Bike messengers unionizing

TOBMA (Toronto Bike Messengers Association) has been in the news a lot recently. Most recently they've held a press conference and a fundraiser after the death of Darcy Sheppard. Ryerson Free Press shows a new angle of TOBMA as the voice and union for messengers who currently work for sorry pay and conditions.

“The best way to describe the courier industry in Toronto is a sweatshop on wheels.” said Hayward.

Bike couriers are paid by commission, which means they earn a percentage of each delivery, not an hourly rate. For instance, Hayward explains, if a courier earns 60 per cent of a delivery, with the average rate of $5, the courier will receive $3. Courier companies are also undercutting each other’s rates and over hiring to create more coverage.

“It doesn’t matter if one guy does the work or a 100 do it, the company will make the same amount of money…so they over hire to create more coverage, which means the couriers will make less money.”

As a result, Hayward said on average, couriers have been earning around $100 a day working 50 hours a week, for the past 20 years.

“When I started, this wasn’t a minimum wage job. In 1998, I made $100 a day and 11 years later, the rate is still $100. Apparently, 20 years ago it was still $100 per day too.”

Hayward and TOBMA are making a strong push to unionize, something that others have tried to varying degrees of success before:

The Toronto Bike Messenger Association of Toronto in a partnership with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, are currently leading a movement to unionize each individual courier company, which would allow couriers basic worker’s rights.

Hayward imagines a union contract including vacation pay, paid holidays and better job security. Most importantly, to combat rate undercutting, it would ensure couriers be paid a fair wage even if rates drop. Concurrently though, if rates rise, couriers would be paid according to the higher price.

Though historically, bike couriers have been viewed as a notoriously skeptical subculture of anarchists and anti-establishment types, Hayward remains confident unionizing the industry is possible.

The reality of couriers being a subclass of people attracted to the easy entry and flexibility has played out badly in the media after the death of Darcy Sheppard. The mainstream media ate up the ideas fed to them by Bryant's publicists, even suggesting Sheppard caused his own death by pulling on the steering wheel.

Although some couriers say the future of a unionized Toronto is grim, there has been progress made in the labour movement. The Toronto Hoof and Cycle Courier Coalition, the founding messenger association before it was reconstructed as the TBMA, won a 15-year battle with Revenue Canada to make the extra food couriers require as fuel, tax deductible. For once, lunch is tax-free as couriers can deduct $17.55 a day for food and drink.

Despite technological advancements such as the fax machine and e-mail and current economic factors, both causing a decline in the courier business, Hayward said the need for better rights for couriers remains unchanged.

“People blame the fax machine and people blame the Internet, but even if there is less work to do, why does that correlate to getting paid less for each individual delivery?…It’s the wild west of labour practices.”

Email didn't kill the need to send packages, just like it didn't kill off Canada Post.

herb : 15 years 8 months ago
Tags: advocacy, couriers, politics

News: Pirates and slow progress on bike lanes

The Bike Pirates are profiled - "has grown into Toronto's biggest bike repair collective" (and dare I say, the only?). Torontist, Oct. 7, 2009

Bike Pirates began as a loosely organized tool-sharing program, where members could dip into a centralized pool of equipment for bicycle repairs. Today, their storefront resembles a fully functional bike shop, but with an important difference: "We won't service your bike," said Chloé. "We'll help you service your bike."

In other words, bringing your broken-down beater to the Pirates means taking their tools and their expert guidance and using those things to learn to do it all yourself. They're the opposite of a full-service, no-sweat repair place, but to the segment of the bicycling public for whom dirty fingernails aren't a problem, Bike Pirates is cycling Avalon. They don't make repairs; they make repairpeople.

Bike lane installation to slow down in 2010, but City moves ahead with consultant for Bloor/Danforth bike lane. Inside Toronto, Oct. 6, 2009.

One thing the city is moving forward in, in the longer term, is the plan to construct city-spanning dedicated bike lanes along the Bloor-Danforth corridor. Heaps called that the "Transit City" of bicycle infrastructure.

The city is looking to hire a consultant to implement what is likely to be a complex mix of bicycling infrastructure along the route. The works committee approved a plan to get the consultant in place by early 2010, and Heaps said the plan should be implemented by 2011.

Yvonne Bambrick of the Toronto Cyclist's Union said that while she wanted to see the lanes there in place as quickly as possible, she understood the need to consult and achieve consensus from communities living along the route.

"They're doing what they need to do to get the buy-in," she said. "It's been done, it's been identified as the right place to go - we know that already - that's a decision that's been made so we're going forward. If the outcome is a full corridor with a variety of cycling infrastructure along it, because of varying street design and widths and whatnot from one end to the other, then I'm all for taking a bit more time to get buy-in to study it further."

herb : 15 years 9 months ago
Tags: news

Not enough bike lanes: Ontario Environmental Commissioner

Ontario's Environmental Commissioner Gord Miller has criticized Toronto and Ontario for failing cyclists and pedestrians. Notch it up to another report (the first being the 1998 Coroner's report) that activists can wave in front of politicians as they waffle and drag their feet:

Toronto's cycling enthusiasts celebrated a small victory this week after the province's environmental commissioner released a report criticizing the city over its lack of bike lanes.

In his annual report, this year entitled Building Resiliance, commissioner Gord Miller criticized Toronto's handling over the Bloor Street revitalization project.

The report said that the city didn't have to consult the public because of the way the project was classified.

"It was classified as an 'A' which means there was very little opportunity for public consultation and discussion that some proponents of cycling wanted to see," Miller said after tabling his report in the provincial legislature on Tuesday.

Miller said the classification resulted in the loss of bikes lanes in the area of Bloor, between Church Street and Avenue Road.

At the time Councillor Rae said they wanted to make this section of Bloor a "destination" rather than just a corridor. Tell that to the motorists.

He said the province needs to do more to ensure bicycles are taken into consideration when municipalities seek provincial approval.

"There should be a mandatory requirement," said Miller "[that] in future in these kinds of projects that cycling and pedestrians — as legitimate forms of transportation — be included in the consideration and the alternatives in discussion and design."

Amen. This is what Bells on Bloor's Albert Koehl has been calling for - a push from the province.

Eventually the Bloor Street Transformation Project plan ended up in court. The city got what it wanted and cyclists ended up with 'sharrows' — a shared lane with traffic — instead of bicycle-only lanes.

Miller's recommendations are a small victory for Albert Koehl, the lawyer who represented cycling advocacy groups on the Bloor Street project.

"We have now the environmental commissioner pointing the finger at the province and saying you've got to do quite a bit more," he said.

Koehl says the report isn't going to change the situation overnight, but will be a weapon in the bigger battle towards having safe streets for cyclists and pedestrians.

herb : 15 years 9 months ago
Tags: bike lanes, commuting, politics