Why is the City of Guelph sleepwalking into a transit strike?

Last week, traffic in the City of Guelph was almost brought to a standstill because work was being done at the intersection of Speedvale and Woolwich. The intersection wasn’t even closed, but the bottleneck had a domino effect across the north end of the city and reached south to downtown and beyond. One. Freakin’. Intersection.

Now imagine what your local commute will look like if there’s no transit service in a week-and-a-half.

It’s kind of well-known news at this point that there may be job action at Guelph Transit in the next couple of weeks. A no-board report has been filed with the Ministry of Labour, which means after a 17-day period there could be job action; either the workers can strike, or management can lock them out, and D-Day is a week from this Thursday.

And by the way, 260 Guelph Transit workers voted 99.5 per cent in favour of striking. May whatever gods you believe in have mercy on the one guy that voted not to strike.

The reason we know this is because the head of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1189 has been fairly open and direct about the possibility. He has pledged to give the city three days notice if it looks like his workers are going to picket so at least we will all be forewarned.

We now go live to city hall to get the point of view from management there and … Is someone fiddling?

It was a tremendous source of disappointment last week to go to the Transit Advisory Committee meeting and think that a potential strike by the service’s workers might rank some discussion if not a whole section of the meeting’s agenda.

It didn’t.

When talking about general matters of the service, transit general manager Robin Gerus said only that contract negotiations were ongoing, and that they're hoping that they will reach a good conclusion. When pressed by one member of TAC after the meeting was officially over, Gerus deferred to corporate communications for any future statement on the state of negotiations, or the possibility of job action.

Where’s the urgency?! Where’s the concern?! I might understand it if Gerus was trying to spin the news and saying that he will do everything possible to avoid job action, or that he was confident that they would reach a deal before you hear any more about a strike, but instead it felt like there was quiet resignation to the likelihood of a strike. Alfred E. Neuman might as well be running Guelph Transit now, “What, me worry?”

Also missing in action is city council, whose constituents will be profoundly affected by job action at Guelph Transit. The mayor tweets about a lot of things, but there have been more mentions of PM Dawn on Cam Guthrie’s feed lately than the possibility of a transit strike. As for the University of Guelph, Conestoga College, or their student governments, they’ve also been fairly silent about what’s going to be a huge monkey wrench in the daily routines of thousands of local students.

Guelph is sleepwalking into a transit strike in less than two weeks, which is another profound indictment on this community’s lack of commitment to reducing traffic congestion, promoting environmental sustainability and creating a more liveable city.

Am I surprised? No, of course not.

Am I disappointed? Yeah, a little bit.

No matter how pathetic it is, at the very least the city seems committed to providing a substandard level of transit service to Guelph. The entire system may break down when the Storm are playing at home, but at least there are buses on the road and that provides some value.

Back in February, when Mayor Cam Guthrie announced that he was using Strong Mayor Powers to force a four per cent max increase to the 2025 budget, I half-jokingly said it would be done on the backs of “buses and books”. I was half-right. The Transit Future Ready Action Plan was cut way back again in the mayor’s budget with the exception of a much-needed dedicated bus to Conestoga’s Speedvale campus.

I will spare some further thoughts about the budget to focus on this for now: The last time there was job action with Guelph Transit it was August 2014, and staff were locked out at the 11th hour of negotiations quite to the surprise of everyone involved including the union’s leaders. It was less than three months till Election Day, so the question had to be asked: Was someone sending a message?

August, being a typically low point for ridership and outside of the school year, was the best time for transit job action because the smallest number of people would be affected. Transit, always being the low hanging fruit, and with just a few hundred employees, is the ideal target to set a tone of fiscal prudence. “Oh, you want a pay raise? Well, these are challenging fiscal times, and we have a budget to balance!”

So I have to ask the question: Is the reason why no one at city hall wants to talk about a possible transit strike is because someone wants to send a message again?

That may sound like a conspiracy, but a message is being sent just the same: Transit, and transit users, don’t matter in Guelph. And for that matter, neither do transit workers who are the frontline of city hall’s constant failures on the file. As councillors and senior staff comfortably drive their cars, or, in some select cases, performatively ride their e-scooters, transit workers take the hit for the terrible decisions they make in regard to the service in the council chambers.

Guelph’s leaders now have 12 days to avoid a disaster. In September, transit marked a new record for ridership, 200,000 trips in a single week, and even without breaking records that means thousands of people take the bus to get around town every day. Transit has not only recovered from the pandemic, but it’s growing, and all that progress will be flush down the drain if the buses stop running, even for a couple of days.

Even if you don’t use transit, and I know so many people in Guelph will never use transit no matter how environmental they claim to be, it’s in your best interest to keep transit running. If a bottleneck at one intersection can nearly shut down the city, imagine thousands of people scrambling for alternative means to get to work, school, and everywhere in-between just as the Christmas season is getting started.

The ball’s in city hall’s court. Here’s hoping they don’t fumble.