8.26.2005
Toronto Bike Messengers on the Road to Forming a Union
NOW Toronto reports that bike couriers in Toronto are making moves toward forming a union with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW).
How rough is the road out there for couriers? While some can make up to $150 a day, the majority earn $70 to $100. Most messengers routinely work more than nine hours a day, and aren't paid overtime or for vacations, statutory holidays or sick days.In doing so, they are joining a movement made famous by the San Francisco bike messengers, who unionized in 1998, and by the New York bike messengers.
They’ve been called urban cowboys, daredevils, and street samurai, but in fact San Francisco’s bike messengers and their car-driving co-workers toil in sweatshops on wheels.As a urban bike rider myself, I can sympathize with the Toronto biker's health concerns.
Now the Sierra Legal Defence Fund is considering bringing suit against the province and feds for failing to curtail the smog that several studies show is having adverse long-term effects on couriers' health.Seems like another step in the trend of seemingly isolated workers (for example, home health care workers) finding some common ground and advantages to joining together to fight for their rights.
Albert Koehl, a lawyer with the group, says an argument for damages could be made. He points out that under section 14 of Ontario's Environmental Protection Act (EPA), it's an offence "to discharge a contaminant into the natural environment that causes an adverse effect." The EPA defines this as, among other things, "an adverse effect on the health of any person" or "interference with normal conduct of business."
