This is a good idea.. Somebody could arrange the homeless people to keep the fires burning.. You know.. After we've put them all out into the streets.Why license bikes when they've already cut the vehicle registration tax?! Then cut the plastic bag tax. Then cut the land registration tax. Why don't they just do away with all taxes?! Then cut all public services and we can light our own streets by burning books that the library are selling off as its been closed?!
Is Rob Ford doing a good job?
- Thread starter avxl1003
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You make me laugh.
"Efficiencies" seems to be the new buzz word coming out of city hall these days.
Call it what you want - "efficiencies", but it's just double talk for cutting services.
You make me laugh James T.
Call it what you like....
but efficiencies..means cutting staff...and making whats left EARN A DAYS PAY!!!
Call it what you like....
but efficiencies..means cutting staff...and making whats left EARN A DAYS PAY!!!
Cutting staff reduces "efficiencies". Some of the remaining staff will do some of the work that the staff who got let go were doing. Others will not increase their workload. As a result, less work gets done. Cut too much and staff become demoralized and everyone works less.
The only way to change this behaviour pattern is by changing the incentives, for example by paying for piece work or some other performance-based metric or by constantly monitoring staff behaviour. The former is rarely possible (either because of unionized work force or because the work is not subject to that level of measurement). The latter require hiring a lot of "monitors".
So ... I get that you want city employees to work harder. Now please explain how you propose to force them to do so.
It was Mike Harris and the right wing that got Toronto into this mess through amalgamation (which the city voted against) and offloading services.
The right is not capable of fixing their own messes, they just keep cutting taxes then when it causes deficits claim they have to cut services.
The right is not capable of fixing their own messes, they just keep cutting taxes then when it causes deficits claim they have to cut services.
I have never thought of Toronto as being a union city. As a rhetorical question, I wonder how many workers in Toronto are members of a union? From all professions!
TMLs
Raptors
Argos
City Employees
Teachers
Custodians
College Professors
University Professors
Teaching Assistants
Support Staff TDSB & Catholic Board
Teamsters
CAW
CUPE
OPSEU
Hotel workers
Theatre workers
I guess there's alot more unionized jobs in Toronto. Maybe the phrase Toronto the good should be changed to Toronto the unionized!
BTW, Employees work for employers not for unions. Unions are for employees protection and rights.
The employees will do the work...if management does their jobs..and fires the asses of those who ARE NOT doing the work~!!
Too many times I have seen around the city where I see 5 guys fixing a small patch job on a roadway!!!
I watched city workers recently fixing a small sink hole on my street...the whole dropped about 8 " and was the size of a grapefruit in the ashphalt...
they really did not dig much...but 5 guys played with that for just over half a day.
I..ON MY OWN..could have done it in about i hour!!!
Too many times I have seen around the city where I see 5 guys fixing a small patch job on a roadway!!!
I watched city workers recently fixing a small sink hole on my street...the whole dropped about 8 " and was the size of a grapefruit in the ashphalt...
they really did not dig much...but 5 guys played with that for just over half a day.
I..ON MY OWN..could have done it in about i hour!!!
Miller also left Robbie hundreds of millions of surplus he's using to close the budget gap he created when he cancelled taxes that created it. Toronto's—that'd be the old city of TO—high commercial assessment long supported our great services, but Mr. Harris jammmed us in with a buncha cheap suburbs, forced a gradual lowering of commercial rates and shared some of TO's tax-take out over the province as a whole. Small businesses are like residents: they're stuck here where their 'jobs' are. But the big businesses that enrich the City's coffers are not, and there are lots of them still on Bay St. Just like a higher personal rate doesn't drive all the billionaires to relocate in the Caymans. Or even Arizona.
We can starve community services like transit and daycare, but you'll wind up buying them individually to drive to your re-located job in Halton if we starve the core of the GTA. Checkout Detroit as the Horror Story of tax and service cutting Donut Cities.
Finally you said something I agree with 100%, so let me repeat it, with some added emphasis: "The employees will do the work...if management does their jobs..and…" manages their workforce competently. Which includes firing the misfits and incompetents.
Unfortunately these days the managers are likely stuck in their cubicles preparing service-cutting plans, doing cost-comparisons on their buyout packages, and calling any and every prospective employer they can think of to get them outta that hellhole of a job.
Meantime, are you sure that sinkhole wasn't left by a cost-efficient for profit outfit like Enbridge? Certainly the case on my street.
You don't know how unions work, do you?
It's virtually impossible to fire an entrenched unionized employee, no matter how useless they are. Unfortunately with unions it's often the best employees (the new ones who still remember the private sector) who are let go first. Better management is needed, and (despite what you preach) that involves more than declaring that you "fire all the useless employees".
Most construction crews you see in Toronto are contracted out and are not city employees. All that inefficiency you guys are describing is from the private sector.
They are still private sector contractors
Fair wage states that they must be unionized and you're right, it's a crock of shit.
You guys are missing fmahovolich's very valid point: That particular buck stops on the desk of the mangers, the ones who negociayed and agreed to that contract they signed and the ones who are still at their desks instead of out there in the drizzle seeing that the work gets done.
You are unable to procure a job for the City of Toronto (I'm sure there are exceptions in some areas) if you don't meet the minimums laid out in their Fair Wage Schedules. So an argument can probably be made that the wage minimums listed are perhaps taken from existing union contracts for city employees and therefore were negotiated by city managers at some point (but I don't know the specifics on that). However there are private sector businesses that don't pay that level, so savings could be had if the Fair Wage policy didn't exist.
As the good Captain said:
James T Kirk said:
If Ford doesn't roll back the "fair wage" policy then I don't know what. He was elected to do things like that, which need doing. Instead he's been busy trying to sell off city land to his developer friends. It would be nice if he would actually do what people elected him to do, instead of every other idiotic thing he can dream up.
Well he was elected to eliminate gravy, like plowing out windrows at the end of his ward's driveways when no one south of Bloor even gets their sidewalks plowed. No sign he ever intended to touch that, although it would be nice if he actually lived up to his promise and cut the gravy instead of lokking to hare-brained an half-assed money-spinnig schemes, stupid tax cuts we can't afford and cutting services we need and want.
I watched deputant after deputant speak for maintaining everything from welfare dental care to day care to whatever without ever hearing a single one speak for the windrow special-treatment. Did anyone? But now the Fords are saying, 'they listened', and snow-clearing won't be affected. Do remember to thank the south of Bloor/Danforth taxpayers for shovelling our sidewalks for us.
I watched deputant after deputant speak for maintaining everything from welfare dental care to day care to whatever without ever hearing a single one speak for the windrow special-treatment. Did anyone? But now the Fords are saying, 'they listened', and snow-clearing won't be affected. Do remember to thank the south of Bloor/Danforth taxpayers for shovelling our sidewalks for us.
I'll thank them when they thank the North of Bloor taxpayers for paying at a significantly higher tax rate.
