At midnight tonight, London Transit workers are legally able to go on strike. If London sees anything like Ottawa’s recent strike — when buses stopped for almost two months — students across the city are likely in for a long stretch without public transit.

With that in mind, the members of Local 741 of the Amalgamated Transit Union should seriously consider whether a strike will work to their advantage.

Strikes are typically the last possible solution when bargaining breaks down — the fallback for workers who are unable to rectify the injustices of their workplaces. There was a time when strikes were necessary. Before labour laws were in place, the ability to strike was often the only power workers had.

Those days have passed. Yet strikes still occur, even after the formation of unions and bargaining units.

Unfortunately, the issues most modern strikes aim to rectify are rarely equal to the injustices of the past. This is coupled with a gradual souring of public opinion towards the inconveniences caused by strike actions. While an average person may have once seen the logic behind workers striking to get a fair working wage, it’s hard to empathize with those striking for a pay hike today.

By threatening to strike, LTC workers have failed to properly gauge public opinion. LTC employees seem to feel their current wages should be at par with the pay of transit workers in other jurisdictions, but it’s doubtful the public will agree with this reasoning — and rightly so. The LTC has blindly neglected basic economic issues.

Higher transit wages in other cities like Toronto correlates with a higher cost of living. In addition, any raise given to LTC workers would be at a rate not seen in the private sector. When many employees earning similar hourly wages in the private industry are being told their raises have been frozen until the economy improves, it is unlikely the LTC will garner much sympathy.

But that’s really what it all comes down to: sympathy. Workers go on strike and hope the inconvenience will generate public sympathy for the workers’ plight, causing the public to lobby the worker’s employers. It’s an archaic approach that could easily backfire in 21st century London.

For one thing, a strike would ensure an increase of students’ negative perceptions of the LTC, poisoning the future relationship between Western, Fanshawe, and the transit system.

In addition, the current economic climate is hardly favourable towards a strike. With unemployment on the rise and tightened budgets becoming the norm, an LTC strike appears to be nothing but a decadent act.