As Thanksgiving weekend came and went, there were a lot of Ontario families that had less to be thankful about due to an ongoing strike by employees of DriveTest. I’m talking about the men and women who have been unable to get their A/Z licences and the people who train them, many of whom have been laid off due to this nearly two-month long (and counting) dispute.

I don’t know enough about the situation to decide who’s right and who’s wrong. It seems the employees, including driver examiners, have some beefs about working conditions -and they may well be legitimate. What I do know is that the two sides need to get back to the table and work out a deal pronto, so that the innocent victims of this strike can get back to work. Many of the victims of the strike are workers who have been displaced from manufacturing jobs at steel plants and other professions.

Now they’re interested in pursuing a second career in our industry (some even have jobs waiting for

them) and they haven’t been able to take their road test as their EI benefits trickled away.

Jobless rates have been climbing through the recession and we should be making it easier -not more difficult -for people to work.

The most frustrating thing about the strike is that there seems to have been little progress in the negotiations. In fact, the two sides have gone stretches of time without even negotiating at all. One thing’s for sure, two sides can’t meet in the middle unless they’re willing to sit down together and hammer out a compromise. Let’s get at it!

-Rob Wilkins is the publisher of Truck News and he can be reached at 416-510-5123.