City
Morning Brew: Man's Pants on Fire, Grocers Go Independent, Caribana Launches, Striking Teenager's Perspective
Photo: "Too High" by sevennine, member of the blogTO Flickr pool.
What's happening in the GTA (and sometimes beyond):
A man standing accused of arson has also brought back childhood memories of the phrase "liar, liar, pants on fire." While nothing is conclusive until a court of law makes its judgment, a man arriving at hospital with burns to his legs claimed to have had a late night barbecue propane accident, but police believe he may be involved in starting a nearby industrial fire.
Undesirable purchasing policies and a drive to buy and sell locally sourced meats and produce have caused a number of southwestern Ontario grocers to sever their ties to the large grocery chain Sobeys and go independent. Meat doesn't need to be federally inspected in far away locations and then trucked here to be safe, does it?
Ontario is looking to give electric and hybrid vehicles a boost by announcing new strategies for promoting them. The plan includes a large purchaser incentive for consumers (which could bring down the cost of hybrid cars like he Volt down by about 25%), and a commitment to make the government's fleet 20% hybrid by 2020.
And in mandatory city union strike-related news...
Caribana will go on despite the ongoing strike. The annual festival kicked off yesterday at a crowded Yonge-Dundas Square, leaving Nathan Phillips Square lonely and pouting.
The Star has an intriguing piece about a 16-year old girl named Tamie Dolny who was supposed to be a city-employed lifeguard this summer but is instead on strike. I'm not so sure that the posed (straight-faced, armed folded) photo will evoke much sympathy, but it must really suck to be in her shoes.
And striking workers shut down Terra-Green Recycling & Transfer (a private Etobicoke hauling company) for several hours yesterday, until the owner came out and signed a hand-written agreement stating that his company wouldn't pick up any park or residential waste in Toronto. His lawyers are calling it blackmail.
Discussion
44 Comments
Sort By Oldest First / Newest First
Subscribe
We all know how great Federal meat inspectors are at doing their jobs...
Most people I've talked to seem to be of the opinion that while the strike is annoying they would rather wait it out then have the city give in to the union. A few people I know were on the fence for a while, but then eventually had to dispose of the garbage that was piling up. After trying to dump their waste at transfer stations any sympathy for the city workers had been thrown out with their trash.
I think being in the shoes of a laid off Centre Island student trying to make tuition sucks more.
Police, Fire, etc.. get raises each year, and the strikes, who sit around comparing tattoo's, and swearing and smoking, and who throw bags of garbage in a truck for a living think they are just as important as the police and fire, that they deserve the same raise?
haha.
I REALLY HOPE SO, like a protest to protest the protesters. Find a way to stop them from illegally blocking the transfer stations.
Or is that even a solution.
The main choices are.
Corrupt over promising Liberals that will do nothing about unions. But they will talk a lot.
Than there is the NDP that will unionize puppies and demand free education for raccoons.
Than there are the conservatives, they will actually do what they say. Which includes selling pretty much all of our right to the highest bidder.
There's a lot of money to be made by painting yourself green.
Actually, the former Sobeys stores have joined together to form a co-operative. Good for them! A small step for them is a step in the right direction towards protecting our food security and supporting local economic infrastructure.
Did you know that co-operatives have a higher success rate and are more stable than other businesses? The bottom line includes far more than just profit. Since workers are members they have a say in the operation of the business. They are more productive and have higher motivation to make the business work. Co-ops give back to their communities far more than other businesses because they ARE those communities.
Perhaps the co-operative model should be explored by the City of Toronto, TTC and the unions to which its workers belong. This model could stop the constant tension that erupts in management/labour action that inconveniences or imperils the rest of us. We would have vastly improved service and a positive leadership example for youth and newcomers.
Paramedics should not even be remotely in the same category as garbage collectors. They are just a 'tad' more important. That doesnt make sense either.
I actually didn't mind dropping off my garbage, I would trade the equivalent taxes and do it myself if the option were available.
Not to mention blocking private firms, and constantly shirking the responsibility of their actions.
Worth watching.
http://www.ted.com/talks/shai_agassi_on_electric_cars.html
http://www.betterplace.com/
Boo hoo some lady goes to the strike, blocks cars, and complains about car fumes? Someone can't make enough to live because they choose to strike (I know they don't ALL have a say in striking or not)? Someone can't find daycare for their child because they're follow union members are on strike?!
