Garbage Strike - Give Me a Break

[sibannac]

Not to get political, but Harris did what he had to do when Cretien downloaded everything onto the provinces and inherited the NDPs mess as well!

And you would be dead wrong here. The cuts from the Liberals had already begun before Harris took power. He knew exactly what he had to work with but what does he do ... three massive tax cuts that puts Ontario's infrastructure at risk.

What you don't get is that while most Conservative will spend to deficit as oppose to tax hikes with the idea that the economy will grow to clear the debt, Harris and his crony's ( who are in Ottawa these days) didn't believe in either leaving option other than to destroy Hospitals and Schools in the Toronto area with no thought to future growth.

No I really love this chicken and the egg argument of yours, regarding the NDP. The NDP came to power in one of the worst recessions to that date. Chances are real good the neither Liberal or Conservative Parties would have fared any better given the times.

The bottom line is that Harris left Ontario with a HIDDEN debt, health care and education a total disaster. He has to go down as one of the worst Premiers this Country has ever had.

 

[james t kirk]

I say sack the lot of them and contract the work out to people who actually WANT to work.

I'd prefer that they just come up with a compromise and get on with it.

Though I'd love to see every single garbage collector fired and the work contracted out my reason is the poor service that the current collectors offer (i.e. they find more reasons NOT to collect your garbage than to collect it.) I don't have so much of an issue with their rate of pay (though that said, they are very well compensated), but I do think that the sick day things needs to go. Sorry, that's over the top. I don't know if the private sector would be able to do it any cheaper frankly. My only hope would be better service.

As to Councillor's pay, I maintain that it's a very responsible job and should be paid as such. There are too many Councillors - 44. There could easily be 30 and things would be fine.

 

[james t kirk]

The bottom line is that Harris left Ontario with a HIDDEN debt, health care and education a total disaster. He has to go down as one of the worst Premiers this Country has ever had.

See it depends on your point of view.

Harris actually ended up running budget surpluses during his tenure. He also cut allot of needless government services, and reduced the number of MPPs (right there I'll vote for him.)

Say what you want about Harris (I liked the guy and tend to be a small L liberal) - he did EXACTLY what he said he was going to do.

I would vote for him again.

 

[buckwheat1]

Harris only balanced the books TWICE and to do that he sold the 407 for a song and a dance. He was in power with this countries highest econmic times this country had ever seen. Let's leave the poor garbage man alone
because if it's not him you'll be whinning about TTC/police/fire postmen ect.

 

[Mao Tse Tongue]

I'd prefer that they just come up with a compromise and get on with it.

Though I'd love to see every single garbage collector fired and the work contracted out my reason is the poor service that the current collectors offer (i.e. they find more reasons NOT to collect your garbage than to collect it.) I don't have so much of an issue with their rate of pay (though that said, they are very well compensated), but I do think that the sick day things needs to go. Sorry, that's over the top. I don't know if the private sector would be able to do it any cheaper frankly. My only hope would be better service.

As to Councillor's pay, I maintain that it's a very responsible job and should be paid as such. There are too many Councillors - 44. There could easily be 30 and things would be fine.

This is what's so damned insulting to me. Any old bullshit excuse they won't pick your garbage. Why? Because they don't have to, that's why. Fuckers are horribly overpaid for menial labour, but union protects them from doing anything that they don't want to. Nice.

 

[buckwheat1]

I live in rural ontario and I take mine to the dump, knowone around to pick it up.

 

[blackrock13]

I live in rural ontario and I take mine to the dump, knowone around to pick it up.

Oh that'll work well here.

Now we'll see where his whiteness stands as if we didn't know already.

18 sick days a year, give me a break. If your sick take time but get a note. Sitting in the waiting room, ER, and drug store sure cures a lot of ills.

I don't hear many city union people/backers piping up here. Show yourself.

 

[blackrock13]

JTK, you're right Harris did say what he was going to do and did it refreshing for a car salesman who saw the light and became a politician. He had his flaws but I did like him.

Strike pay never covers cost. If I remember, union reps and higher-ups still get paid. Maybe they should get strike pay also.

Most strikes don't go by 22 days, right after that one big money grab period, the workers really miss the cash.
after 6 weeks you never make up the money, but their smart this time as they're just looking for free time, not wages.

You can always spot the slackers in a company as they take all the sick days possible every year. No body's that sick, sorry people. I know you can't fire without cause but take a page out of Sweden,as told to me on my last trip there.

Give him a promotion, sit him in an office, with a comfy chair and desk and tell him to answer the phone when it rings and help the person on the other end. Pssst! It doesn't ever ring. No reading, personal grooming, or eating at your desk, that's what break are for, right. They'll last maybe 6 weeks and go bonkers. A lot quit.

 

[james t kirk]

Although allot of you love bashing unions every chance you get, and you like to think that "IF I WAS IN CHARGE I'D SHOW THEM THEIR PLACE" and "I'D GET THINGS DONE"

The truth of the matter is there is the way it should be and the way that it is.

Municiple politics in the Western world does not and never will operate like that. You can not rule by decree and you really aren't that much smarter than anyone else, and no, the incompetents are not really in charge.

