Appeals Court Confirms TTC Workers’ Right to Strike Amid Looming Job Action
Ontario’s highest court has affirmed the right of Toronto Transit Commission workers to strike, a ruling issued just days before a planned walkout.
On Thursday, the Court of Appeal for Ontario dismissed the provincial government’s appeal of a lower court decision that had found a law abolishing the workers’ right to strike unconstitutional.
In 2011, the Liberal-led Ontario government enacted legislation banning unionized TTC workers from striking. Government lawyers argued in the appeal that this law was a response to “unusually frequent strike action and immediate ad-hoc back-to-work legislation.”
Last year, a Superior Court judge ruled that the law interfered with workers’ collective bargaining rights. On Thursday, the Appeal Court upheld this decision in a split ruling.
The Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113, representing about 12,000 operators and other frontline staff at the TTC, announced just hours after the favorable decision that it has set a strike date for June 7 amid ongoing contract negotiations.
The lower court judge made some errors in his analysis, the Appeal Court acknowledged, but none of these “fatally undermined” his conclusion that the law violated TTC workers’ collective bargaining rights and that this breach could not be justified under the section of the charter permitting reasonable limits on rights and freedoms.
“The main thrust of the application judge’s reasons is that Ontario’s evidence did not persuade him that a full pre-emptive ban on TTC strikes was reasonably needed to protect public health and safety, the environment, and the economy,” the Appeal Court majority wrote.
“He concluded that the public harms the legislature feared would result from a full or partial TTC shutdown were speculative and unproven, whereas the impact of the strike ban on TTC employees’ collective bargaining rights was significant.”
The judge’s factual findings contained no overriding errors on essential points, the court wrote. While the lower court judge may have reached his conclusion that Ontario couldn’t justify the breach in an incorrect manner, the conclusion itself was correct, the Appeal Court stated.
The union hailed the Appeal Court decision as a historic victory for workers.
“Since our right to strike was restored last year, we have seen a change in bargaining for the better,” union local president Marvin Alfred said in a statement.
“Bargaining a collective agreement is never easy and it involves a great deal of hard work. We are committed to working to come to a fair agreement and we will do what it takes to ensure our members get the fair agreement they deserve.”
