There’s no way to avoid the reality that strikes will make people upset, but maybe we can do more to avoid them altogether.
That suggestion was made by Larry Cornies in great column in Saturday’s London Free Press, arguing we’re overdue to consider the damage caused by strikes and lockouts, time to think more imaginatively about solutions.
A lot has changed over the years.
Unions may not be irrelevant, but it’s pretty clear that a lot of their practices and policies are… as I’m learning from the current transit strike here in London.
I was wondering whether a little more transparency using the web might be a good place to start. Dan Brown blogged about the lack of strike blogging and I commented that social media could be an effective way to improve public perceptions.
At this point, the general feeling seems to be, as Kevin Van Lierop tweeted, “both sides are acting like children.”
The public sees right through them — even when they’re being straight (because who knows when that is).
At this point everything said by either side is suspect. I actually can’t help chuckling at a lot of it — except then I wonder how many hours of work were lost, classes were missed, health conditions caused or aggravated by walking long distances in the cold, dollars were not spent because people can’t get downtown or to the mall, etc.
(Website idea: if anyone can figure out an estimate of those stats, write a script to run an ongoing tally and post it online.)
And then yesterday’s report was downright insulting:
Pat Hunniford said yesterday he no longer trusted the LTC enough to put an offer in writing.
“If I give Larry Ducharme some number he will twist it around to say we want everything,” Hunniford said.
Wha? Isn’t the idea of putting things in writing so they don’t get twisted?
Instead, Hunniford said, he was drafting a letter yesterday to ask Ducharme to clarify the LTC’s insistence on a written proposal.
And it goes on…
Enough was enough, I thought. This is ridiculous. In the Age of Openness, it doesn’t make sense anymore.
Being used to a world in which we have access to information at our fingertips — information that’s open to scrutiny and commented on by people we know and trust — it just seems so alien that things are still being done this way.
Don’t get me wrong. I understand there has to be accountability and due process — and there may be legal and confidentiality constraints (and I appreciate the hazards of naked transparency) — but that doesn’t mean the processes that have worked (or rather, haven’t worked) in the past are the best we can do.
Better ways are coming, we just have to have to be more creative and willing to make them happen. [Creativity and willingness to consider new things are habits we have to cultivate before the right thing comes along, or we won't be equipped to even recognize it.]
Because let’s not forget that once upon a time unions were a radical idea too. People struggled to conceive them. People didn’t accept them right away.
Everything starts as an improbability.
So I was very glad to see that Derek Silva contacted the ATU Local 741 and the LTC with the suggestion they make the figures available online, where anybody can scrutinize these frustratingly controversial facts.
Makes perfect sense to me. As Esther Dyson wrote last month, “we’re all fact checkers now.”
There were some unimaginative responses on Twitter, arguing that contract negotiations like this aren’t public until finalized — whether there’s a substantive legal reason for that or if it’s just because that’s how things are conventionally done was not clearly explained.
Stating “the way things are” does not necessarily say much for what might become.
Whether or not it’s reasonable, let’s make them explain why they can’t — make them look at how they do things and think about why they can’t be done differently.
This is, after all, a negotiation.
If we want change we’re going to push for as much as possible, hoping the other side will meet us at least halfway — which is really what we want all along. ;-)
What we want is to not be used as leverage while being insulted and misled.
We want our concerns to be genuinely recognized, with visible attempts to accommodate them.
We want negotiations that make things better for everyone, not worse while disrupting life for all parties.
I know I’m getting beyond the scope of the London transit strike — but the transit strike itself was never my main concern.
It’s the next strike I’m more worried about. As in, how can we avoid it?
And it isn’t even just about strikes, or labour more generally. This is an opportunity to loosen things up a little. Let’s get people imagining and applying more critical faculties to old assumptions and conventions. Asking why…
Every little thing we do here and now affects the attitudes that will run through the whole system tomorrow and into the future.
Other cities (e.g. Vancouver, Toronto) and countries are already working on innovating aggressively. It’s time to be aggressive.
By pointing out these absurdities and suggesting ways (however improbable) to address them more openly and creatively, we’re establishing leverage and setting the table for renegotiating — if you’ll forgive the philosophical reference — our “social contract.”
It’s an agreement with a lot more at stake — and not just for the sake of a few.
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