A major one is scheduling, and today’s Ottawa Citizen has a pretty good overview of exactly what the issues are. And, to me, they seem minor. Certainly not cripple-the-city-for-39-days-so-far scale differences. I don’t understand why the two sides can’t find a resolution; it seems more about egos than issues.

There’s a table in the paper comparing the deals that the cities of Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver have with their transit unions.

The table isn’t clear on how much drivers make in one city compared to the other; it notes that the average wage in Ottawa is $24/hour, but gives ranges for the other cities. If the average is in the middle of the range, then the salaries are comparable.

Ottawa guarantees fewer hours than the other cities, and the city’s proposal involves changing that. That seems like a reasonable change.

On scheduling, it seems the only major differences is regarding shift work. If a shift is split, current practice is for the spread between when the first shift starts and the last shift ends is 12 hours; the city wants to extend that to 14 hours. The city says that in practice that happens already, but the union doesn’t want the city to be able to force drivers to have a 14 hour spread.

Okay, so that’s a reasonable complaint. But if that particular issue is the fundamental disagreement, how much money is that particular issue costing the city? I’d like to see an estimate of that. Maybe it’s worth caving on that to end the strike, if the money to be saved isn’t significant, or can be made up somewhere else in the agreement.

I gather one of the main reasons for the strike is a proposed change to the booking system that drivers use. They currently get to book their own schedules, and this introduces some inefficiency, to the tune of about 100 drivers worth of wasted time every year. Or so the auditor general has said.

It’s a tough call whether to agree with the drivers or the city on this one. Someone I know works for an organization whose status quo is what the city is proposing, and they’ve formed a union whose goal it is to change to something like what the city is trying to remove in Ottawa. I’ll admit I don’t really understand why block booking is so much more efficient than letting employees book their own time, but I know asking workers to work split shifts, or alternating them between working a night shift and a day shift seemingly randomly makes life a lot more difficult than it needs to be.

I wouldn’t expect this to get resolved quickly. Looks like there are some decent carpooling resources filling in some of the gap.

I’ve been running this site for years now, and this is the first time it’s become a serious spam target.

I’m going to disable comments while I figure out what to do.

Setting up the change huts for skaters on the Rideau Canal:

First snowfall:

Snow in the back yard:

More snow in the back yard: