Warning from Toronto Transport Worker

New NYC Transit Boss: Union Buster

We print below a contribution, edited for publication, by Debby S., a retired transit worker in Toronto, where Andy Byford ran the transit system before becoming head of the New York City Transit Authority last month.

On hearing that Andy Byford was made head of NY transit, I thought it would be useful for readers to know about his union-wrecking operation in Toronto. First, some history to set the stage. It was the New Democratic Party (NDP) mayor David Miller who laid the basis for the era of Rob Ford, the racist, wife-beating, anti-union mayor of Toronto from 2010-14. The NDP is a bourgeois workers party, with organic links to labour but a pro-capitalist leadership and program.

Under Miller’s reign, transit workers held a wildcat strike in 2006. It was initiated by 800 mechanical and janitorial workers who were protesting proposed changes in work schedules, including permanent reassignment of 100 workers to night shifts (regardless of seniority). At a union meeting, track workers told then-union president Bob Kinnear to do something about these attacks or they would. Kinnear and the union tops did nothing, so the workers did something. The wildcat lasted only one day, but that was enough for Miller to join the anti-union hysteria that ensued and demand massive fines from the union.

In 2008, transit workers struck again over a lousy contract that impacted maintenance workers. The strike was backed by subway operators, streetcar and bus drivers (who are all in the same local) despite the bosses and union tops seeking to divide workers to ram through the contract. The city demanded the province of Ontario enact strikebreaking legislation, for which the provincial NDP caucus voted unanimously. In 2009, Miller targeted the Canadian Union of Public Employees in Toronto, aiming to destroy sick benefits and gut seniority rights. A bitter 39-day strike beat back most of the attacks, but the union leadership caved in on the city’s demand for second-tier wage and benefits for new-hires. It was after these labour struggles that Rob Ford was elected on an anti-union mandate. In 2011, the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) was designated an “essential service,” taking away Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 113’s right to strike. The union is still challenging this...in court.

Byford was hired in November of that year. While he comes from British working-class stock—his grandfather was a London Transport bus driver for 40 years—Byford was always on the wrong side of the class line. He started out as a station foreman and worked his way up the management ladder, eventually becoming General Manager of the Central, Bakerloo and Victoria lines, three of London’s busiest subway lines. After a stint in Australia working for Sydney’s commuter railway he was hired by TTC as the chief operations officer. He quickly became the chief executive officer when he showed his ability to be a lapdog for Ford, going along with the decision for a new addition to the Scarborough subway line (known as the line to nowhere).

Byford is a media hog and darling. The bourgeois press raves about his “great” record and presents him as squeaky clean. “Under his leadership, subway delays have been reduced, customer satisfaction has hit record levels, and a number of major projects progressed (my emphasis), including the phased introduction of a [communications-based train control] system and the imminent completion of a major subway line extension” (www.railwayage.com). Tell this to the workers who use public transit and are late to work and face lack of service regularly.

The real story behind Byford is the usual: speedup, speedup, and more speedup. The horrible conditions under his reign have led to more workers retiring before their time. In 2013, Byford instituted a snitch line to encourage workers and staff to anonymously report “unethical or illegal” behaviour. More backward workers were ratting out their fellow workers due to competition for jobs. He also implemented new job qualifications intended to weed out those from working-class backgrounds without university education. One story is that a black, female shop facility janitor with 25 years seniority would have been forced to resign or be fired because she didn’t have a driver’s license, which was not required when she was hired. The only reason she kept her job is because a co-worker offered her his job in the shop cafeteria, which didn’t require a license, while he bid on a different job.

Byford pushed to reinstate special constables at TTC who have the authority of a police officer on or in relation to TTC property, including buses and streetcars. They don’t carry guns, but are armed with batons and tear gas. By mid 2015, 40 former fare-enforcement inspectors were trained. They join the Toronto police Transit Patrol Unit, which also oversees the TTC. Ostensibly, this was to protect bus drivers and streetcar or subway operators, who are assaulted about four times a week in Toronto. In fact, these cops are used to police transit workers as well as the public and intervene in “workplace violence” matters that have led to the harassment and firing of workers. Byford also created a contracted-out, low-paying (minimum wage) job called “customer service ambassador.” These workers get paid almost nothing to “alert” the pissed-off public of route changes, delays and breakdowns due to the underfunded, mismanaged system. Sometimes being an “ambassador” means you stand outside in minus 15-degree Celsius [5 degrees Fahrenheit] weather for 12 hours a day with scant breaks.

The city tops, with Byford’s approval and oversight, contracted out the bus cleaners and the janitors of public washrooms. These used to be union jobs with benefits and pension. Wages went from $25 an hour to $14 with no pension and little benefits. The concern for “containing costs” of course comes with a price on workers’ safety. On 19 August 2013, a contract worker died and a second suffered broken bones at the Malvern bus barn when a garage door opened and tipped over their scissor lift, an elevated work platform. The two contract employees received on-the-spot, limited training that same morning before their shift. It was their first day on the job. More recently, on 16 August 2017, a unionized worker with 30 years on the job was struck by a bus operated by a contract worker, who did not even have a driver’s license, going over the speed limit at a bus garage.

The bosses’ aim in using non-union contract workers is to pit different sectors of the workforce against one another and to crush the more than 10,000-strong ATU as well as the two smaller craft unions that are part of TTC. There needs to be a fight to organize the unorganized and for union wages for all those working at Toronto transit. There is a history of workers fighting the divide-and-rule attacks of the bosses. Between 1989 and 1991, there was a series of work slowdowns, culminating in a four-day strike, that put a stop to management’s attempts at making drivers a part-time workforce.

Byford’s speedups have hit night crews especially hard, as they are frequently under pressure to get the job done no matter what before service restarts. In September 2012, Peter Pavlovski, a low-level foreman (one of the few well respected by workers), died on the job. In October 2017, Tom Dedes, a union member with 18 years’ experience, was also killed. Both were pinned by workcars (modified rail cars used for track and tunnel work). Both were working overtime and at the end of their shifts. The deaths and injuries are why elected union safety committees that are independent of management should be formed.

In October 2016, the transit agency filed an application with the Ontario Labour Relations Board alleging that ATU Local 113 condoned an illegal strike after only nine (!) of roughly 600 train operators signed up for a voluntary overnight shift during the Nuit Blanche art festival. Bob Kinnear, the sellout union president at the time, said the lack of volunteers was a “grassroots movement” that wasn’t condoned by union leaders. The Nuit Blanche incident occurred shortly before Byford’s TTC introduced one-person train operation on the Sheppard line (smallest line), a move the union opposed.

The TTC’s “Fit for Duty” campaign has made working conditions even worse. Workers are hunted down and disciplined for taking a nap even when on lunch break. Random drug testing gained currency in Toronto after a fatal August 2011 bus crash in which the bus driver was charged with possession of marijuana but was not found to be impaired. Byford rammed through drug testing and the TTC approved the implementation of random drug and alcohol testing for designated (what they call safety critical) employees beginning in March 2017. Many workers now question the “randomness” of these tests, as they have witnessed the most militant workers and those who are deemed “troublemakers” being tested and sometimes more than once! We remember Tony Almeida, a workcar operator killed on the job in 2007 due to unsafe conditions and smeared by TTC management and in the press as a pot smoker!

Class-conscious workers in Toronto had no illusions in Byford as a “friend of workers” and weren’t fooled by his “we’re all family” rhetoric as he was laying waste to union jobs and union working conditions. Likewise, workers in NYC transit must beware of this vicious anti-union boss.