When it was uncovered in the Spring of 2016 that then-Mayor John Tory and the Toronto City Council were contemplating the privatization of Toronto Hydro, the Society quickly sprang into action.
A full-fledged public campaign opposing the privatization, backed by a diverse coalition of civil society organizations, challenged the city head-on. The Society, which represents engineers and information technology specialists at Toronto Hydro, was an active player in the coalition, and a leader in the public interest campaign.
The privatization of Toronto Hydro was problematic for a few reasons. While John Tory pointed to privatization as a way to generate revenue for city infrastructure advancements, Toronto Hydro is a public investment that generates sustained returns. It did not make sound economic sense for the city to sell.
According to the 2016 report, “Selling Off Toronto Hydro: Private Sector Gain, Consumer Pain,” authored by Sheila Block and published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), “Toronto Hydro is a very good investment for the city. The average return on equity for Toronto Hydro over the last five years was nine percent.”
“Year in and year out, this public asset provides valuable dividends to the city. Over the last five years, those dividends totalled $241 million,” it reads.
By keeping an energy utility in public hands, it can serve a public interest mandate that includes prioritizing universal access, delivering secure and reliable service, and ensuring fair prices for consumers. When privatized, the company’s bottom line is to generate profit for shareholders, often at the expense of the public good. And instead of economic returns funding public projects, they’re used to line private pockets.
As Senior Economist Sheila Block notes in the CPPA report, “History has shown that turning over public services for private profit frequently costs consumers in the long run. Available evidence indicates that prices for privatized or partially privatized local hydro distributors are higher than publicly owned ones.”
Then-Society President Scott Travers and then-Toronto Hydro Local Vice-President Henry Quach contributed to Block’s research.
The Society’s Toronto Hydro Local was in bargaining the same year that Tory proposed to privatize Toronto Hydro. The effects of potential privatization were seen at the bargaining table. Quach believed that the concessions Toronto Hydro tabled were to make the utility books appear more enticing to Bay Street investors, according to a Society statement published June 16, 2016.
The Toronto Hydro Local stages an information picket at 14 Carleton Street on April 21, 2016
That year, the Local faced a particularly rough round of bargaining. The employer pressured Society members to sell out the next generation of workers. Management was pushing to take away post-retirement health benefits and slash parental and family leave for new hires.
On May 24, 2016, Travers appeared before Toronto City Council’s Executive Committee. He discussed the economic impact of selling Toronto Hydro and the effect of potential privatization on the Society’s negotiating Toronto Hydro members.
“My members, who serve this city well, who perform vital engineering functions for Toronto Hydro, ensuring the reliability of power to citizens and businesses alike, are facing a privatization agenda at the bargaining table,” reads his deputation from May 24, 2016. “I want to assure this committee, the Society will not accept these cuts to important benefits, in order to facilitate the sale of Toronto Hydro to private interests.”
Travers urged the city not to turn “a resilient, predictable and provident source of revenue into a loss,” while noting that privatization would increase electricity costs for consumers.
Society members from Toronto Hydro organized and obtained a 98 percent strike vote. They staged information pickets, launched an online petition, and garnered media attention. They successfully fought off the concessions and in July 2016, ratified a four-year deal.
But a broader fight was still ahead.
May 24, 2016 - Then-Society President Scott Travers delivers a deputation to a Toronto City Council Executive Committee
THE BATTLE TO KEEP TORONTO HYDRO PUBLIC
The Society was actively engaged in advocacy from the onset against Toronto Hydro’s privatization. According to Travers, the Society leadership, including its Board of Directors, were solidly in support of allocating resources to the fight.
“We were very unified as a union,” he said. “There was no internal bickering about the right way to proceed, and that made a huge difference.”
The Society published full-page newspaper advertisements and commissioned the firm Environics Research to perform public opinion research. The findings, shared in the June 2016 report “Attitudes towards Toronto Hydro Privatization,” demonstrated strong public opposition to Toronto Hydro’s privatization.
Just nine percent of Toronto residents responded that a private corporation should deliver electricity to Toronto. Sixty-four percent of respondents believed electricity should be delivered by a public utility.
"Just nine percent of Toronto residents responded that a private corporation should deliver electricity to Toronto."
“We ran a really good campaign of public involvement,” said Travers. The Society launched a website, OurHydro.ca, which featured a platform to email the mayor and city councillors. A 30-second commercial was produced, based on the theme of “Stranger Things,” to encourage public participation in the campaign. The Society reached tens of thousands of Torontonians by running ads on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
By the Fall of 2016, a coalition to stop the privatization of Toronto Hydro was assembled.
It included representation from the Toronto and York Region Labour Council, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), Social Planning Toronto, the Toronto Environmental Alliance, and ACORN.
“By cooperating together, we increased our strength,” said Travers.
Travers said that the previous relationships built by the Society with community organizations enabled the Society to engage in effective coalition building. “We had sponsored some social events and social groups in Toronto that paid off in dividends, even though they were not unions,” remarked Travers.
Groups that had experience with on-the-ground organizing, such as ACORN, were vital to the work of the coalition. “Those kinds of relationships pay off, because we have a common interest in doing things that are good for the people of Ontario.”
In addition to organizing online and through the media, the coalition performed neighbourhood outreach through door knocking. This holistic organizing approach resulted in major public engagement. By November, Torontonians had signed more than 2,500 petitions and letters to councillors. More than 500 people had placed calls.
“We applied political pressure on the city of Toronto, and we carried the day,” said Travers.
On Nov. 24, 2016, Mayor John Tory announced in a speech to the Toronto Region Board of Trade that plans to sell off parts of Toronto Hydro were cancelled.
“I remember we were at City Hall ready to do a large press release, and we were told we won. It was wonderful – a real textbook campaign with a victory,” said Travers.
A still frame from the Society's campaign video to keep Toronto Hydro Public, which was filmed to the theme of "Stranger Things"
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