School Might Be Out – But Summer Camp Isn’t In

by John Laforet
posted on June 30th, 2009 at 07:33:19 am

The second week of the City of Toronto strike has added a further element of stress to the lives of many of Toronto’s families. The 3000 children receiving child care in City run daycares have been without a program since the beginning of the strike over a week ago, forcing their parents, many of whom are low income to make other arrangements for their children – without the assistance of their municipal childcare subsidy.

This week thousands more children and parents have been affected as the City’s summer camps have not opened due to the strike. This leaves parents scrambling to find a private summer camp placement for their child, either paying more or going without adequate child care for this portion of the summer.

This is an unsafe situation, as many parents are forced to choose between going to work and keeping their job and ensuring their child has adequate, safe and affordable childcare.

It is my hope the City recognizes that workers have been clear, and have a mandate not to negotiate on the sick leave issue. If the City insists on pushing this right now, instead of pulling this off the table for further negotiation between the this collective agreement and the next, they are very unlikely to win at arbitration anyways. Should the City lose at arbitration, it will demonstrate the strike was unnecessary, the City will lose the ability to get anywhere on this issue, and parents and children will have been inconvenienced and possibly put at risk over this.

It is my hope that the City will recognize it is in it’s best interest to reach a negotiated settlement on the sick pay issue, and that the risk to them is very high, particularly after finding $400 million in their budget in less than 24 hours, after saying it’d be impossible to find the money necessary to fund this.

Before folks pile up on me and tell me about the private sector – I’m going to say this – I don’t disagree this is a unique benefit, but the City’s position has been so compromised they have no reason to expect to be able to negotiate the outcome they’d like, and what’s more finding $400 million in 24 hours has effectively ended their ‘we can’t afford it’ argument to an arbitrator.

Torontonians want workers back to work, workers want to be back at work – the City of Toronto needs to let them get back and use the next three years to resolve the controversial issues in advance of the next collective agreement.

Tags: City of Toronto Daycare, City of Toronto Sick Pay, City of Toronto Strike, City of Toronto Strike Update, City of Toronto Summer Camps, CUPE 416, CUPE 79, Sick Pay benefits Toronto