On June 22, 2009, both inside and outside workers of the City of Toronto hit the streets in a bid to fight their employer over unfair concessions they believe they are being are asked to make. Toronto’s garbage collection, park maintenance, transportation, by-law enforcement, pools, recreation centres, daycare and inside office staff hit the streets over what they claim to be over 100 pages of concessions the city is asking the union members to make in wages, benefits and sick time.
City Workers Are Asking for Fairness
For five months, neither union has had a contract and has negotiated steadily with the City without any success. Both Locals 79 and 416 of the Canadian Union of Public Employees placed ads in Toronto area newspapers and other publications to let the public know they want parity with other municipal employees. Over the past year or two, other municipalities in the Greater Toronto Area have negotiated contracts with their employees. As well, workers with Toronto Fire, Toronto Hydro, Toronto Police Services and others have achieved gains and retention pay in recent years.
The unions representing other Toronto city workers wonder why they have to give up so much of what they already gained through previous strikes, collective bargaining and arbitration settlements. One contentious issue is the sick pay benefit, which currently allows eighteen sick days per year and if one does not use all of their sick time, sick days can accumulate at the time of one’s retirement for up to six months. This benefit is essentially an incentive to be present, as each unused sick day can be banked. Union representatives say their workers do not have short-term disability benefits and need the sick days because of the risks they encounter, particularly for those that work outdoors.
The City of Toronto is Constrained by Impact of Recession
Further the city is asking its workers to accept “flexibility”, which means less job security for its workers. Workers in the public sector have traditionally enjoyed excellent benefits and job security, but the City of Toronto management and political representatives feel they are no longer in the same financial position they were even a year or two ago when they were able to offer more incentives to other workers such as fire fighters and police officers.
Further, others including small business owners and private sector employees feel that the sick pay policy is very rich, particularly in a time of economic recession when everybody else is forced to cut back. With substantial layoffs in other sectors of the economy with no end in sight for the current recession, the City of Toronto is noting its swelling welfare rolls and declining revenues from other levels of government.
Many Toronto Residents Inconvenienced by Strike
The most notable difference members of the public note is that garbage pick-up has ceased and residents are being asked to take their garbage to any one of nineteen “transfer stations”. Many waste containers in the downtown core were sealed with a notice citing that the “service was temporarily unavailable”. Closure of these containers was done in the hopes that residents would not use them to dump their own garbage and to direct them to the transfer stations instead.
However, in the first few days of the strike, a few residents found difficulties at the transfer stations as they attempted to enter in order to drop off their refuse. Some striking workers were attempting to prevent entry by the public altogether, while others were holding people in line-ups and accepting one resident at a time and forcing each to wait fifteen minutes per turn. This resulted in a number of altercations, as well as attempts to dump one’s garbage outside the transfer stations resulting in a fine. City managers have negotiated with outside pickets to get them to cooperate with residents that are legitimately using the transfer stations, as well – more transfer stations may be in the works.
In addition to the inconvenience of dealing with one’s trash, many working parents have had to find other childcare arrangements, as the city-run daycare centres were closed. Henceforth, the opening of the summer season has left many residents fuming that would otherwise be able to use the city’s pools and splash pads. City parks such as the one in Christie Pits has suffered a backlash from the city worker strike, as people have been dumping garbage illegally in these areas. At this point, there does not seem to be any call for legislating these workers back to their jobs.
Popular city events such as Canada Day celebrations have been cancelled due to city workers being unavailable to clean up after them; however, private citizens and volunteers were available to ensure that things were picked up after the annual Pride Week events. Moreoever, at this same time a strike of several weeks by city workers in Windsor has been taking place as well. However, unlike Toronto to date, neighbourhood committees and citizen volunteers have taken responsibility for keeping the roads and parks litter free.
Angela Browne - Angela Browne is an independent Paralegal practising in the Niagara Region, of the Province of Ontario (Canada). She is a published ...
