Posts Tagged ‘City of Toronto Garbage Strike’
City of Toronto CUPE 79 and 416 Strike – Day 33 – A Heartwarming Story of Cooperation on the Picket Line in Scarborough
I get a lot of emails from residents of Toronto, and workers especially in response to my City of Toronto strike coverage. I found the one below very touching and asked the author for her permission to publish her story.
If you have a story you would like to to share with me, please click Contact Me.
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Mayor David Miller announced yesterday that enough workers had crossed the picket line to allow the folks responsible for issuing building permits to get back to work. This seems to me like an odd choice of service reactivation considering the number of programs that affect the lives of people that are currently affected.
The Mayor presenting this as a good news story also seems to miss the point that allowing a strike to go on for over a month has hurt a lot of people including residents affected by service disruption and workers who are going without pay until the City bends from an unfair position even the Mayor now publicly recognizes could not pass muster with arbitration.
It has also been reported that the City will begin issuing refunds to the families that have paid for summer camp and recreation programs they have been unable to access. To me, it seems unconscionable to ‘hold cheques’ from residents when its clear the service could not be provided. In the mean time, these individuals have had to shell out again for another program, before receiving their refund.
It seems to me refunding money to folks who have paid for things they aren’t getting during the strike should have been the first priority when surplus workers became available. Issuing building permits is a great way for City’s to bring in money however, and it seems pretty clear that the folks in the Mayor’s office want a long strike in hopes of saving up money to cover the massive deficit they have had no plan for in the upcoming budget.
If David Miller believes arbitration would hurt the City, and a 12% pay increase would be crushing, then he needs to get the City’s negotiation team off it’s collective butt and working on a sensible plan, like say – meeting contractual obligations to date, and not retroactively taking money from workers. Who in their right mind would vote to take thousands of dollars away from themselves because some hypocritical City Council that is well stocked with rhetoric, but lacking leadership asks them to. You will recall David Miller refuses to allow Council to vote to take thousands of dollars they gave themselves this year back.
If Miller grandfathered in full payouts for the current sick bank, I’m sure he could get his way on the future treatment of sick leave and his proposed 7.2% increase, even if the year one and two increased represent just 40% of what Councillor’s just gave themselves this year and next.
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City of Toronto CUPE 79 and 416 Strike – Day 30 – ‘Glad to the Rescue’ – Seriously?
That is the name Glad Canada has chosen for their self promotion campaign during the City of Toronto garbage strike. ‘Glad – helping you get through the strike one bag at a time’ seems to be a pretty shameless attempt to increase market share. My favourite was their reminder to double bag… At least George Smitherman’s attempt at self promotion results in a community good happening in the process.
I found it almost offensive that any company, especially a supplier of garbage bags, could somehow think making their product available for free in the streets of Toronto, would some how help remedy the impact the strike is having city wide. If they were handing out daycare subsidies or offering private garbage collection at home – they would have a point, but handing out free garbage bags and calling it rescuing the city from a thirty day municipal strike is laughable.
I am not in the loop on the supply chain management of garbage bag demand, but I highly doubt there has been a run on the stores, and unless the folks at Glad who make the bags are planning a strike, I don’t see how supplying bags for free in the streets does anything for anyone.
There never has been an issue in accessing garbage bags. The issue is getting people to pick them up and properly store our waste. This strike will certainly become more annoying to me if other companies follow suit, missing the impact and seriousness completely in the name of self promotion of their product.
What’s more Glad seems to have decided the six hundred thousand people in Scarborough don’t need free garbage bags and don’t seem to go east of Broadview in their distribution. As someone who is proud of his Scarborough roots, I find that to be awfully lame as well.
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