Must suck to be in Toronto now

[Leslie]

Both the inside workers and outside workers for the city are out on strike. NO garbage collection, no pools for the kids, few community centres, few services available. Garbage is piling up, people are dumping it wherever they want.

YUCK (http://www.pulse24.com/News/Top_Story/20020705-001/page.asp)
What's not (http://www.pulse24.com/News/Top_Story/20020626-007/page.asp) available now...

[Professur]

I just love watching people pile garbage up around themselves, waiting for someone else to take it away. The idea of the common human sheep burying themselves in their own waste makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

[unclehobart]

How long has this been going on?

[Leslie]

only around a week, week and a half I think for the garbage, inside guys just yesterday.

Imagine a month! :eek:

The mayor is holding out, there is a stand off, they're expecting it to last at least the summer, the issue is job security (jobs for life), the mayor says noone has job security anymore and he'll not sign.

[unclehobart]

What started it all? I've ne'r heard of it prior to today.

[Leslie]

The normal, contracts are up, some dumbass set it up so they'd all be up at the same time.

[Professur]

Dumbass? Sounds like the union planned it just perfectly. A garbage strike in winter means nothing. Have the entire city go on strike right at the beginning of tourist season, and the city has to pay attention. If they want to ever see another election that is.

[unclehobart]

Time to fire the entire public works depatment and start fresh.

[Professur]

Sure thing, President Reagan.

[Leslie]

I hope the mayor stands off for awhile anyway. Job security - bullshit.

The dumbass was the one in the city that let it be set up like that.

[unclehobart]

It worked *shrug* Time to peel the rotten onion layers off or be held hostage. I chose to fight rather than to cower.

[Professur]

You don't have the Canada Employment Act to deal with. The thousands of people you fire will still be on the public payroll for another year. Plus, you'd have the added expense of trying to find jobs for all the losers with no other job skills after the fact.

[Leslie]

Yes. Sadly, it's probably cheaper to keep them. But the citizens of Toronto can console themselves with the thought that the workers will have to pick it all up after the strike, after it's been sitting out in the heat of summer for weeks :D

[Ardsgaine]

Originally posted by unclehobart
Time to fire the entire public works depatment and start fresh.

Better yet, simply do away with the sanitation department, and tell people they're going to have to hire their own garbage collector. Then let anyone with a truck go into business for himself removing garbage for a price.

Where I live we can choose from about a half dozen garbage companies. I think the county still owns the landfill, but at least there's some competition in the pick up service. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me that the government should be involved in garbage disposal at all.

[Leslie]

:confuse3: I don't know if that would work in Toronto, the apartments and businesses with dumpsters for the most part have private collection, but I think in the main, Toronto would be too big to cope with that.

[Professur]

Too much chance of a fly-by-nighter doing pickups and dumping it in the lake.

[Leslie]

people already do that :sick:

sadly, it was a joke during the heat wave:

"It's sooooooooo hot...
that people are swimming in Lake Ontario :eek: "

[unclehobart]

Sounds as if the cowering and hostage taking took place long long ago if your welfare state labor laws are that gravy heavy.

[Leslie]

Yep :(

[Ardsgaine]

Originally posted by Professur
Too much chance of a fly-by-nighter doing pickups and dumping it in the lake.

Yep. Stuff like that never happens with the government looking after things.

[Leslie]

:eek:

Trash Thrash (http://www.pulse24.com/News/Top_Story/20020705-017/page.asp)

Toronto’s mean streets have truly become Toronto’s Mean Streets. The lack of garbage collection due to the C.U.P.E. strike appears to be turning otherwise normal residents into hostile combatants.

There were confrontations over garbage citywide, with one of the strangest occurring at Adelaide and John Sts. The scene turned positively surreal, as two striking C.U.P.E. workers confronted two men in a truck trying to remove a mound of trash from in front of a building. “That’s my garbage!” shouted one, as the union strikers called him ‘scab’.

The situation reached ludicrous proportions, as both sides swore, shoved the other, and battled over the bags. As one tried to load his truck, the union men would reach in and unload it. They tried to throw the bags into the open cab. But the strikers blocked it like basketball players. They played soccer with the green containers, kicking them away from each other, trying to gain control. And amidst all the pushing and shoving was an ongoing war of words that lasted 10 minutes or more.

video (http://www.pulse24.com/In_The_Raw/Raw_Video/page.asp#trash1) :eek:

[Leslie]

Toronto’s labour disputes reached a fever pitch on Saturday, after striking C.U.P.E. outside workers tried to halt private haulers from picking up trash.

“We have private haulers there,” said President of Local 416, Brian Cochrane. “You can understand the guys on the line for 11 days, they will not take kindly to the very things that they are fighting against, coming in and doing that garbage collection.”

But the city didn’t take kindly to strikers obstructing workers, and went to the Ontario Supreme Court on Saturday to get an injunction allowing a clean up. The order to tidy certain garbage piles came from the Public Health Unit on Friday; due to the danger of a rat and fly infestation at Ingram, Victoria Park and Trinity-Bellwoods Park dump sites.

pulse24.com (http://www.pulse24.com/News/Top_Story/20020706-001/page.asp)

[equinoxe3d]

You could take your garbage and put it in front of the mayor's house (seriously, it happened a few years ago in Montreal, it was planified and a decent amount of people did it) :D

[Professur]

Enough there to do the mayor's house and city hall.

[ris]

yuhup :P

[ris]

yuhup :P

[Leslie]

It’s over. Legislation to end Toronto’s C.U.P.E. strike passed at Queen’s Park, after a long series of endless wrangling between the Tories and the N.D.P. The stumbling block, the naming of an arbitrator, was finally solved Thursday afternoon, after the Liberals brokered a compromise.

The Grits submitted 6 names they believe could serve as an impartial judge. At least three of those names – Victor Pathe, Tim Armstrong and Kevin Whitaker, were agreeable to all sides. Under the deal, the city and the union now has 5 days to work out who should arbitrate the dispute. If they can’t agree, one of the three names would be chosen.

“They are all well known. They are all well respected. They all have a great level of trust,” concludes N.D.P. leader Howard Hampton.

The passage of the bill means workers will be returning to their jobs Friday morning, with garbage pick-up for residents coming back on Monday.

Source (http://www.pulse24.com/News/Top_Story/20020711-004/page.asp)

[Professur]

Translation: Pay all the union dues you like, you still can't strike.