Ottawa's Transit Strike: Part II

“The thing that’s so ironic, is we are stuck with what I call national Alzheimer’s disease. The general American public, through no fault of its own, but through the media—which is laughingly called, absurdly called, obscenely called—liberal media, which is a joke, of course. But the point is that because of that, day after day after day, putting down of labor organizations, or not mentioning them led to the children not knowing a thing about it.

How did the eight-hour day come into being? It began in Chicago and four guys got hanged for it—the Haymarket affair in 1886. What were they fighting for? The eight-hour day.

There’s no knowledge what the labor movement did for the lives of people. Social Security came out of the New Deal, and the minimum wage idea, and the idea of national health, these all came out of [labor]. And that’s all being dismantled by what we have now. And so part of it is not knowing the past. No past, therefore there is no present and no future.” Studs Terkel


Studs Terkel, the famous American DJ, writer and social historian, who chronicled first-hand experiences of workers in America, might have something to say to Ottawa commuters. First, I want to say that I sympathize with my friends who have to commute to work during the current transit strike. However, in the spirit of the late Studs, I ask them to hold back on their vitriolic reaction to the current labour impasse and to think about Studs question: How did the eight-hour day come into being? As they commute every so slowly to their eight-hour work day they religiously adhere to, they might ask why the transit drivers are so rigid in their demands for control of their work schedules and to curtail the power of transit managers to make them work split shifts which can stretch their work day for 12-16 hours for 8 hours pay. Would they accept the same work conditions? I doubt it and ask them to think about the larger social context and beyond easy reactionary hate for unions which brought them their 8 hour work-day.