Imbecilic Reactions

There they go again, the management of Ottawa's OC Transpo and the president of the union, Andre Cornellier, who never will bypass the opportunity for hysterical denunciations of management. Sounds like a no-brainer, to observe safety measures that will not permit bus drivers to remain on the job for periods of driving time in excess of good sense. If anything, a normal thinking adult might consider this to be a protective measure both for drivers and their passengers.

Instead, it's a re-enactment of the original union decision to strike for an unprecedentedly long and horribly difficult period throughout the worst of this city's winter months, hobbling commerce, and imprisoning people in their homes, causing many to lose employment, and businesses to shutter, students to miss classes. Before a semblance of reasonable reaction to the chaos caused by an intransigent union and a bullying city council finally submitted to the need of the city's residents.

Transit drivers for OC Transpo are said to be enraged by this latest move by the city which they claim upends their rights to do as they will. Should they wish to drive a day shift and then an evening shift, it is their concern, they contend. The city claims that for everyone's safety a sensible period of rest and restorative sleep is a must. Which party to this disagreement sounds sensible?

Now resentment is taking its toll of driver civility and respect toward the people who pay their salaries. As though there weren't enough complaints pre-strike about morose and hostile drivers, now more are surfacing, as transit users complain they are deliberately left at bus stops while their bus, which they've hailed, bus pass in hand, speeds by.

Others detail bus drivers deliberately dawdling to ensure their timing is off, and bus riders arrive late to their destinations; again threatening people with low-paid employment with new reasons for their employers to lay them off. It may very well be a minority of drivers who are responsible for these abusive actions, but they're harming the goodwill bus passengers were willing to extend after a long hiatus of no service.

And in the process they're ensuring that fresh hostility between taxpayers, the city and the bus union will continue to bloom, as trust in the professionalism of OC Transpo employees becomes corroded through this deliberate choreography of contempt for bus riders being practised by what one might hope is a loutish minority of drivers.