Posts Tagged ‘Labour Relations Committee – City of Toronto’
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.
1 Comment »City Negotiators Need to Ask ‘What Would Arbitration Do?’
Toronto’s municipal workers are on the picket line because they refused to accept major concessions from the City of Toronto. That is a completely documented, uncontroversial fact. The City would not strike a deal that did not include some pretty fundamental changes to the employment conditions of workers, and workers didn’t go for it.
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.
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