It’s getting rougher dealing with the public

John Lorinc, The Globe and Mail

The scene could scarcely have been more benign. During Wednesday’s lunch hour, a trickle of people ambled up to the cashiers’ counter inside the East York Civic Centre to pay tax and water bills. A woman exchanged pleasantries with a clerk, then dashed off. An older man fumbled with an envelope containing papers.

It was perfectly placid, but for the presence of a Plexiglas barrier, which the city recently installed across the counter separating municipal staff from municipal taxpayers. Small blue signs affixed to the glass sternly warned, “Aggressive or intimidating behaviour, harassment or coarse language won’t be tolerated.”

“I noticed [the partition], yes,” said Clyde Soden, a 74-year-old retired cashier. He’s lived in East York for 13 years and comes by every few months to pay his dues. “I’m feeling all right about them. Better safe than sorry.”

None of the clerks, nor their supervisors, would talk about the alteration. City spokesperson Cindy Bromley says the partitions were installed, along with surveillance cameras, to bring the East York Civic Centre up to the safety standards used at other municipal offices, where staff is in cash dealings with the public.

Yet such security measures hint at a highly sensitive topic that received a blast of attention this week when the union representing transit workers threatened to strike over the Toronto Transit Commission’s refusal to pay drivers who’ve been sidelined after rider assaults. Indeed, for many municipal workers, bullying, harassment and even violence is a part of daily work life.

What’s more, says CUPE Local 79 president Ann Dembinski, who represents City of Toronto inside workers, “it’s certainly getting worse.”

Both Local 79 and the city have been surveying municipal employees last month to determine the extent of the harassment facing those on the front line. But based on the city’s own statistics, it appears that such problems aren’t endemic: In 2007, there were 279 reported incidents in a work force of 35,000.

The victims of aggression run the gamut from child-care workers who are threatened by gun-wielding youth at Toronto Community Housing complexes to staff at homes for the aged who are assaulted by cantankerous residents.

Ms. Dembinski notes that city employees are dealing with a number of stressed, angry people who “are in desperate need of the services we provide.”

Brian Cochrane, president of CUPE Local 416, adds that sanitation workers take verbal flak when pick-up schedules change or if the garbage trucks are running late. Community-centre employees contend with aggressive loiterers who’ve been asked to leave or people who rail when they find out a program is full. It’s as if they’re held liable for decisions made by the officials at City Hall.

“Our front-line guys are the face of the city and they’ll take the abuse,” Mr. Cochrane says. But unlike Ms. Dembinski and the transit workers, he hasn’t seen an escalation recently.

These confrontations are not a Toronto phenomena. Transit drivers in Edmonton, Sydney and Paris have seen everything from spitting to stone-throwing and frantic teens wielding torches. As one Parisian bus driver recently told the Associated Press, “Trying to enforce the rules – like making people pay for the ride – is the quickest way to find yourself in the hospital.”

In Edmonton, from 1999 to 2005 recorded assaults against drivers grew from 200 to 302 – a troubling 50 per cent jump, especially considering that ridership only rose by 26 per cent in the same period.

For years, many experts felt that workplace violence in public-sector institutions involved disgruntled employees who lashed out, sometimes murderously, at managers or co-workers. But a 2006 study published in the Virginia-based Public Personnel Management journal debunked the “going postal” stereotype. Based on a survey of 868 employees in a Midwestern U.S. city, the study found that customers were responsible for the majority of threats.

Workplace aggression expert Julian Barling, associate dean of Queen’s University’s School of Business, notes that members of the public who would never consider berating a stranger on the street have few qualms about taking out their frustrations on a government worker. “There’s no doubt there’s a double standard.”

Ms. Dembinski says in many departments, City of Toronto managers have recognized the tension. But Prof. Barling feels employees need better training in conflict resolution. They also have to have the confidence that when they refuse to serve someone, their supervisors will back them up.

Vehicle operators, however, are in a tougher spot because they must pay attention to the road and route schedules. The TTC is allowing operators to be flexible about admitting passengers who don’t have tickets. The commission is also in the process of installing closed circuit cameras in all its buses and streetcars, and is examining the pros and cons of installing protective barriers around the drivers. “We’re actively contemplating it,” says TTC chief safety officer John O’Grady.

Prof. Darling agrees that physical protection measures are important, especially on high-risk routes.

Yet University of Regina conflict-resolution expert Alan Levy points out that bulletproof barriers and surveillance cameras may also exacerbate the alienation and erosion of civility that tends to give rise to such conduct.

“The city needs to work harder to raise people’s awareness that this sort of behaviour is not the way we should treat one another,” Prof. Levy says.