Our union (0PSƏU) reps are having meetings this week with our employer (L1feL@bs) and an arbitrator. About a month ago, we overwhelmingly voted for strike action, if no new deal can be arranged. However, only about a quarter of our drivers have full-time routes, and a further quarter or so are permanent part-time (21 guaranteed weekly hours, with benefits). I assume that most of those drivers usually feel like actual employees.

About half of us are casual/on-call drivers (without benefits) and don’t necessarily get more than two shifts per week, especially outside of the summer vacation period. I’m in the bottom half of the seniority list and probably will be for quite a while. Even a permanent part-time position apparently only comes up once every year or two. Most of our part-time and casual drivers are retired or semi-retired from other things and already have pensions, other retirement savings, and benefits in place from those, not to mention being homeowners. A few of us do not have any of those things. Once my employment insurance top-up from being laid off from my last job ends in a few months, things will get very tough. I guess I need to find a second part-time job.

Our work is important: picking up medical specimens and delivering accumulated bags, sharps bags, empty bags, supplies, and reports (“mail”). A few routes have as many as 70-120 stops, but some of them are multiple doctors’ offices in larger buildings, of which some are report delivery only. Several routes each take many dozens of full bags from the Kitchener-Waterloo/Cambridge/Guelph/Fergus and surrounding area to major facilities in Etobicoke and Mississauga (about an hour or more away, in the Greater Toronto Area), where the specimens are processed. Sometimes, our manager gets stuck at the last minute having to hire a third-party company, which gets paid two to three times more than we do, even though their drivers skip many thing (e.g., sharps, empties, supplies, and mail) and frequently make mistakes.

After only about five months, I’ve already done (or, in a few cases, just been trained on) 14 of our 17 routes. However, even with extensive notes it’s hard to be efficient, stay on schedule, and get one’s breaks in when there can be a gap of up to several months before doing the same route again. Also, all routes have aspects that are illogically arranged and expected stop timings that are impossible, even for the most experienced drivers. My favourite is downtown Guelph to Rockwood back to downtown Guelph to west Waterloo in 52 minutes, including all of the time it takes to do things at these places.

We drive all over the place in all weather conditions and deal with potentially hazardous things all day (anywhere from 8 a.m. to 1:30 a.m.), but we are the company’s lowest paid employees. The company is just being sold, though, and the new owner’s US drivers actually get paid more per hour (in equivalent Canadian dollars) than we do. I hope this week’s meetings will address some of these things.