I thought the article below was an interesting analysis. However, I think that Gee misses an important point. Even if it is likely that the union has lost, it will be impossible for the union leadership to end the strike soon. It would mean that the union leadership would have to admit to their members that they recommended a strike and the resulting loss of pay for nothing. I think that a likely outcome might be for the strike to go on for a few weeks and for the province to eventually force a second strike vote after they think it is likely that a majority of workers want to go back to work. This would not necessarily result in a new contract but it would end the strike.
“Marcus Gee
It's time for the unions to admit they've lost
Nearly three weeks in, it's obvious Torontonians are coping and Mayor David Miller is winning. So why are the workers persisting?
In a strike, as in a war, you never quite know which way things will go once hostilities commence. But nearly three weeks in, there is no escaping it – the unions are losing this strike and Mayor David Miller is winning.
The purpose of the strike is to make life in the city so unpleasant that residents will pressure Mr. Miller to settle on the unions' terms. Judged against that aim, it is failing miserably. Toronto is coping quite nicely, thank you.
Despite the work stoppage by 24,000 city employees, life in the city goes on. The strike is a nuisance, but nothing more. Most residents are taking it in stride. Their anger, if any, is directed mostly at the strikers, who made the fatal mistake of walking out in defence of generous benefits at a time when tens of thousands of Torontonians are losing their jobs.
The unions' big club, garbage collection, has been snatched away by the city's well-planned and efficient performance under trash chief Geoff Rathbone. The 19 temporary drop sites where residents can take their overflow garbage are functioning well. The lineups and angry exchanges that marked the first couple of days of the strike have all but disappeared. At the one site where there was serious tension with residents, Christie Pits, an injunction ended a blockade.
The city's medical officer of health, David McKeown, has handed down cleanup orders for six temporary dump sites, but he sees no overall threat to public health so far. That makes this strike different from the 16-day walkout in 2002, when a health warning helped persuade the provincial government to pass a back-to-work order.
Learning from that experience, Mr. Rathbone has deployed his non-union staff to crack down on illegal dumping. As a result, you don't see the ugly heaps of refuse in parks and at transfer stations that disfigured the city in 2002. The city's drive to get residents to separate their garbage has helped too. People can keep their recycling stuff and other dry trash almost indefinitely, storing the smelly wet garbage separately and carting it to the drop-off points every week or two if they need to. As Premier Dalton McGuinty put it, the garbage in his garage is starting to stink, but “it's not the end of the world.” That neatly sums up the city's general attitude to the strike: It's a pain, but we'll live.
Of course, some people are hurting: the parents whose city-run daycares are on strike, the lifeguards or day-camp counsellors who are out of a summer job, the teenagers in troubled neighbourhoods whose recreation programs have been cancelled.
But in many parts of the city, you would barely know there was a strike on. Showing fine community spirit, residents are banding together to hire dumpsters or haul each other's garbage away. Between people who live in apartments or condominiums (which have private collection) and residents of Etobicoke (where officials wisely contracted out garbage collection years ago), about half the city is still getting its garbage picked up regardless of the walkout.
All of this means that there is no great pressure on Mr. Miller to give in. To the contrary, he said this week, “I can tell you what I'm hearing from Torontonians is: Keep it up.”
Mr. McGuinty says he would prefer to stay out of it and neither his Conservative nor his NDP opponent is calling for provincial intervention. Even on city council, no one is crying out for a quick settlement at any cost. The most they can do is whine about how the mayor hasn't called a council meeting.
Put simply, Mr. Miller is not wearing this one. The unions are. Though their leaders are still striking a defiant, even militant, note, they are leading a cause that was lost in its first days. Now they face an agonizing decision. To climb down and make concessions after mounting the barricades would be bitter indeed. But to carry on for week after week with a strike that is failing to hurt the employer, in the midst of a severe recession, in the face of a hostile public, would be sheer folly. As Mr. Miller put it, “Enough is enough.””
On an unrelated point:
Yoga Face said:
Again, your social brainwashing is showing.
I always find it funny when those who have been most indoctrinated with propaganda accuse others of having been brainwashed. A couple of times you have pointed out that most posters have not bothered responding to the points of your original post. I would suggest that is because they don’t see the point. You believe what you want to believe and arguing about it would as much a waste of time as arguing with a priest about the existence of god.
