[URBAN NOTE] "What are you like at your job?"

[rfmcdonald]

Torontoist hosts a guest opinion from one Jordan Foisy calling on readers to be compassionnate for city workers. While some eyebrows are raised by what he describes himself as having done, I agree with his points.

Toronto is not a city with a lot of compassion for the worker. Oh, we may vote NDP and worry over income inequality while we drink our craft beers, but when it comes down to supporting our fellow workers we are nowhere to be found. We are much more likely to attack them. I don’t know if it’s the result of an economy that has been squeezing and degrading most for the past 25 years leaving bitterness and resentment, or if it’s some weird Protestant work-ethic leftover, but Torontonians (like Canadians in general) love to shit on other workers. Especially if you are in a unionized force, people will have no problem describing you as lazy, bad at your job, and, of course, that you either deserve the hate or shouldn’t be making that much money.

TTC workers take a huge part of this resentment. Torontonians complaining about the TTC is maybe my least favourite part of this city. Every day on the internet there are people complaining about the service in the transit system, that a driver was rude or a booth collector didn’t know the answer to a question. This despite the fact that Ontarians react to new taxes, which would improve the TTC, as though they’d have to be paid with the blood of a family member. Furthermore, as evidenced above, my experience with TTC operators as usually been pleasant, if not great. Sometimes they have been rude, but I usually pay it no mind because it’s probably the worse dealing with tens of thousands of commuters every day. Plus, my self-esteem doesn’t usually rely on my interactions with public transportation operators.

The same callousness came to the fore during a recent protest by cab drivers against Uber at city hall. Cabbies were trying to bring attention to what they think is Uber’s unfair advantage in not needing to be licensed by the city, resulting in their own declining incomes. The protest was met with disdain instead of sympathy. People took it as an opportunity to unload their grievances about every horrible experience with a cab driver that they’d had, citing these grievances as proof that now cab drivers were getting “what they deserved.”

It’s this language of retribution that troubles me. The same thing sprouted up when former mayor Rob Ford was privatizing garbage collection. While it was occurring, there was strong undercurrent in the press and the populace that garbage collectors were getting what they deserved for their 2009 strike. Because obsolescence is apparently the fair return for engaging in a legal action to protect your wages and pensions.