CALM Features

FEATURES

* Vancouver bus driver eliminates dangerous left turn
* The dope on pepper spray
* Workfare isn't a new idea at all

Vancouver bus driver eliminates dangerous left turn

PAUL STEWART / ICTU / CALM -- Vancouver bus driver Paul Stewart and his union have triumphed in a years-long campaign to eliminate a dangerous left turn from a downtown bus route. Here's his story.

I HAD always disliked the left turn from West Georgia onto Chilco. It just seemed like a stupid place to turn left, across three lanes of oncoming traffic. The Stanley Park trolley bus has turned there for decades, to enter a loop to make its return trip. The oncoming traffic is leaving the park, travelling at 60 kilometres per hour or more, and many of the drivers are tourists, unfamiliar with local traffic. I believed that if something wasn't done, someone would eventually die in an accident, either in my bus, or someone else's.

On the safety agenda -- for 20 years

After I first witnessed a near-accident at the turn I asked my union's safety committee members what they thought of it. They were all aware of the left turn problem, and explained the difficulties in changing the route. As I found out, the issue had been on the safety committee's agenda for more than twenty years.

Next I went to my supervisor, who said he understood the problem, because he had been a driver for 12 years, and disliked the turn. However, the next day he told me that his boss didn't feel there was a problem.

I was furious. All the drivers seemed to realize there was a safety problem. So did the safety committee. Yet the bus managers refused to budge. I was beginning to believe that the inertia on this issue was so great that someone was going to die before there would be a change.

Refusal to turn left

So I asked my union rep, Jim Houlahan, why we didn't just refuse to make the turn, and force the bus company to change it. Jim said it was a classic Catch-22: if you sign up for the route, you can't refuse to make the turn, but you're also not allowed to refuse to sign up. So I asked him, "Jim, if I refuse to make that turn, will you, in your position, and the union, support me?"

Jim got that `are-you-sure-you-know-what-you're-getting-yourself-into' look on his face, then said, "Yes, absolutely."

Bus driving is a stressful job. But it got a lot more stressful over the next few months, as I began refusing to make the dangerous left turn at the Chilco Loop. The first time, I radioed my controller in advance, asking him to short-turn me downtown so I wouldn't have to make the left turn. He refused, but a ground supervisor let me. The next time I stopped at the turn and parked my bus. So they sent a supervisor to see me.

"This is simply a stupid place for a left turn," I told him. "There are too many cars coming around that corner, and most of them are going too fast." Eventually, they called someone from the Workers Compensation Board, to rule on whether the turn was safe or not. The WCB guy simply said it wasn't his jurisdiction because the street wasn't a workplace.

I told my supervisor, "I will never turn here again."

Union action

After that, the union took action, and began asking all drivers to refuse the left turn. Union reps boarded the buses downtown and short-turned them, directing passengers onto the Robson Street bus instead. They explained to the passengers what they were doing, and why. I only saw two people get angry about it; most supported us. One lady, who lived near the Chilco Loop, told us she held her breath every time the bus made the left turn. Another passenger told us he could "feel the tension" each time the bus crossed Georgia.

The bus company got a cease and desist order, to prevent the union action. But by this time it was in the media, and it came up at city council. Union rep Bill Nelson told the politicians that the drivers felt like kamikazes. When I spoke to the council, left-wing alderman Harry Rankin said, "So you're our kamikaze!"

No more left turns

It worked. Council ordered B.C. Transit to find a solution that didn't involve turning left across Georgia. Eventually, after a couple of experiments, they came up with a safer turn. Now the Stanley Park bus actually enters the park, turns near the zoo, and comes back through a set of traffic lights.

It was a long struggle, but it wouldn't have happened without the bus drivers, and our union.

The dope on pepper spray

CALM -- Pepper spray, or oleoresin capsicum (OC), is a derivative of the cayenne pepper plant. It has been touted by manufacturers and police forces as a relatively benign, non-lethal alternative for police officers in violent situations.

It was officially introduced into the U.S. in the 1980s as a dog repellent but has since gained popularity with police forces world-wide.

Pepper spray is most effective when sprayed directly into the face of a victim, thus ensuring that not only are they temporarily blinded but they also have difficulty breathing, and are incapable of resistance.

The effects of the spray are extremely unpleasant. It irritates the mucous linings of the nose and lungs as well as the eyes, and produces such pain that the victims are immobilized for up to 45 minutes. Their eyes usually swell completely shut.

Mace, the forerunner of OC, was about 60 per cent effective in making a person helpless. OC is found to be about 95 per cent effective.

About 60 people have died worldwide after being pepper sprayed. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, it is most dangerous when used on people who are handcuffed, and who may asphyxiate if they are lying on their chests.

Workfare isn't a new idea at all

CALM -- Right-wing politicians and academics promote workfare as a radical new idea for solving the welfare and unemployment crisis. In fact, "work tests" have been tried before in Canada, during the 1930s depression. They didn't reduce unemployment, and were abandoned, even outlawed by the federal government, until recently.

Historian James Struthers of Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario is an expert on unemployment and social policy. He's been speaking widely about the history of workfare, just as the Ontario government gets set to start the scheme.

Workfare rooted in poor laws

Struthers says workfare is rooted in a 19th century attitude towards the poor: that some are undeserving of relief because they don't want to work. Distinctions are made between the lazy, as opposed to the merely unlucky. By forcing welfare recipients to work -- and denying benefits to those who refuse -- society can sort out the "deserving" from the "undeserving" poor.

In the early years of the Great Depression politicians tried to put single males to work, first at prevailing wages, and later in work camps in northern and western Canada. The camps provided the men with shelter and food, but didn't pay them a wage. They received a 20 cent daily allowance for personal necessities. (They eventually revolted, in the On-to-Ottawa Trek of 1935, which the government violently repressed.)

Later in the depression, the provincial governments pressured municipalities to force jobless men to work at menial labour -- sawing wood, picking dandelions, or shovelling snow. Struthers concludes, however, that none of these programs solved the unemployment problem, and they did little to shrink the size of the population on the dole. That happened only when the economy recovered with the outbreak World War II.

Workfare outlawed, then returns

For the next twenty years, welfare wasn't a political issue, because unemployment was low. Workfare was abandoned, and finally, in the 1960s, the federal government refused to share welfare costs with provinces that used workfare -- making it effectively illegal. However, with the new Canada Health and Social Transfer, which came into effect last April, the federal government reversed this policy and re-legalized workfare, paving the way for the provinces to bring back the schemes.

Workfare is about blame, not work

Struthers concludes that workfare has historically been used as an attempt to fix the blame for joblessness on the unemployed, instead of on the economy itself. Workfare is society's way of testing the willingness of poor people to work. Politicians talk about the "dignity of labour" and how good workfare will be for those on welfare. But at the same time they cultivate a climate of suspicion and stigmatization of welfare clients.

Finally, for those forced to accept workfare as proof of their willingness to work, it's a cruel exchange, Struthers argues. The schemes have never been accompanied by a promise of legitimate employment. Only a healthy economy can do that.

* Can Workfare Work? -- Reflections from history, by James Struthers, published by the Caledon Institute of Social Policy, is available from Renouf Publishing in Ottawa. Phone: 613-741-4333, Fax: 613-741-5439.

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