2005. New York’s transit strike ended with a union boss being given a short prison sentence, while the union itself was fined for the economic disruption it caused. Kinnear brushed off suggestions that he too was in line for incarceration. Instead, he embraced the idea, signifying his willingness to act as the union’s martyr.

On May 31, 2006, Local 113 published an attack ad against the commission chair Howard Moscoe, Mayor Miller, and Rick Ducharme, chief-general manager of the TTC. In it, the union argued that negligent and careless behaviour by the three men, essentially reflecting management’s posture, had led Bobby Lowe, a bus operator who was physically assaulted on shift, into disparity. The ad effectively illustrated how Lowe’s life was ruined as a result of receiving deficient forms of compensation from the commission, and due to their overall laissez-faire stance on the issue of operator safety. After Moscoe rebuked the ad with scathing criticisms of its accuracy, Lowe himself visited the former in his city hall office, illustrating his discontent over the allegations. Moscoe later retracted most of his comments. Some saw the attack ad as the essential variable that legitimized the wildcat strike, while others saw it as the union’s complacency over other contentious issues such as the state of janitorial and mechanical workers; an issue that was seen as less media friendly in comparison to the matter of operator safety. It had also been suggested that if the union moved forward with a similar Public Relations campaign before the wildcat strike, they would have received more sympathy from the public. Some also charge the union of foul play by not concentrating on the problems facing initial strikers themselves.

The power struggle between management, the commissioners, and the union, eventually ended with Rick Ducharme’s resignation on June 6, 2006. Ducharme had criticized the councilors on the TTC board for interfering with labour negotiations, as there were closed door meetings between TTC commissioners and the union which excluded management; management was the traditional negotiator with the union, not the board.

At the end of 2007, the TTC dropped its $3 million dollar lawsuit against the union, while the event was no longer referred to as a "wildcat strike", but an incident.