Toronto civic strike angers residents and annoys tourists
Lemmy @ Tue Jun 30, 2009 7:57 pm
ASLplease ASLplease:
If I was negotiating against the unions, I would take away all sick days, and offer a new sick day program similar to Torontos because the banked sick days could be used to artificially inflate the pension figures that I quote them. Everytime I tell them what their pension is worth, I would give them a figure that assumes that they were never sick.....then slap them in the face with reality when it comes time for them to retire.
You don't have to take away sick day accumulation, and why would you want to make the situation adversarial? There's no need for that. All you have to do is cap the total that can be used as retirement gratuity. That's what the Boards of Education did. Most of that's changed now, since teachers now get RRSP contributions instead of retirement gratuity, but before that changed, they could bank up to 180 sick days, but their retirement gratuity was 40 days.
Unions that get to bank sick days actually have less abuse of sick days than those that can't bank them. The members see it as something to collect, even though the sick days themselves are essentially useless. It's really only a political issue. It's not a real negotiation issue.
Ash1980 @ Tue Jun 30, 2009 9:46 pm
QBall QBall:
Time to privatize garbage collection. Cut property taxes by 10% and have the citizens arrange their own garbage collection. I've had to use private collection here in a suburb of Victoria and I've never had to worry about strikes in the six years I've owned my house.
Here is the kicker.Garbage collection is paid for with fee's.
All Bags must be tagged and every household must rent a bin from the city.
Tax dollars have been moved to raises,calenders and bunny suits(I am not kidding about the bunny suit)
Freakinoldguy @ Tue Jun 30, 2009 10:21 pm
Lemmy Lemmy:
Unions that get to bank sick days actually have less abuse of sick days than those that can't bank them. The members see it as something to collect, even though the sick days themselves are essentially useless. It's really only a political issue. It's not a real negotiation issue.
The trouble with allowing the banking of sick days or accumulated leave is the cost.
Anyone with any brains in their head accumulate sick days or holidays and use them at the end of their careers before they retire.
This only makes sense. You start off as a city ditch digger at 18 bucks an hour and accummulate as much leave as you can, so when you retire as the manager of ditches for the City at 50 bucks an hour that's the rate they have to pay you at for all those sick days and accumulated holidays you've saved up.
It becomes a horrendous expenditure, for any organization to pay.
Lemmy @ Tue Jun 30, 2009 10:29 pm
Freakinoldguy Freakinoldguy:
The trouble with allowing the banking of sick days or accumulated leave is the cost.
Anyone with any brains in their head accumulate sick days or holidays and use them at the end of their careers before they retire.
Anyone with any brains in their head accumulate sick days or holidays and use them at the end of their careers before they retire.
But that's an unfounded fear. It doesn't happen. They COULD do that, but they don't.
Freakinoldguy Freakinoldguy:
This only makes sense. You start off as a city ditch digger at 18 bucks an hour and accummulate as much leave as you can, so when you retire as the manager of ditches for the City at 50 bucks an hour that's the rate they have to pay you at for all those sick days and accumulated holidays you've saved up.
It becomes a horrendous expenditure, for any organization to pay.
It becomes a horrendous expenditure, for any organization to pay.
I understand the fear, but it just doesn't happen in practise. Sick days are accumulated and then the guy retires, without ever claiming hardly any of them.
kenmore @ Wed Jul 01, 2009 9:29 am
InternetChatter InternetChatter:
The city of Toronto is broke. They can't afford to pay hundreds of thousands of hours in unused sick time. The water works are crumbling, bridges and roads are in the worst state in modern times, city services have been repeatedly scaled back.
Why should the uncivil servants be immune to the economic realities of a Toronto in decline?
Why should the uncivil servants be immune to the economic realities of a Toronto in decline?
Hmmm ...no stimulus package money from Harper? oh sorry Toronto is on the tory shit list.
Terence @ Wed Jul 01, 2009 2:50 pm
Kenmore, McGuinty and Harper get along extremely well. They actually seem to like each other.
Miller, likes to antagonize people with pockets full of cash. Whether they be the Office workers from the burbs, discouraging them from driving in, to property taxpyers, Liberal and Conservative PMs alike.
The man is complete doorknob for a Harvard man.
QBall @ Thu Jul 02, 2009 4:55 pm
ASLplease ASLplease:
QBall QBall:
Time to privatize garbage collection. Cut property taxes by 10% and have the citizens arrange their own garbage collection. I've had to use private collection here in a suburb of Victoria and I've never had to worry about strikes in the six years I've owned my house.
there needs to be a mechanism that allows people that recycle 100% to opt out of garbage collection fees. Perhaps a voucher that is handed to you every week that you don't have garbage. Combine this with a limit of how many bags per week you are allow.
It can be really simple (sort of). The city should have some form that the property owner can sign to opt out of municipal trash collection in exchange for a 10% cut in property taxes. The owner can then use the money to hire a private firm to collect the trash or, in your case, go out to dinner at a nice restaurant for being a good global citizen. In fact the city can mandate that all commercial properties MUST accept this option. Eventually the number of sanitation workers will be reduced until a time when the city announces they will cease municipal garbage collection all together.
BeaverFever @ Wed Jul 29, 2009 1:38 pm
10% of PT refunded just for garbage collection is alot.
Besides, the issue here is not really garbage, its about the "us vs. them" and "less for somebody else means more for me" mentality that some people have. Remember, it wasn't just garbage workers on strike, there were day care workers, groundskeepers, public health nurses, water quality technicians, etc. There will always be some public worker that the rest of us can gang up on and beat into the poorhouse because we, "the taxpayers" are so self-righteous on our high horses we're willing to starve someone else's children in order to indirectly save a theoretical penny.
It's one thing to say a certain job i.e. garbage collection is no longer needed, its quite another to say it is needed and should be an "essential service" while at the same time insisting that whoever works those jobs be stripped of their middle-class status and become working poor.
Congrats to CUPE 416 and 79, looks like they did a great job holding the line against yet another attempted claw back from the blue-collar middle class.