Every season, there seems to be some public-sector labour disruption brewing or in rolling boil. Right now, Ontario’s college staff are on strike. The customers, as always, are screwed.

Even conservative newspapers like the Toronto Sun are calling for the provincial government to enact “back-to-work” legislation to stop the strike. I wish it was possible to rely instead on market mechanisms to correct this situation.

After all, track the money. College students buy their education (though they get subsidized by various governments): it is they who at the end of the day are the customers who paid for a service that they are not receiving. Why is it unheard-of to sue the colleges? Force the organization that committed to providing the service to actually carry out its side of the bargain.

The same concept would apply to ordinary municipal services. If the garbage guys stop coming, why not sue the city for the inconvenience? damages due to stench (as garbage strikes always seem to occur in late summer)? If elementary schools close, why not sue the school board for having to take time off work to look after the brats? Plus, once service is restored, is there ever a refund to those that suffered?

I have seen a few commercial contracts in my days at Cygnus. It was typical for these to exclude liability due to “labour disruption”. Of course, these terms were unused as Cygnus staff was never unionized (though there was a great April Fool’s Day note by Pati Palmer in 1999 that got management riled). Labour disruption was thus essentially impossible, so our customers didn’t have to discount their contract value by the risk of such loss.

I don’t recall seeing any such terms in the “contract” associated with my numerous university tuition transactions.

If governmental organs are implicitly provided by some sort of legal shield against such non-performance lawsuits, I wonder if a political party could make it a policy plank to revoke such taxpayer-screwing protection.