Talk about making your own bed.
And comparing yourself to police and firefighters? At this point your age is showing. TTC... can argue either way.
Can't argue about City councillors self-raise, but how many of them are there. Now how many of you? And I hate to say it the ugly truth but the councillor (is supposed) to represent me. You just haul my garbage.
I didn't know we have the right to annual raises to match inflation. Is that part of labour laws? It isn't??? No wonder I didn't expect it in my job.
"so painfully wrong to be malicious, rude and spiteful to a group of people who just want to make a point for 15 minutes of your day."
And you get 15 minutes of my day why? Tell it to the Island worker Mark Dowling mentioned. Cold hard truth is that people have prioritize the issues in their lives, you're not high on that list.
And guess what, 15 minutes for each car in a 5 car lineup is not "just a couple of minutes later".
Here's something else you might be interested to learn about this chain. You can shop at their upscale "Urban Fresh" stores and request a paper bag instead of plastic at the checkout - for a cost of $0.05! Yes, they actually have the nerve to nickel and dime you for requesting a recyclable paper bag. Totally clueless about their customers and what an "upscale" shopping experience means!
That Mike W isn't good enough at his job or the art of negotiation to get an inflationary increase each year speaks more to Mike W than it does to CUPE. The reality is that the vast majority of people who don't make minimum wage see some sort of annual pay increase, usually in line with inflation.
But thanks for demonstrating once again how out of touch the Unions seem to be.
The girl in fact did compare garbage collectors to police and firefighters. Did you read the article? Search for the phrase "Under their current contract", it's right there, only takes a few minutes to read the whole thing.
It's interesting you assume and imply I'm bad at my job or negotiating without knowing anything about me, because that speaks volumes about you and your ability to make logical arguments.
That said, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask CUPE to accept a temporary wage freeze or near-freeze, like the one that was imposed on the non-union workers. (Council would have a lot more credibility demanding this if they rolled back their own increase, but that's another issue :P).
But I think the really sticky issue is in the long-term benefits the city wants to revoke (i.e. the "sick bank"). They're using the current economic climate to justify eliminating benefits that in many cases wouldn't have to be paid out of years (or decades). Ludicrous system though it may be, these sick day "banks" are people's retirement nest eggs... I'm hardly surprised to see them digging in their heels when those are threatened.
It'll be interesting to see whose side the inevitable arbitrator takes on that.
Really? I thought their retirement nest egg was the costly, fully inflation-indexed defined benefit pension plan.
I think this is great.
Sure paper is better than plastic, but waste is waste. Paper bags may be better, but reusable bags are even better.
Yeah, that too. Still, people were expecting their "sick day banks" to be worth thousands of dollars upon their retirement. I can see the argument that they never should've been given that benefit in the first place, but the fact remains they were. The city is effectively saying "we want to evaporate thousands of dollars of your future income because of current economic conditions". It's naive to expect the workers to say "No problem, I'm just happy to have a job in these Tough Economic Times" or "Go ahead, I don't deserve it, I'm just a lowly garbage man*!"
I suspect there are plenty of places the city could have saved more money (especially in the short term), without causing so much labour unrest. But the sick bank made a good target because it's easy to sell to the voting public as a cushy frill.
(* Notwithstanding the fact that most of them are not actually garbage men.)
Are they? The only publicly knows offer is from the city includes a present day payout of accumulated sick days. What is being evaporated?
too quick to be cynical? Paper bags are not a better choice than plastic bags:
they use more carbon in transport
use more energy to produce: 2511 BTUs vs 594 BTUs
In 1999, 14 million trees were cut to produce the 10 billion paper grocery bags used by Americans that year alone.
It takes 91% less energy to recycle a pound of plastic than it takes to recycle a pound of paper. But recycling rates of either type of disposable bag are extremely low, with only 10 to 15% of paper bags and 1 to 3% of plastic bags being recycled, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Paper sacks generate 70% more air and 50 times more water pollutants than plastic bags.
maybe just put your groceries in your backpack.
