Ok - a few days of assential-only service, a little leaning on by the province - and Montreal's transit system has a tentative deal with its maintenance workers. It will be interesting to see what wage increases have been agreed upon.
I'll bet there less than the ultra-generous (1 - 1.5% OVER inflation each year) that the TTC granted the Amalgamated Transit Union here in Toronto.
Of course, in Toronto, the TTC commissioners are no deep into the union's pockets that they are choking on the lint. Howard Moscoe publicly telegraphed what HE was willing to pay. Well - we got the on-day wildcat strike anwway.
Montreal seems to understand that it's running a transit system for the riders and residents - rather than Toronto which sees the transit system as a gravy train for union members.
Friday, May 25, 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Percentage increases are pretty meaningless in my opinion, especially considering the downward pressures on incomes during the early-to-mid 1990s. While the most recent increases were above the rate of inflation, many workers' increases (if indeed any increases occurred) in the early-to-mid 1990s were not, and a number of groups have sought to catch up. Whether or not they deserve to do this is, well, a political discussion.
It would be more instructive to compare the salary ranges and average salaries, comparing that, of course, to the cost of living in the respective cities. Do you have numbers on the average incomes of TTC maintenance workers? Because this is what I found in the most recent Globe and Mail article about Montreal:
"The workers now earn between $22 and $25.78 an hour, or an average of about $50,835 a year, plus overtime." (link).
The TTC's numbers have been hard to come by, but a search on their Maintenance Recruitment page through the Wayback Machine pulls up this information from February 2006:
"The minimum starting hourly rate is $16.58, this will depend on the position, some positions offer a slightly higher hourly rate." (link).
Two positions under offer at the TTC, General Machinist and General Painter, offer pay in the $22-30 range, so a higher end than Montreal (in my experience few, if any, workers approach the higher end; you're talking major seniority here), but a lower end that's in line with the sister city. Now we only have to compare cost of living indexes.
The 'we need to catch up due to earlier x, y, or z indignities' is a stock excuse for demands for wage increases. In the case of TTC workers in general (and I'm sure that this is pretty consistent across departments), that the remuneration increase have been consistently above inflation.
From 1004 - 2003, the CPI in Ontario increased from 101.8 to 123.3 - or an increase of 21.1%.
TTC average remuneration increased from $28.08 to $34.79 per hour over the same period - or 23.9%. So even before the latest contract, ATU members were enjoying a good deal of gravy - being ahead by 2.8% over the ten years.
What is Montreal's average remuneration? The numbers I quoted were for mechanics and maintenance workers only.
I don't have numbers published on that. In 2005, based on the budget, I calculate $36.40 / hour total labour costs for the Metro/Bus division. No idea if this is the same type of calculation as the TTC uses on its Annual Report. This 2005 TTC report (most recent on the Website) gives the 2005 average at $37.02.
Post a Comment