Earlier today, in an attempt to do something instead of simply sitting on the sidelines, I contacted both the ATU Local 741 and the LTC with an idea:
Publish your offers on your websites. That way the public is informed, the media has access to it and the “other side” can’t distort your numbers because everyone can fact-check.
Unfortunately, ATU Local 741 President Pat Hunniford has already replied to my idea basically saying that it’s not going to happen. Here is the full text:
Good afternoon ATU Local 741,
I am submitting this message via your website in the hopes that it reaches union President Pat Hunniford.
I have a great idea: hopefully you are willing to listen.
If you’re afraid that the LTC will distort the numbers in Local 741’s latest proposal, then make the proposals available for the public to view online. That would take about 5 minutes to either put it up as text on the union’s website or to put it into PDF format for download.
That’s it, that’s all it would take! Then the general public has the ability to fact-check the other side and EVERYONE wins.
I’m not interested in what the offer is because I’m not the mediator. But this would go a long way toward building goodwill amongst the citizens of London despite the strike. At the very least it would look like something’s getting done.
President Pat Hunniford replied:
It is the Union’s position not to negiotiate in the media or to publish offers or the company position on any web site. The company and city hall has taken that action and has caused more problems that it has solved.
I also e-mailed LTC General Manager Larry Ducharme the following text:
Good afternoon Mr. Ducharme,
My name is Derek Silva. I live in the London area and work in the city of London. I’m contacting you in the hopes of helping to move the strike forward as far as negotiations go.
Mr. Hunniford recently stated in the London Free Press that he doesn’t trust the LTC not to take their numbers and twist them somehow. I’m not siding with either the LTC or the union, but I believe I have a solution to this alleged problem and have already sent a message to the union regarding this idea.
I propose that the ATU Local 741 and the LTC make their proposals and counter-proposals available on their respective websites, either in plain text or PDF format. This would allow the general public and the media to act as fact-checkers and quelling the war of words currently going on in the press. It would take just a few minutes to make this happen assuming that the latest proposals were probably written in word processing software (WordPerfect, Word, OpenOffice, etc.) and saved to a hard drive somewhere in the organization.
I hope you take this idea into consideration going forward. This would allow the LTC to receive proposals in writing and also to counter-propose in writing.
If I receive a response from Larry, I’ll post it here.