Locked in to the lockout
Adnan Ghadie stands in front of his airport taxi on the streets of Ottawa. © Alexandra Mazur.
Adnan Ghadie, 38, is tall and broad, and wears thick black gloves and a classic black toque — he admits he looks intimidating, until he begins to speak.
“It was my father’s taxi, and I used to drive part-time with him when I worked other places,” he said. “His foot became swollen, it was his driving foot, and so he was forced out and I was forced in. I’m institutionalized. I’m institutionalized behind a steering wheel.”
Ghadie, born and raised in Ottawa, has been an airport taxi driver for more than 10 years, and depends on the job to support his wife and his two-year-old son. Along with more than 275 other taxi drivers, Ghadie has been locked out from picking up passengers at the airport, because of a three-month labour dispute with the dispatcher Coventry Connections.
Ghadie said the lockout is more personal than anything, and that he’s felt the pressure from all sides. He’s had Blueline taxi drivers and passers-by give him the finger while he was out protesting. He also claims airport security has used psychological tactics to intimidate protestors.
“They’ve had the commissionaires follow us into the washrooms and stand behind us while we’re urinating,” he said. “They’ve had commissionaires stand on both sides of the protest area. They stare at you, and any time you look back they start writing notes.”
Ghadie also said airport security was quick to hand out trespassing notices to protestors, refusing them access to the property unless it was for travelling purposes.
He got a trespassing notice when he and other protestors were banging spoons against the railings used to section off the protest area.
“A lot of us, maybe including myself, were hitting them maybe harder than we usually would, so they gave us all trespassing notices,” Ghadie said.
Since Über — the new app-based un-licensed cab service — was introduced to the city in October 2014, some of the backlash from licensed Ottawa cab drivers has been violent.
Über is one of the fastest-growing companies of any type in history, according to a review done by the City of Ottawa, which claims that the company’s value has jumped to $51-billion in 2015 from $60-million in 2011. This document is part of the City of Ottawa’s process of restructuring the city’s taxi system in the wake of the Über wave. In the meantime, people like Ghadie have to wait and struggle through the birthing pains of a new industry, one that might not benefit him in the end.
Matt is a part-time Über driver who requested his last name not be published for fear of harassment from taxi drivers.
“I think it’s unfortunate on both sides,” he said. “I just think that while the situation isn’t ideal with the lockout that’s happening right now, there are probably better ways to protest.”
“We’re at a place where ride-sharing and taxis are such a focal point in the media,” he added. “With such scrutiny, you probably just want to be on your best behaviour”.
He is not alone in his sentiments. Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson has been vocal about the airport cab drivers’ “bad behaviour.” The most recent incident involved unidentified protestors storming the Coventry Connections dispatcher on Nov. 13, what Unifor 1688, the Ottawa chapter of Canada’s national taxi union, dubbed its ‘Day of Action’.
Coventry Connections is the largest taxi dispatcher in Ottawa, and also manages Blueline, Capital, Westway, and other taxi fleets in the city. In July 2015, Coventry Connections CEO Hanif Patni clinched a five-year deal with the airport, with the potential to extend it for another five years.
The lockout started Aug. 11 after the airport and Coventry Connections came to a deal to impose an increase on airport taxi drivers’ rent fees.
The airport first offered to lend exclusive access to the airport taxi fleet, but to change their monthly stand rent fee, which previously worked out to an estimated $1.50 to $2 per pickup. The new system would have drivers charged a flat rate of $4.50 per pickup.
Unifor stated that airport cab drivers would previously have spent approximately $380 a month on pickup fees, but with the new system, the monthly stand rent would be closer to $1,300 a month, which works out to a nearly 400 per cent increase in fees.
In a letter to Patni, Mark Laroche, CEO of the Ottawa International Airport, stated that if Coventry didn’t meet his terms, the second option would be to open up the airport to “other drivers, vehicles, fleets, and service delivery models,” which would potentially open the door to Über.
Determined not to lose the airport business, Patni locked out the defiant airport fleet, and opened the airport to others from Blueline and Capital, who have lost business in the downtown area to Über, charging them the new $4.50 flat rate per pickup.
Coventry Connections justified the price increase to the airport cab drivers in a letter, stating that a flat fee rate was common of other airports in Canada, and that the money would not be going to Coventry Connections.
In Edmonton, the taxi drivers pay $4 out of pocket for each fare, but they charge a $55 flat rate from the airport to downtown.
At the Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport in Montreal, there is a lottery system that selects an exclusive fleet each year. The drivers pay a yearly fee that works out to roughly $300 plus tax a month, but they also charge a flat rate of $40 to the downtown area.
In Calgary, there is a $4.70 fee charged to the customer, and the ride downtown costs between $40 and $50.
Ghadie believes, along with many other airport taxi drivers, that a $4.50 out-of-pocket charge for Ottawa taxi drivers, who on average charge approximately $30 to downtown, is too much to ask.
“If you go to the Hilton Garden Inn, which costs $6.65, and I owe almost $5, and I have to pay for gas and insurance, it means I just drove for free,” the Ottawa native said. “They never proposed a system that would be fair.”
Tom Milroy, Ottawa Centre’s Green Party representative and an expert on labour disputes, admits the taxi lockout is an extremely complex problem. Milroy argued that for a clean resolution there would have to be more movement from everyone. Unifor would have to solidify a united front with other taxi fleets in Ottawa, and the airport board members, who have expressively stayed out of the dispute that Milroy argues they created, need to step in.
“I don’t know how it’s going to play out,” Milroy said. “There are failings on both sides”.
Coventry Connections refused to comment on the details of the lockout, stating any comment might damage negotiations.
There was a new verbal proposal from Coventry Nov. 12, before the Day of Action, according to Ghadie, but he believes the lockout distorted fair dealing from the start.
“What should have happened instead of what’s going on now is that we would have continued with the service, and negotiations would continue between us and the company, and if that fell through, then we go through due process and go to arbitration,” he said.
Nov. 13, Waffa Dwaydar speaks with her husband Haroun Dwaydar, an airport taxi driver, at her side about the lockout on Unifor’s ‘Day of Action’.