Whether you like it or not, it is all about compromise and compromise means neither party is happy at the end of the day.

I love guys like the Mayor of Ottawa (Obrian?) who was some hot shot business man who figured he'd go into City Hall and run the place "like a business" and "I'm a successful businessman, so I'll be sucessful in politics" Well, no you won't. (And niether was Ottawa guy - brought up on corruption charges as well). They just stone wall you and throw so many road blocks in your way that nothing, repeat NOTHING gets done and you end up looking like an ape. Whether you like it or not, it is all about compromise.

If a guy manages to accomplish one third of what he wants to at the end of the day, he's a hero.

Pay the city workers what they are owed to date on the sick thing, but reduce it going forward until today's workers no longer can accumulate sick days.

A compromise

 

[Quest4Less]

There area a couple of things that bother me about this whole situation:

If the city can afford to give raises to the council, and the firefighters, and perhaps others I have not followed very closely - then one would tend to believe they actually do have money and should not go crying poor. If things are tight then NO ONE should get a raise - PERIOD!

Why is it acceptable to take something back that you agreed to in a previous contract? If you don't like it then why did you agree to it in the first place?

Personally I think anything more than 12 sick days per year is extremely generous. I also think that you should be able to bank a certain amount - to cover long term illness if needed, BUT you should not be able to 'cash' them at the end of your job. Or perhaps a compromise would be to let them have say 5-10 percent cashed out....

 

[John Williams 785]

Another problem with cashing them out is that many of the days were accrued when the employee was making less money, but the payment amount reflects the salary they make today. Say you have an employee who has worked at the city for 25 years. In 1984 the employee was making $250 per week (for arguments sake), so each day was worth $50. Now, this employee makes $750 per week (again, just for arguments sake) so those days are now worth $150. Many employees have hundreds of sick days accrued, to be paid out in todays wages. If they use days that are collected from years ago, they should only be entitled to whatever the financial amount they were worth when they were accrued. I'm all for having paid time available when you are ill, but they should not be able to hoard the days and then use them as vacation time before they retire. The days should expire at no cost to the city if they are not used after a certain amount of time.

 

[The Options Menu]

I wonder what similar workers get in the private sector? I recall years ago that Mississauga Mayor Hazel was quoted in a Toronto paper saying Toronto was one of very few municipalities where the garbage workers are employees and that Toronto pays a huge premium for that.
Take the whole system private!

Mayor Hazel's not what you'd call neutral. Private collection tends to go bad after the first contract. Basically he who owns the trucks dictates terms, and that money goes into private pockets. There is no such thing as real completion when you have the need for 'heavy specialized machines now'. It might turn out OK if the city leases the trucks to private firms, and only let's them used leased trucks, but things seldom work out that way. (Some right-winger screams, "Why do we own trucks if we don't collect garbage?" and that's the end of that.) Or if they kept enough public capacity to fully cover any one private firm for the short term in a pinch.

If you're looking government corruption you always want to look at public to private contracts first, consultants second, and contractors third. As much as people like to bitch about unions and monopoly service providers, the private sector and monopoly service providers tends to go comically wrong as well. (There's a reason why the IMF and Worldbank have had to reform and you don't hear the call of privatize in the halls of power in the West anymore.)

As far a the current strike goes- Yeah, 18 is a lot for sick days (and it is 18), but they are sick days not personal days. If it works like nursing, if you need more than a couple in a row you better have a doctors note, and if you're sick every Friday or Monday or Weekends you'll likely be confronted about that. (Because that makes you a pain in everyone ass.) Neither Miller's demands, nor the union's desire to keep their benefits is irrational.

As far as the strike goes, meh, it's a negotiation. It'll either get sorted out in the next couple of weeks, or it will be arbitrated out. It's nice for all of these TERBites to pop out and say, "Expect less." or "your job should suck like mine.", but frankly 'expect less' is code for "I want everybody working for $10/hr but me." and "your job should suck like mine." means that you should probably focus on improving the lot of the people hat do your job. Maybe a Union?

Like I said above, it's a negotiation. Any one party is stupid to volunteer to fall on their sword first. This is from a pro union guy who thinks reforms around Unions not being able to fight technology, not sheltering the incompetent or chronically unproductive, and not being able to set a quota too far below the output of a representative set of workers is important (you have to take a standard deviation into account). In exchange for better rules around 'What's a contractor?', making pet time vs full time more cost neutral (politicians hat that because it's bad for the unemployment #), a clear definition of what is an essential service, and some smoothing around right to organize / scab / union antagonism issues.

In the current case things should 'sort' fairly quickly. There's nothing intractable there. As far as people here with their nickers in a bunch, sorry for your minor inconvenience, but there's a good chance that 80% of Canadian workers aren't interested in your race to the bottom. This notion that of, "Fuck everybody but me." presupposes that you (if not you, then your children) are somehow special. You aren't, and you'll be racing to the bottom with everybody else. (This gets born out time and again where it has happened.)

 

[fuji]

Let's leave the poor garbage man alone
because if it's not him you'll be whinning about TTC/police/fire postmen ect.

