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.

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. 

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. 

• Receives 18 paid sick days per year. Can carry unused sick days over into the next year and is able to ‘bank’ a total of six months paid sick leave. 
• Currently is entitled to receive payment for 50% of unused paid sick leave at the end of their employment with the City, up to three months pay. 

There are two possible outcomes for a strike – an agreement between the Unions and the City, ratified by a vote of workers, or ‘back to work legislation’ from Queen’s Park. The Unions have been clear they will never accept the City’s current demands, their workers are behind them overwhelmingly. Don’t count on a negotiated settlement. Last time there was a strike of municipal workers it took sixteen days and a papal visit to pressure Queen’s Park into acting to send workers back. Back to work legislation results in ‘binding arbitration’ where an Arbitrator from the Ministry of Labour strikes the collective agreement and it is essentially imposed on both sides. 

It is well documented that Arbitrators like workers, and are generally sympathetic to their positions. In this case, I would be prepared to bet almost anything that arbitration will not result in the City getting the a fundamental shift in how workers collect sick leave or their ability to cash it out. 

This strike will be essentially about nothing, because it will very likely end with a position extremely close to the Unions, after the Province eventually steps in to bring workers back. That will demonstrate that the City was wrong to box workers into a legal strike position and should have either negotiated a deal or removed the controversial aspects of their concessions from this round. 

Until then, parents with small children are out of luck for daycare, summer camp, swimming lessons and other important aspects of childhood. Residents are without garbage pick up, community centres, clean streets and essentially a functioning municipal government. 

Torontonians should be frustrated, but they need to direct their frustration at their municipal leaders. Over a hundred concessions is never a reasonable expectation, and when the arbitrator is named once back to work legislation is introduced and passed probably weeks from now, they will likely agree. 

An agreement is being upheld by the City’s insistence to address the issue of sick pay benefits in this round of negotiation, something the unions have flatly refused and a disagreement over wage increases.

Residents of Toronto need to know that their Councillors were all given a 2.5% pay increase this year, and the Mayor refused to allow a motion to rescind the increase. Residents should know that four of the seven members of the the Labour Relations Committee – representing the City at the bargaining table took the increase. Union officials have suggested they are looking for an increase in the neighbourhood of 3%.

The City is refusing to budge on the ‘bankability’ of sick pay benefits. I recognize their point that this is a fairly unique thing, but each and every Councillor who is in fact hired for a contract receives severance at the rate of one month for every year served and six of seven members of the City’s Labour Relations Committee are already entitled to a full years pay at retirement (and growing).

Torontonians have been subjected to a strike by a fumbling Council that has once again missed the boat on a major issue and left residents to suffer. The deal Councillors wrote for themselves is far better than what workers are asking for, and let’s face it, City workers work a hell of a lot harder and do a lot more good than the majority of the folks who’ve turned being a Councillor from being a public service into a career choice.

The City missed an opportunity to pull back from the brinkmanship and give the unions an out. I get that the City doesn’t want to budge on the issue of sick leave benefits, but forcing a strike over this isn’t going to get them anywhere. No Arbitrator in the world is going to take this benefit away on their behalf and their only hope of changing it is negotiation.

What’s clear is this round of talks won’t see a resolution, arbitration won’t solve this, and they will have to wait for another collective agreement to re-open this file anyways. At the end of the day, we’ll see a strike, and the sick pay issue will see the status quo prevail for another three years anyways.

I don’t believe a strike helps anyone. I think most of all it hurts Torontonaians who pay their taxes and require the services these workers provide. We have nothing to do with the status of workers sick leave at the time of retirement. This issue is the ultimate ‘inside baseball’ and the members of Council who are on the Labour Relations committee (a majority of members took the 2009 increase for Councillors, six of seven are entitled to over 12 months pay at retirement or defeat as severance) need to be aware that the hypocrisy they and their fellow Councillors exhibit and fumbled negotiations hurt all Torontonians. 

If the City seriously wants to resolve the issue of sick leave pay outs at the end of one’s career – they need to pull it from the table, make an agreement in the next fourteen hours and strike a working group of union reps and City management to discuss this issue over the next three year agreement. That is the only way they can expect to get any action on this issue. Failing that, there will be a strike, Torontonians will lose services they rely on, over something that has nothing to do with them and negotiations that the City has so badly messed up through pitched fights, bad faith negotiations and posturing. 

The Union’s have been clear that 12:01am Monday morning is a firm deadline. The City has known about this date for almost three weeks, and workers have gone almost six months without a contract. After revoking worker’s right to Family Day and telling the Unions they’d have to fight to get it back, coming up with 140 pages of concessions for workers, refusing to talk money or anything else until the unions back down on the sick pay issue – it’s easy to see why the unions don’t plan on showing any more good will. 

City Council regularly demonstrates how out of touch it is with the folks who live in Toronto and make it the great place that it is. This is another example as their irresponsibility has now created an unnecessary strike situation that unions are likely to make good on. 

Should there be a strike, I urge you to write your Councillor and the Mayor and tell them that you believe the responsible course of action is to pull the issue of sick pay benefits off the table, to work out an agreement and strike a working group of union and city officials to explore the issue of sick pay benefits over the term of the new collective agreement. 

Contact information for the Mayor and Council can be found here. 

The City will not be monitoring water quality at City beaches. There will be no restaurant inspections. Healthy pregnancy and healthy baby appointments will be cancelled. Municipal sexual health clinics will be closed. 

There is more, but these are the ones, I felt are probably most impactful to most people after a quick read through. Here is the City of Toronto’s Contingency Plan. 

Garbage pick up is more complicated than the headlines would suggest. In Etobicoke for instance there is no impact as Etobicoke has contracted out garbage pick up. Curbside pick up will be cancelled in all other sections of the City. Apartment’s and other high density residential buildings will continue to have garbage service.

The City will be asking residents who usually have curbside pick up to hang on to their waste for the first week, and then bring garbage to transfer stations around the City, while keeping recyclables at home until the strike is over. For more on Garbage Collection click this link. 

It’s pretty clear a strike of municipal workers will have a big impact on the quality of life in Toronto very quickly. It’s fair to say that neither the City nor the workers wants to see a strike happen, but unfortunate that the negotiations have gotten this polarized. The unions have a strong strike mandate and have been clear they will not accept the City’s proposal for sick leave. Considering wages and other matters aren’t on the table because the City has taken the position that until the union’s buckle on sick leave the rest isn’t worth discussing, a strike seems unavoidable. 

The impact a strike will have on families and the vulnerable is great. It is important that the City recognize this as they push on an issue the unions have stated no intention of budging on, instead of discussing the issues where common ground and a collective agreement can be found. To me, Toronto’s priority should be avoiding a strike, and if the City were to pull this one issue off the table, an agreement could easily be reached that would see a continuation of services without any labour interruptions. 

What has become clear is the issue of sick pay benefits is controversial and one that is better solved over the long term through a series of discussions between the workers and management and that pushing it right now will result in likely defeat for the City and an otherwise unnecessary strike.