Posts Tagged ‘City of Toronto Sick Benefits’
Blaming Workers Isn’t a Sound Plan to End a Strike
David Miller should know better. He’s the Mayor after all. You can’t blame workers for a strike when the City demands for concessions is the sticking point. The strike isn’t about wages, it is entirely about concessions. Concessions workers voted overwhelmingly to reject. Concessions that coming from City Council re-define hypocrisy.
David Miller is as defiant about re-opening his own entitlement to a pay increase as he is about refusing to budge in negotiations with workers.
The City’s position will not withstand arbitration, and the Mayor knows it. His strategy at this point can best be described as a ’starve them out’ approach to labour relations. By allowing the strike to go on indefinitely, the Mayor and Council hurt all Torontonians, especially the vulnerable. They hurt the workers who lose 2% of their annual income with each passing week (4% has already been lost).
The Mayor has ruled out asking for ‘back to work legislation’ – his out if he seriously wanted the strike to end. He doesn’t. That’s the problem. Back to work legislation would mean the City losing on the sick pay issue. His Council’s ability to find $400 million in less than 24 hours, totally discredits the argument that $250 million being paid out over 20 years would somehow harm the City’s financial position.
There isn’t an arbitrator in the Ministry of Labour that would side with the City’s position. The Mayor knows it, so do the workers. Ladies and Gentleman this Mayor, and this Council have brought you a summer without pools, day camps, trips to Centre Island, garbage pick up, or access to all the municipal services covered by the doubling of the land transfer tax, promise breaking property tax increases and new fees like the vehicle registration. You’re paying the bills and getting nothing for it.
I agree with David Miller that ‘enough is enough’. He can end the strike.
He needs to pull the sick pay issue off the table; strike a three year collective agreement and form a working group made up of union reps and city officials to explore alternatives to the sick pay issue over the course of the three year collective agreement with the aim of introducing an alternative both sides agree to in advance for the next round of talks.
That would end the strike, get workers back to work, get garbage out of our parks, and parking lots and go a long way to finding a financially sustainable solution that works for both management and workers. That should the the Mayor’s priority. Unfortunately – he and his Council peers have decided to effectively ’strike’ in solidarity with their workers – canceling all of their responsibilities until workers go back.
Boy are they lucky they have a four year term, otherwise it is my belief many heads would roll this fall – who knows, next fall could still see the same result.
21 Comments »Pictures From Day Three of the City of Toronto Strike
Alright, everyone is talking garbage – here is garbage. These pictures were taken on Yonge Street south of Queen, one of Bay Street at Lakeshore and the vast majority on Queen Street between City Hall and just west of Spadina.
For folks who find themselves holding garbage with no where to put it, do what I did yesterday with a Starbucks cup – I found another Starbucks, stopped in and put it in their garbage. My rationale is that it is really their garbage anyways, and it saved me having to both bring it home or add to one of these ‘garbage jenga’ bins or what I am sure is soon to become some kind of modern urban art. Plus, what are they going to say, honestly? Try it with your next cup of Tim Hortons or Starbucks, it will help keep the streets cleaner, I’m sure.
I also want to note that the dude who threw out a bike tire – that never was meant for one of these bins, same goes for whoever threw the bags of gas soaked dirt near City Hall. I find the black garbage bags mysteriously out of place. That isn’t strike related, it’s littering. Same goes for the lady who abandoned her flip flops.
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Commentary on the Angus Reid/Toronto Star Poll on the City of Toronto Strike
Simply put, the Angus Reid Poll the Toronto Star featured on it’s front page doesn’t make any sense. The methodology is weak. Why would you interview anyone who does not live within the City of Toronto’s boundaries about a local municipal issue? With the greatest respect to the folks in York, Durham and Peel regions, you don’t pay taxes in Toronto, you don’t receive municipal services in Toronto and you don’t vote in Toronto, and as a result your opinions on Toronto issues, particularly extremely local ones like this, aren’t relevant.
Angus Reid may as well have interviewed people in Summerside PEI to gauge their views on the City of Toronto Strike as they are as affected by Toronto’s delivery of municipal services as someone in one of the regions around Toronto. I bet their are folks across Canada with opinions, unfortunately if they aren’t in Toronto, it’s impact isn’t nearly as great on this issue.
Does anyone believe that 14% of folks living outside of Toronto but in the GTA are actually affected by pet licenses, building permits, or parking permits?
How about 41% of non Toronto GTA residents being affected by sidewalk and road cleaning in Toronto? Really?
Something tells me 30% of the GTA’s non Toronto residents don’t use our pools, parks or golf courses and certainly not on week days, making the claim of this impact highly suspect too.
Finally – the sample is not representative of Toronto residents or even residents of the GTA. There is no demographic information attached to the report and because it relies exclusively on an unverified online methodology it has absolutely no margin of error as it is literally the opinion of 600 randos, who self selected themselves as prospective panel participants for Angus Reid’s online surveys.
With no break down of how many of these folks a) actually live in Toronto b) where in Toronto and c) any information about their demographics (age, income level, voting preference, education etc) this poll is pretty meaningless.
Another red herring buried in the poll is the fact that 39% (43% from Toronto and 19% in the rest of GTA) of residents reported being personally affected by the strikes impact on libraries? Really? Because 94 of 99 libraries are totally unaffected by the strike. This demonstrates a data quality issue. If four in ten anonymous, self selecting, online panel participants reported an impact that is literally impossible, how much weight can you put in the rest of their data? It would lead me to believe folks who self selected to participate in this survey have an agenda, however uninformed their are on the issues. It would seem to me that folks who participated over reported negative impacts, some of which are highly suspect or impossible to have actually occurred.
I am not disputing that many are upset and many residents are negatively impacted or frustrated at the strike. I don’t want a strike, I want workers to work and the City managers to manage, but I don’t think bogus polls should be highlighted to try to drive popular opinion in any one direction. I do dispute the results of this poll because it is clear to me their are massive issues with the integrity of it’s findings.
If you want to do a real poll of Toronto residents, it would need to be a telephone survey of randomly selected residents from all six former municipalities within the new City of Toronto. It would need proper screener questions, be representative of Toronto’s population and ask the right questions. If someone provided a bogus answer like ‘library services’ there should be a follow up like ‘in what way has the strike impacted your use of library service’ to explore why they gave that answer and allow the researcher to try to understand motives for giving that response.
Here is a link to the Angus Reid Poll that I think is bogus.
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