TTC workers are WAY overpaid as well. Less familiar with the situation with police, fire, and postmen, but it wouldn't shock me if we're overpaying there too.

No way I am going to back down on pointing out that these jerks are overpaid just because some other jerks might be even more overpaid.

Anybody who thinks they are entitled to 18 extra vacation days, whoops sick days, is a jerk.

Those are my tax dollars, hands off.

 

[The Options Menu]

Anybody who thinks they are entitled to 18 extra vacation days, whoops sick days, is a jerk.

Oh come now- While 18 is a lot, and I wouldn't be shocked if more than a few got burned as 'personal days', nobody tolerates somebody who will burn those days on 'systemic weekending'. You'll get put into place pretty quickly because that makes you a pain in everyone's ass. (Everyone being your co-workers and management.) Not to mention that presupposes that everybody is cynical enough to try for 'systemic weekending', where on balance people don't.

 

[james t kirk]

TTC workers are WAY overpaid as well. Less familiar with the situation with police, fire, and postmen, but it wouldn't shock me if we're overpaying there too.

No way I am going to back down on pointing out that these jerks are overpaid just because some other jerks might be even more overpaid.

Anybody who thinks they are entitled to 18 extra vacation days, whoops sick days, is a jerk.

Those are my tax dollars, hands off.

I'm just curious what you think a TTC worker should be paid?

How bout a tradesperson? (say a track foreman, or welder, or electrician)


How bout a professional who works at the TTC? (say an Engineer, or an Accountant, or a lawyer)

 

[james t kirk]

Yeah, I just heard that they were blocking the transfer stations.

 

[buckwheat1]

picket lines!!! We had protests in Toronto that blocked a major highway
and University avenue it was illigel, this is a legal strike protest.

 

[The Options Menu]

I just saw on the news that people are being turned away from the garbage drop-off location. The city had announced that people could use that site to drop off their own garbage but the workers are not letting people/cars pass the picket line!! There weren't even letting some cars exit the drop-off location!!! WTF!

Seriously... these idiots should visit my country and realize that they have it pretty damn good. Garbage workers get paid $3-5 US an hour, get very few sick days and almost no vacation time!! (minimum wage is $3 US)

Once again, 'expect less because it could suck more'. This isn't to say that some Union workers couldn't stand to take a bit of a haircut on their benefits, or to have some of them monetized at 85% of their actual cost. Encouraging races to the bottom is good for nobody, even the rich over the long term. ('The rich' are less able to extract money from people and are usually the first targets of angry mobs when gross inequality is present. Really rich for Haiti IS NOT rich for New York.)

 

[someone]

I'm just curious what you think a TTC worker should be paid?

How bout a tradesperson? (say a track foreman, or welder, or electrician)


How bout a professional who works at the TTC? (say an Engineer, or an Accountant, or a lawyer)

The easy answer would be to ask what their private sector equivalents would get paid (e.g. greyhound drivers, private sector welders, maybe movie ticket sellers for the subway collectors etc.)
In the case of jobs that don’t have a clear private sector equivalents (e.g. police, fire) or in case an argument is made that public employees face different working conditions (e.g. maybe TTC bus drivers have more hassles to put up with than Greyhound drives), one could look at the waiting list to get a job and the turnover once in the job. Some years ago, such a study was done in New York city. At the time, it was found that many more people applied for jobs than there were openings and the turnover rate was extremely low compared to labour market averages. Both indicated that people are a getting much better deal than other workers (admittedly, the numbers would now be out of date). I strongly suspect that if you check, you will find that the city of Toronto gets many more applications for their unskilled positions than they have openings and that turnover is pretty low.

Someone mentioned the problem of contracting out when only a few firms would have the necessary equipment to collect garbage. This is sometime called the holdup problem and it should be remembered that in this case the problem goes both ways. The private contractor is depended on the city for contract renewals. If the equipment is that specialized, it is not worth much to him if the city calls him on his bluff. Moreover, it should be easy to find out what private garbage collection costs in Etobicoke are and compare costs per ton or some such measure. In addition, a comparison of days lost due to contract disputes would be important.

 

[shrek71]

Province will order them back 2 work in 3 weeks and it'll go before a labour arbitrator. The arbitrator will never take those sick days away but may make a decision on wage increases, but he'll look at what the city has given to othere employees in the last year and it's around 3% a year

The City of Windsor is the midst of a garbage strike that has been going on for over 10 weeks at this point. Don't count on the province legislating them back to work. A report on the lunch time news on CTV from the interim PC leader indicated that they won't do anything until such time as people start becoming sick and the public health is at risk.

Other interesting tidbits on the news indicated that not all of the 24000 workers in these 2 unions voted for the strike mandate. From the Talk Back Toronto segment, 2 union workers reported that there were only voting on opposite ends of the city and it took place on a Sunday.

So all is not happy with all workers in either union.

Fortunately, I don't live in the city and am not affected by the strike. I say that the City of Toronto should post the home addresses of the garbage workers union so that the other residents blocked from the disposing of their garbage in the proper manner could make deliveries to these ass hats.

Cheers