Posts Tagged ‘Sick Pay benefits Toronto’
School Might Be Out – But Summer Camp Isn’t In
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.
1 Comment »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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