Posts Tagged ‘Sick Pay benefits Toronto’
Torontonians Should Brace for Municipal Workers Strike
Let the PR battle begin! On Friday, I received a press release from the City in my inbox with the title “City of Toronto ready to work through union strike deadline to reach a negotiated settlement”. The union set the legal strike deadline with the Province of Ontario mediator sixteen days ago, and made it extremely clear in advance of even giving the legally required seventeen days notice of a legal strike position, that they were heading in that direction. I don’t support a strike, I don’t want to see a strike, but should there be one, I blame the City for causing it.
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.
3 Comments »City of Toronto Strike Affects More Than Garbage Pick Up
The City’s 57 daycare centres with their 3011 child care spots will be closed. Parks and Rec Day Camps will not start. Community Centres, Toronto Island Ferry Service and other important aspects of recreation will be cancelled as well. City Museums, art galleries and cultural facilities will be closed. All special event permits will be cancelled for civic squares.
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.
21 Comments »Advice for City Hall – Bad Faith Negotiations Always End Badly
In just under a week Torontonians should expect a municipal workers strike. CUPE 416 and CUPE 79 – the two unions that represent Toronto’s municipal workers move into a legal strike position on June 22nd 2009. Based on the stand still and the City of Toronto’s approach to labour relations during this round of negotiations, it would be hard to anticipate workers not striking.
Currently CUPE 416 and 79 workers are negotiating an agreement to replace the collective agreement that expired on December 31st 2008. Even while aware that the City of Toronto as the employer would be at the table with it’s largest unions in the new year, in November of 2008 the City decided to rescind worker’s rights to Family Day, deciding that instead they would make the union negotiate for a day the City gave them the year before. I wrote about this on November 16th 2008 and said at the time:
‘Sometimes the City of Toronto acts with a collective stupidity that residents of our City just can’t understand. I think news that City Council is taking Family Day away from unionized employees just before entering a round of contract negoiations is one of those moments.’ Toronto Public Employees Deserve Family Day
So then, the contract expires, union members don’t get Family Day, the wages of the City’s non union workers are frozen and Council keeps its 2.5% pay increase.
The City of Toronto comes at the Unions with over 100 pages of concessions they would like the workers to make and no talk of wages at all. Not surprisingly the workers overwhelmingly rejected these with a margin of 89% for one of the unions. There are now six days until the legal strike position is met, the City still isn’t on to talking about wages and there is deadlock in negotiation over sick leave benefits.
I had a pretty good talk with a union member about the sick benefit issue because I didn’t really understand the issue very well myself. As the story goes, CUPE 416 and 79 members are entitled to paid sick leave and can pool their sick days over the course of many years to a total of six months. Should they not have to use these days, upon retiring workers are entitled to a payout of 50% of whatever sick time they have banked. This means someone with the maximum number of banked sick days would be entitled to three months pay, at the end of their employment with the City of Toronto.
The City would like to end this practice, and workers obviously would not like to. It took a while for me to wrap my head around this, and while I do recognize the City’s position which is essentially that most employers do not have to pay out for untaken sick leave at the time of an employee’s retirement, I can also see why workers would like to prolong their earnings and have a buffer as they transition from pay cheque to pension cheque. Considering workers who’ve banked six months of sick leave must have been both long standing employees and as their sick time would suggest, reliable – it seems to me that three months pay at the end of a long career is almost a fitting ‘thank you’ for a job well done.
Regardless of whether you believe workers are entitled to a payout of sick leave or not, this certainly isn’t the issue to force workers into a legal strike position over.
What seems certain to me though, is if wages haven’t even hit the table yet, and considering the Council’s position that they should maintain their increase, but not have to provide an increase to their workers, regardless of the sick leave issue, and considering the environment the City has created for negotiations, there will almost certainly be a strike for all municipal workers next Monday.
I personally would find it very difficult to lay blame for a strike on the unions, considering the City’s approach to labour negotiations this time around. I fail to see why the City would want to let the collective agreement expire before kicking off the new round of negotiations. It seems to me like this is something you would start well in advance of the expiration and a time when you’d do all that you can to not inflame a situation with things like taking back Family Day, or coming up with a massive number of concessions at a time when you’re best bet for a wage freeze would be asking the Union to help you not, not brow beating them.
The City should be negotiating in good faith, and may want to consider saving this particular issue for next time, in hopes of reaching an agreement now and creating a dialogue to discuss their position on sick pay and other more controversial issues later, like in the two to three year window they will have before the next agreement expires.
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