Toronto's strike is on: they must have spent a lot of money on these signs
Toronto's on strike. Two of the city workers' unions are, anyway. And from one union only 5% of union membership turned out to vote on the long weeknd in May. Great timing on the part of union leadership to ensure that they'd get only the diehard "hell no, we won't work" crowd to come out.
The city no doubt knew this was a foregone conclusion given they invested thousands of dollars in "out of order" signs for public garbage cans. No wait, I take it back. Turns out garbage workers were already on strike for eight days and I hadn't noticed. Oh well, it's still bizarre to be putting up these signs.
No wait again, that article is from 2002. The strike just started.
Brilliant. I wonder if any lazy journalists will start plagairizing from the 2002 article anyway? We can only hope, for the laughter. Oddly enough the first thing CBC does is reference the 2002 strike talking about 2009.
Going back to those signs, I've already seen kids ripping off the cans to use for their own creative purposes.
I forgot to add the www.krupo.ca watermark on that photo, so let's all pretend it's there.
At least the city is providing more subidized art supplies.
Rumour has it that happy-to-have-a-job city staff are setting up a facebook protest group to indicate
The irony, of course, is that if all those happy staff actually had no lives and went to the remote Scarborough voting location in May to cast their ballots the strike wouldn't have happened in the first place, but more importantly - what is up with group leaders - on both sides - who insist on going to the brink and indulging in strikes and lockouts when they could just come up with a compromise which would save everyone a great deal of hassle and venom?
At least the city news bureau types will have something interesting to write about as garbage starts piling up on city streets and less ambulances are available to carry away casualties.
Oh, and if you're not from around here or just too lazy to look it up, here's the main bone of contention - the ability to "bank" sick days.
At the center of the contract dispute is an existing perk
that allows workers to bank unused sick days and cash them in
when they retire, a practice the city of Toronto wants to
abolish because it says it will cost it hundreds of millions in
payouts over the years. Workers are currently entitled to 18
sick days a year.
Sad.
Actually check out the CBC article because listening to union reps posture is hilarious.
"At 9:30 this evening, the City of Toronto tabled a proposal that we
considered to be complete garbage," CUPE Local 416 president Rob
Ferguson said Sunday. "It was a vicious attack on our membership, an
unwarranted attack."
The only garbage I see is the refuse piling up on the streets because you're expecting the middle of the worst recession in decades to be a good time to be attempting to win big in contract negotiations.
Wow.
What I consider worst about this is the childish use of invective. "A vicious attack" is when paramilitaries come to your house, drag you outside, and shoot you in the back of the head in front of your wife and children. Try being a union official in Columbia. Then you have the right to make dramatic claims.
I have sympathies for unions facing genuine trouble.
If you're earning $50,000 a year to collect money from people in a booth all day, you have got to be kidding me.
The point made by Local 79's president is even better, in that it's at least less insulting to people's intelligence: "CUPE Local 79 president Ann Dembinski said the inside workers
represented by her union were striking because they were asked to make
concessions that other city workers — like police and firefighters —
didn't have to make."
Fair enough. And I suppose lifeguards risk their lives sometimes.
But, guess what? Police and firefighters risk their lives on a daily basis.
Aside from the elite band rockstars known as lifeguards and similar people who have to go out there and put their necks on the line, most of you don't.
So suck it up and smell the massive expansion in welfare rolls and other drains on the city's coffers.
If you want more money, find a job that's less secure than your sinecure for life.
Having said all this, how can you be creating and dumping this much garbage after just one day of the strike?