NEWMARKET, Ont. – The municipality of York Region has filed an injunction against striking transit workers, asking the court to prevent “illegal blockades and unreasonable delays.”
Picketing has intensified over the past two weeks of the nine-week strike, the municipality said Monday, and the job action is now affecting 60 per cent of transit service.
“Regrettably, unreasonable delays and illegal blockades by pickets have created unsafe conditions for transit users, motorists and pedestrians, resulting in the need for the injunction,” the region said in a statement.
Some of the union tactics that prompted the injunction included passengers and drivers being harassed and intimidated, as well as passengers being forcibly held on buses by pickets at transit terminals, the region said.
Several pickets have also been struck by vehicles, and both regional employees and the general public have been denied access to regional buildings for up to 90 minutes.
Last week, striking workers staged a march to York Region headquarters, closing down the northbound lanes of Yonge Street in Newmarket. They wanted to ask councillors to get binding arbitration going with York’s private transit contractors to help end the labour dispute.
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But York Region has repeatedly said it will not intervene in the dispute between Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113 and Local 1587 and Miller Transit, First Canada and Veolia Transportation. The municipality has said it is not the employer and that both sides should be able to sit down and hash out a deal.
The union has said the main issues are the gap in wages and benefits between the York workers and their counterparts elsewhere in the Greater Toronto Area.
“The defendants are causing irreparable harm to York Region’s operation of its regional transit system and is harming members of the public who are unable to access public transit for daily necessities,” York Region said in its court motion.
“They are also causing breaches of the peace and threats to public health, safety and security. Their conduct is criminal in that it includes: trespass on property, mischief, nuisance, intimidation and criminal harassment.”
“Reasonable efforts to obtain assistance from the York Regional Police to address the illegal conduct,” the document added, “have failed.”
The three companies have met briefly with Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113 and Local 1587 over the past two weeks, marking what the region called “the first and only meaningful negotiations between the parties since the strike began.”
All talks have since broken down.
The strike affects more than 44,000 York Region commuters daily.
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