Shame on us!
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/03/13 ... ref=canada
One of the most promising — and unexpected — union organizing drives in Alberta in recent memory got its start on a frigid evening in February 2009, with a chance encounter in an Edmonton taxi cab.
David Froelich, a veteran organizer with Teamsters Local 987, was on his way home from the airport when he struck up a conversation with his taxi driver, Akram Ali Shamie, who shared the frustrations he and the other drivers were having with their taxi company.
The main sticking point was the size of the fleet: Despite pledging to cap the number of cabs at 100, Airport Taxi Service had allowed the total to grow to more than double that, and it was continuing to expand. The situation was intensifying competition for fares, and diluting the value of the taxi licenses the drivers owned.
Ali Shamie told Froelich they were considering forming an association to take on the company, but he had doubts about how much they would be able to accomplish without legal protection or a strike fund.
“I said, ‘Well, we’ve got about $50 million in our strike fund, so maybe we can help you,’” recalled Froelich. “We went for coffee and got talking.”
What Froelich experienced in Edmonton is playing out across Canada, most recently in cities like Hamilton, Markham and Toronto, as Canada's more than 40,000 taxi drivers reach a breaking point and push back in an industry whose tangled web of hierarchies makes it difficult to regulate and police.
Characterized in many jurisdictions as independent contractors, taxi drivers must answer to company owners and city bylaws, placing them squarely outside the standard employer-employee relationships unions are accustomed to mediating. But with immigrants leading the charge, this very non-traditional class of workers has increasingly staked its hopes on Big Labour, which after years of flagging membership is wading into unfamiliar waters, despite what promises to be a tough fight.
Though some owners say the unions have swooped down on a vulnerable population in an opportunistic bid to replace the manufacturing base that used to fill their coffers, interviews with taxi drivers across Canada suggest that conditions have become increasingly untenable for this largely immigrant workforce.
The list of driver grievances is long, and touches on everything from rising costs to deteriorating job security and lack of recourse.
Taxi drivers aren’t big earners to begin with. Much of the cash customers hand over goes to covering expenses such as gas, insurance and fees, which can run as much as $100 per day.
Though statistics on the industry are spotty, a 2011 StatsCan survey of Quebec’s cabbies found that nearly 70 per cent of them make less than $20,000 a year with fewer than 5 per cent earning above $50,000. The average salary was around $17,600, compared to an average of $45,000 for all occupations.
Additionally, taxi licences have skyrocketed in cost, exceeding $200,000 in Montreal in recent years and $250,000 in Toronto. Not all cabbies pay for their own licences, however, as many of them share or lease the licences to each other.
The prohibitive cost of entry into the business is but one of many challenges. In Markham, Ont., for instance, taxi driver Ben Abou Akar, 48, says drivers have been unable to fight the proliferation of illegal taxis and the recent crackdown on taxi stands, which in recent years has cut his annual earnings by half, to less than $35,000. First Officer wages anyone?
“Some of the drivers [are starting to feel] like they are losing their dignity,” said Abou Akar, who started driving a taxi 20 years ago, shortly after immigrating from the Ukraine. “The security comes up and kicks you out, gives you tickets, and the town won’t listen to you, so you start having this feeling like you’re not a first class citizen, like you’re a second level of citizen.”
But for more than a few drivers, the push to organize also comes from the desire to pave the way for future newcomers who may very well find themselves behind the wheel of taxi, just as they did.
As Balraj Manhas, an Edmonton taxi driver and member of the Teamsters bargaining committee, explains, “We faced these problems for a long time, so if we don’t stand up now, they will be facing them for years to come.”