Based on foggily-recalled media reports, my understanding is that the earlier city offers (before the strike) included no such provision.
I get the idea of charging for plastic bags, and maybe even for paper. I don't for a second though buy the argument that Sobeys charging for paper is doing it "for the environment" and not for cost recovery/revenue. If the former was true, why didn't they start doing it a decade ago? Why are they STILL giving away plastic bags in other markets outside of the GTA?
"maybe just put your groceries in your backpack."
Just how large a backpack are you expecting people to carry with them? I'm picking up a few items on the way home from *work*, not an expedition up north. :-) I'll just pay the money if I don't have a reusable shopping bag handy. Speaking of which, the grocers have to be making a killing from the sales of those things. A quick search on alibaba.com shows that you can buy those in bulk from China for as little as $0.15, which some stores resell for up to $1.99 (or more).
So yes, she in fact did make a comparison between garbage handlers (yes, important) to police and firefighters (more important, sorry).
And to the other posters: yes, the Sobey's story is a very big deal, and I will try to frequent the store more than I do now.
But I otherwise agree with you. I wonder after the strike if these workers mind while every citizen in Toronto stops them each day for 15 minutes to bitch & moan. How rude if they can't give us that out of their day.
And let's be real, by constantly crying about the police and firefighters raise these CUPE 416 & 79 dummies ARE comparing themselves to these groups. They aen't saying the difference should be the same, they are just saying "hey, me too".
Time to shove the argument you are trying to make that if we aren't getting what the union is getting then we suck or aren't as smart. We all know that it is because these unions hold cities hostage and negotiate with bosses who are not concerned with economics but re-election. Politicians don't usually worry about where the money will come from like a private business does, they just increase taxes. It is infinitely easier to pressure a boss when the people who will decide whether he has a job next time are yelling because the union is screwing them. We are not fooled by your type of 4th grade reasoning.
No argument can justify this nonsense. The sick day pay is a safety net for a person, not a retirement vehicle. Try asking your employer to pay you 20k when you retire because you actually showed up for work when you were able to. i am sure he/she will be so thankful for taking the time out of your life to actually do the job you are being paid for they might throw in a gold watch.
Because they do know their customers very well. They know their customers are ignorant morons who desperately want to pretend they are "upscale" and "environmentally aware".
I'm not arguing that it's a reasonable or sensible benefit. I'm saying that given that they were awarded it years ago (in exchange for giving up pay immediate raises at the time, I believe), you're not going to get them to give it up retroactively without a fight. And I'm suggesting that the city knew that, and knew how it would play with the public, and used the issue to push the union into a strike -- not because it was the best and most sensible place to cut costs, but to score political points.
Most of what is done shouldn't be. What little that should be done, most shouldn't be done by the government. Of what tiny bit that should be done by the government, most is vastly overpaid.
Unskilled labor shouldn't get the wages and benefits that they do get, and they definitely should never get a raise. EVER. Paramedics should be essential services and prevented from being part of a general union.
The city should pay Fire, Police, and Ambulance workers handsomely. They should pay the rest virtually nothing. Government shouldn't be the highest paid option, nor should it be a career. It should be the last resort and barely above welfare.
Libraries shouldn't be government run, the city shouldn't do daycare. Garbage should be private contracted and not run by council (i.e. idiotic green bin and bag programs).
Why we're paying people so much to cut grass, when it should be done by shelter residents as part of getting them off the streets and into work, I have no idea.
Says who? Against whose religion is this? Where is the moral justification for privatising these things? No. If these were privatised, they would become more expensive and we would not necessarily get good service as the bottom line of anything privately run is profit. Referring to my earlier comment, perhaps they could be organised co-operatively.
Whole foods is the definition of green washing.
Paper takes more energy to produce than plastic, more chemicals are used (surprisingly), more raw materials are required, it takes more energy to transport paper bags in every part of the system (to the processing plant, store, to your home, to the recycler, etc), they require an enormous amount of energy to recycle (and more chemicals still) and while they CAN biodegrade they most certainly don't (the dump environment stops this from happening and even if they did biodegrade they'd be leaching chemicals).
This is the same company who would rather offer you frozen 'organic' food imported from across the planet than from nearby farmers with standards just as good, if not better than these organic South American ones.