The union representing the city’s 6,200 striking outside workers has made it clear that a proposed pay freeze this year and 1 per cent hike next year won’t fly, according to an email message to city councillors obtained by the Star.
“Local 416 is not prepared to accept a compensation scheme with zero in the first year and 1 per cent in the second,” president Mark Ferguson said in the email, which was sent just hours before a closed-door session of the employee and labour relations committee yesterday.
After a 2 1/2-hour meeting, attended by nearly half of all city councillors, Mayor David Miller emerged to tell reporters that the committee voted to grant increased flexibility to the city’s negotiators, though he refused to elaborate on what that meant.
He did, however, continue to talk tough, suggesting the union needed to change its attitude to end the 18-day walkout.
[More]
Updates:
12:35 pm EDT, July 10th, 2009 — Miller makes offer public, wants strike over now
Don’t cave now Mayor Miller.
mid island mike
Y’all can kiss my ass.
Be happy you’re not being forced to swallow a 20%-100%(job loss) reduction in pay. This is more the norm these fine days.
Ungrateful, useless, lazy bastards.
I feel better now.
Good of these union types to refuse to get paid just when the city was nearing bankruptcy again because of the recession. If they keep this up much longer Toronto should remain well within its budget and city council won’t have to cut any more of the services that the unions aren’t providing.
Fire them all.
Both Brian S and BTDT have good points.
One thing I’ve noticed is that my neighbourhood hasn’t gotten much grimier since the strike started. Speaks to the quality of the people in the neighbourhood, IMO, since the same can’t be said for some areas downtown. Still, perhaps what Toronto is learning is that we may not need unions to come around and collect garbage. I’d be plenty happy if the union contracted the job out on condition that the private company pay no less than $22/hour to its workers. It would be raise for them and we wouldn’t have to worry about being held hostage by the unions.
Winnipeg contracted out garbage pickup a fewyears ago despite the warnings of unavoidable armageddon if it happened. Hmmm, huge savings for the taxpayers and hell’s bells service improved too!. Go figure.
When Winnipeg finally completed contracting out in 2006, a move which it did in two stages, it saved in excess of $5.7 million. Winnipeg has about 700,000 people.
http://www.citycaucus.com/2009/06/canadas-big-cities-could-save-big-bucks-with-privatized-garbage-pickup
CUPE objected of course. Screw’em, fire them all.
http://cupe.ca/P3_Alert__June_2005/Privatizing_Winnipeg
Just wondering how much these strikers get paid/day from the union. How much is the union strike fund. These workers will never make up what they have lost in wages, and will probably have to pay higher union dues to make up for the strike. Are union leaders still getting their regular pay and benefits. Hope all those strikers had their credit cards paid down before walking off the job.
MaryT: It has never been about economics; strikers rarely recoup the losses financially. It is all about power. To my knowledge, the union leaders continue to collect their pay as they are still working. If you call rallying the members, showing up at a few picket lines, and generally being difficult to deal with, working.
Union dues are tax deductible and the benefits received via strike pay are non taxable. How good is that?
EI & CPP deductions generate a tax credit, but the benefits you receive are considered taxable income. See anything wrong with this compared to the union benefits?
Privatize these services.
mid island mike
Let them stay out until after the new year, call it insolvable and contract out. I live in the area of TO where garbage collection has been contracted out for years (still have collection during strike). The union also wants my collection, this cannot be allowed to happen.
“I Just Want To Work!” Really? This is pathetic on so many levels. Work it out through arbitration – no legislating for a settlement. We’ll see if McGinty and the Liberals cave to the unions. Windsor has had a strike for months, Toronto and the non-mayor should tough it out. Cheers.
Come on you guys, you’re too had on the unions! They haven’t worked this hard since the last strike! If the pecker heads on city council can give themselves 2.4% raise give it to the unions. Better still, roll back the pay raise. (Cost of living increase my ass). While the people in Etobicoke are breathing fresh clean air the people in North York must be really pissed. They had private garbage pickup until the chief pecker head Miller changed that a couple of years ago. I’d be happy to stick it out until they bust the union and hire real workers to do the job. Fat chance of that!