Drive Test Strike! R-U Crazy?
The company managing Ontario’s 55 road test locations Serco Drivetest DES Ltd, has been on strike now for 3 months! It seems their 250 full-time employees quietly joined the USW (Steelworkers) Union, local 9511, in the hopes that they could bully management into letting into the Union, the additional 280 part-time contract employees, entitling them also to full benefits. Let me ask you, my clients, did you get a raise this year? Are you entitled to job-security, and full benefits? Are you automatically under the protection and strong workers rites under the umbrella of such powerful unions? Well I am not. What gives these people their sense of entitlement? When the economy is struggling out Canada’s current recession, these 250 USW union members are holding this Province, and it’s backlog of 300,000 applicants waiting for a road test hostage. Enough is Enough! I urge you to write to your MPP’s, and write to Premier McGuinty as I have done. Urge them to step in, and put a quick sobering end to this political mish-mash nonsense. It is the Ontario Government’s responsibility to oversee, and administer the Serco Drivetest company, to ensure we voting taxpayers, we 300,000 disgruntled voters, to provide what we have paid so much in taxes for: the right to take a driving test!!!
Too many seniors need to requalify for a driver’s license after attaining the age of 80. Medical suspensions dealing with life-threatening medical conditions such as epilepsy, and sleep apnea, which demand an evaluating driving test, are now still driving untested! Hundreds, if not thousands of foreign drivers, and expired-licensed drivers are driving each day untested. Truck and Bus drivers in need of retesting are on our provincial highways daily untested. This poses a huge safety and insurance risk to all of us. Are insurance companies going to give coverage to those killed and injured on our roadways to drivers with expired licenses? I think not! Any excuse to possibly deny coverage will be used against these motorists.
We Canadians are a passive people. Little has been said in the media, or done in protest to bring the plight of more than 300,000 affected individuals to the forefront. This must change! Premier McGuinty, this is YOUR responsibility to end the strike NOW! Your government oversees and administers these tests. At a time when your Ministry could be recouping a lost revenue of $800,000.00 daily, in this tough economic recession, to delay further is madness! Do not under estimate the disenfranchised seniors, commercial drivers, and soon-to-vote new drivers, we are watching while you continue to do nothing, we will not forget when it is our time at the polls to vote. It is your action NOW, or continued inaction that WILL be your political legacy!