The OC Transpo bus drivers union is on strike, and I take the bus to work. Which means I woke up at 5:45am this morning just to make it to work on time.
Working in down town Ottawa means that there’s not enough parking to go around without busing. So get there early or don’t get there at all.
Just to help things we got dumped on with 20+cm of snow over the last two days. But thankfully my little Honda Fit (with all-season tires, no less) somehow managed to make it.
I’m not a happy camper with the strike or the timing of it. I realised that the job isn’t exactly that great but this really rubs me the wrong way. And every time their union head talks I want to hit him. Seriously, I’ve got no sympathy for the union on this one and (for now) I’m perfectly willing to get up at 5:45am.
I’ve been listing to CFRA (of all things…) just to try and get news updates and I’m hearing a lot of things I’m not liking. That the city’s Auditor General is saying that the city’s services are abusing overtime and other things. They also implied that some of the changes in the contracts are to try to curb some of this – and that’s what the strike is over. Just to add to that, CFRA’s morning blow-hard hand picked this quote to read over the air:
I don’t care who the mayor is. The mayor doesn’t run this city, I run this city.
Which was, we were told, what the top guy for all the city’s unions said after the last election. It wouldn’t surprise me that this could have been taken out of context, and the way it was intoned on the radio made it sound like a line from a mob boss in a movie, but it still leaves a bad taste in your mouth. The inmates are running the asylum.
When trying to leave the city centre today the streets where jammed so we decided not to add the the chaos and get something to eat before joining the roadway fun. We walked down Elgin past City Hall and there was a picket line there. While we were walking by (on the other side of the street) some guy just started shouting at them. Really laying into them. It wasn’t just swearing, he was just going on and on but I only caught a few words, stuff like “contributing” and “producing”. As in – they don’t. I wish I had been closer so I could have heard it clearly. And the whole time everyone walking by were just glancing at the picketers in some kind of silent agreement. It was weird.
It was also, however, awesome.
