The City of Saskatoon and the Amalgamated Transit Union — representing bus drivers and the rest of the city’s transit department — have been deadlocked in contract negotiations since 2012. While contract issues don’t usually affect the general public, this is a rare exception.

The City/ATU dispute led to a lockout in September 2014, affecting the entire city. For nearly a month, ATU members were locked out of work by city managers, making public transit impossible for residents.

The disruption disproportionately affected University of Saskatchewan students, many of whom rely on the bus to get to and from campus. Eventually, the Saskatchewan Labour Relations Board deemed the lockout illegal. The city withdrew its lockout notice and transit resumed in October of 2014.

The buses have our back, so we owe it to them to have theirs.

In the same ruling, the SLRB also found that the city illegally changed several contractual obligations, including conditions of employment and several benefits.

Fast-forward almost two years and there is still no agreement covering the hundreds of transit workers who provide our community with the essential services so many of us rely on every day.

At the heart of this dispute is the workers’ pension plan. Until 2012, when the contract between the city and the ATU expired, transit workers had a defined benefit pension plan that guaranteed a set monthly benefit based on the worker’s age, years of service and average earnings upon retirement.

As the employer, the city is responsible for managing the pension plan and is liable for any deficits in the fund so it can pay its retired workers the amount set out in the plan.

Now, fearing a deficit that at least some pension actuaries say won’t happen, city managers want to replace the existing plan with a target-benefit pension plan, which ties the value of the plan to market investment returns. Employers and employees assume equal risk for the “guaranteed” amount, and if there is a deficit, pension benefits are slashed to make up for it.

Wait, aren’t bus drivers already well paid? Didn’t the city offer to increase wages by 10 per cent? Why should I care about their pension plan?

Let me put it to you this way: imagine you are in your second year of university. The administration estimates that their annual cost for lawn care on campus may go up — maybe not, the grounds crew says the lawn looks fine — but just in case, they want to hike your tuition next year by 20 per cent.

Don’t worry, they say — they are going to increase your scholarship from $100 to $150. But the rest of the increase is your responsibility to make up. I don’t think any of us would handle that well, especially if you were budgeting that tuition will increase two to three per cent.

It’s the same thing with the city’s offer: a 10 per cent wage increase isn’t going to make up for a shortfall in your pension if you’re already 50 years old; there’s just not enough time to make up that money.

Unions protect workers from the big-business-cures-all tendencies of conservative governments, and shelter workers from unfair labour practices, like locking out workers to force them to give up a pension plan both sides negotiated and signed.

I don’t think wanting what was promised to you makes you greedy. I think blaming transit workers for disruption of service is completely manipulative of public perception. The city has figured out that it’s easier to keep fingers pointed at “the union,” because then no one points fingers at management when they break their word.

U of S students make up a significant portion of daily bus riders, and a disruption of service affects us all. We need to make sure the ATU knows they have our support, because they have always been there for us and we need to be there for them.

All undergraduate students belong to the U of S Students’ Union, and so we, too, are all members of a union. If the administration said they were going to raise tuition 20 per cent, we would expect the USSU to be there for us, so how can be blame the transit workers for doing the same? We can’t let the city manipulate us into believing unions are greedy troublemakers, because without unions, we all would be in far worse shape.

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Geneva Houlden

Photo: Jeremy Britz / Photo Editor