October 2008 Archives

Today, in Toronto, City Council is debating as to whether they should ask the province to declare the local transit system (the TTC) as an "essential service".  The issue arises over an incident last spring where the TTC was in a legal strike position and in contract talks.  Somewhere during the negotiation cycle things went awry. Both management and the union executive arrived at a deal that was supposed to be a 'slam dunk' with the union but, as telegraphed here, was not.

The transit union voted against the deal and went on strike.  Further, against union executive promises, they stuck immediately, without the agreed upon 48 hour notice.  Expectant users were literally stranded in the streets following the usual Saturday night revelry.  Everyone was angry.  Hundreds of thousands of users were left trying to scramble for alternates before Monday's rush, not to mention those working and travelling on the Sunday.  The Provincial Government ended up introducing back to work legislation to end the strike and send the parties to arbitration.

Some of the parameters of the impact of a TTC strike that are being floated around:

        * 1.5 million riders per day
        * traffic congestion in the city costs about $2 billion per year
        * the cost of a TTC strike to the city is about $50 million per day
        * the cost to accept the negotiated contract was about $11.2 million

There is no doubt that this transit system is, as most systems are across North America especially in major urban centres, a vital service to the populace.  In fact, as a strong proponent of Critical Infrastructure Assurance, I would say this type of service is critical to the continued proper functioning of a city.  But "essential"?

The Ontario Provincial Government, in 1993, legislated "Essential Service" through the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act (S.O. 1993, C. 38).  In this act, essential service was defined as "services that are necessary to enable the employer to prevent,

    (a) danger to life, health or safety,

    (b) the destruction or serious deterioration of machinery, equipment or premises,

    (c) serious environmental damage, or

    (d) disruption of the administration of the courts or of legislative drafting" (s. 30)

Essential services include police, fire, ems and other life saving services.  Nowhere does the legislation state, or even allude to, economic impacts.  Nowhere is there mention of guaranteed access to employment.  This action would put bus drivers in the same class as paramedics performing advanced care on an accident victim or firefighter running into a burning building.  With all due respect to transit personnel, this designation would 'cheapen' our front line responders.

If, in this context, transit is essential, then we must necessarily include almost every other piece of critical infrastructure.  Truck drivers who deliver our food (necessary sustenance), sanitation workers (health threat of curbside garbage) and oil refinery workers (we need that gasoline) to name but a few.

This movement is occurring for the wrong reasons, this is about economy and convenience, not health, safety and life protection.  There are alternatives for transit (car / carpool, walk, cycle, taxi, work from home, vacation, stay with friends, etc.) but there are few alternatives to law enforcement officers.

There are better ways to deal with the issues surrounding this event.  Designating transit as an essential service, thus removing their right to strike, is not one of them unless we deisgnate all critical infrastructure workers as "essential."

Our governments, big business and other organisations are highly stratified.  We all know this.  The closer we are to the bottom of the ladder, the more we do.  The higher we are to the top, the more we decide what is to be done.  Again, pretty obvious.

There are many benefits to this system.  One being we don't have inexperienced, 'wet behind the ears' employees making critical decisions and running the business.  On the other hand, our decision makers get further and further away from the field. Basing decisions on increasingly outdated and obsolete ground level experience.  Funny though, that's not my point.

What is my point is that at the very highest levels, in the largest of companies / governments the decision makers are only just that.  They decide.  They rarely have time to digest information.  They rarely have time to educate themselves.  They rely on an upward trend of recommendations through reporting structures and advisors to provide for them the sound bite of information required to make the decision:  "Just give me the 50,000 foot overview (as we walk between meetings)". Maybe this is necessary.  Maybe this is the best way.  But maybe it has it's faults.

My area of focus, emergency management, often has CORPORATE WIDE IMPLICATIONS and employs a complex stream of analyses, justifications and diverse perspectives to paint a realistic view of risk to those who must responsibly treat these risks or give direction to treat these risks.  Can your executive adequately make decisions on Critical Infrastructure Assurance, Continuity of Operations or Comprehensive Terrorist Threat Assessment Programs based on a one or two page brief?  

The question is: how does one prepare the decision makers to make an informed decision, when there is little time or ability to properly educate them? 

Further, if an incorrect decision is made, who is most at fault?  Those that didn't (couldn't) supply the correct amount of information / awareness / education? Or those that didn't (couldn't) devote the time for the correct amount of  information / awareness / education?  How can we get the an increasing amount of 'face time' with the executive to ensure they the essential information required to make the informed decisions on these comprehensive programs?

Photo by Steve Webel. Creative Commons License Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic

 

"During an emergency is NOT the time to be exchanging business cards".  I first heard this piece of advice from then Commissioner of Emergency Management (Ontario), Julian Fantino.  While this is certainly sage advice and I wholeheartedly agree, I have also noted an adverse effect of the business card exchange, or rather it has highlighted a dangerous fallacy among practitioners.

I hear this phrase now at almost every other conference, workshop or seminar I attend on the subject of emergency management.  It is a plea of the moderator for the audience to get out and meet the other attendees.  "NOW is the time to exchange business cards", they say.  "Well that's just great", I say.  But there are problems with this.

Firstly, I now have a drawer full of business cards.  We live in an electronic information age, at least I do.  It's better to send an email so I can electronically catalogue your information, place into my contacts folder and blast you an email from time to time.  It's much easier as I have a genetic disposition for instantly forgetting names. But that's not the problem, that's just me.

The problem is that we are connecting ourselves through chance meetings at various events, meeting those of the same interest and the same abilities to attend.  It's a skewed audience.  I will have to hope that in the midst of an emergency, I have previously met the person I now desperately need to contact.

Our contacts are based on personal relationships, chance meetings and imperfect memberships.  How many meetings have you attended where some (many) of the members are no-shows, or send a 'designate'?  This problem looms large for the emergency manager, or anyone who needs to coordinate vast and varied persons / organizations / industries and needs them to 'play nicely together in the sandbox'.

What still has to occur in emergency management, risk management, business continuity and any other discipline that stretches across an organization or public body is to operationalize the process.  That is to pull the function away from the individual (the 'champion') and push it to the position, connecting with every other position.

We shouldn't need to exchange business cards.  We should have to rely on happenstance to meet the right people.  We should have the networks set out in all of our operations so contacts are known, exercised and maintained.  So if so-and-so from such-and-such retires, I would know immediately, would know his/her replacement and would not lose continuity.

Imagine during an emergency I pull out a business card and "...the number you have dialled is no longer in service..."