Ottawa is bracing for a transit strike starting tomorrow morning. Here's my back-of-the-napkin summary of the math...
The Differences
- If I understand correctly, the City is offering 6% 7% over three years, and the Union is demanding 10.5%.
- The City is offering 5 8 sick days per year (up from 6), the Union wants at least 10.
- The City is offering a one-time $2000 cash signing bonus.
- The Union wants people to pick their own shifts as opposed to (presumably) managers actually being able to manage their resources. This item has no monetary value.
That signing bonus, based on an average salary of $70,000 works out to about 1% over 3 years, so for the purposes of these calculations, that's the number I'll use. It might be more than that. I don't know that the average worker on strike makes $70k. I know some make more, but I think a lot make less.
So the fight seems to be about 4% 2.5% pay and a total of 15 6 sick days which, ideally, nobody should be taking unless they're actually sick. For the purposes of this calculation, however, I'm going to assume that bus drivers are relatively sickly and actually take them all.
The Mathematical Reality
There are, over the next three years, approximately 720 working days for the average worker. The difference of 4% 2.5% pay translates to 29 18 days. Add the 15 6 sick days in dispute and you have 44 24 days. That's the number of working days the transit union can be on strike before it is actually shafting its members with an unrecoverable loss.
Starting 10 December, that works out to a strike that has a mathematical upper limit of 13 February 16 January, 2009. If the strike goes on so much as 1 minute more, the city can capitulate and come out ahead over three years.
If you take out the sick days, because to presume that all the drivers are going to use all the sick days (an assumption that kind of makes them look pretty pathetic), the strike has a mathematical upper limit of 23 8 January. That's right, the city can capitulate on all issues of wages and still come out ahead over three years.
In essence, if this strike goes on much past the middle of January, not only do the citizens of Ottawa get pissed off, but the union members actually lose ground.
Now, we all know the city is not going to just capitulate. That signing bonus is probably going straight out the window now, but in any case, the best that is likely is some splitting of the difference. That means, realistically, that if the strike goes on much beyond the end of December Christmas, the union members lose... forever. Maybe mid early-January if you count the sick-day issue.
Thus, I'm going to give the Union the benefit of the doubt for intelligence and presume that this strike will be short... because no union is stupid enough to keep their members out long enough to generate ill-will with the public AND cause their members to lose money in the long term. Of course, there's plenty of opportunity to prove me wrong.
Oh, and if any union supporters are thinking of it at this point, please don't leave a comment about striking for dignity and similar bollocks. Striking for dignity is like fucking for virginity. Just don't even go there. However, I invite comments regarding how the union actually expects to come out ahead with this strike, given that the last strike damaged OCTranspo for a decade and ultimately resulted in job losses, damaging union membership even more.
Note that I did the calculations based on a 5-day week, which, on average, is what I assume applies to the bulk of the employees. It also takes into consideration the three statutory holidays between now and mid-January.
[edit] Numbers updated to coincide with new information.
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