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Garbage Strike 2009 (pg. 16)
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| Orko |
| quote: | City of Toronto is falling off the same cliff as General Motors
The workers enjoy perks that others can only dream of. The well-paid executives avoid making tough decisions. The organization has lost touch with those it serves and become a sprawling, self-perpetuating bureaucracy. The whole vast enterprise is drifting toward the rocks.
All of this was said of General Motors a year or two ago. It could just as easily be said of the City of Toronto today. Toronto is the GM of Canadian governments, heading for ruin, knowing it but lacking any credible plan to save itself.
The strike that started this week is only the latest sign of trouble. Mayor David Miller blames the city's worsening financial state on the recession. With revenues down, the city is trying to cut labour costs by wringing concessions from the unions.
But, as with GM, the recession is merely the straw that broke the camel's back. Like GM, Toronto has been storing up trouble for years.
Generous settlements with its various unions have burdened the city with wage and benefit costs that consume fully half of its $8.2-billion budget. One study by a business group found that the average Toronto municipal employee earned $57,000, 11.6 per cent more than workers in comparable private sector jobs and fully 36.4 per cent more when factoring in plush public-sector benefits.
Those benefits include the notorious 18 days of annual, bankable sick leave enjoyed by Toronto employees.
Like GM auto workers, city workers have come to see these benefits almost as a birthright. No mayor, right, left or centre, has made a serious attempt to wrest them away. The Toronto Board of Trade estimates that in the five years from 2003, when Mr. Miller took office, labour costs rose at a rate of 6.2 per cent a year. If, instead, they had been held to a 2-per-cent inflation ceiling, the city would have saved $1.53-billion over that period. Perhaps then it would not be in an 11th-hour panic to find money for new streetcars.
Ever-rising labour costs are only part of Toronto's problem. The city's whole budget is a mess. The mayor's Independent Fiscal Review Panel estimated that the city's unfunded liabilities things it doesn't really know how to pay for amount to $2-billion. And that's not including the liabilities of the many boards and agencies under its umbrella. Add in debt that no one knows how to pay off and the city is on the hook for another $2-billion. On top of all that, its capital plan calls for $11.1-billion in spending on transit, roads and so on by 2012.
The city's revenues from property taxes and other levies do not remotely cover all these expenses, so every year there is a mad scramble to balance the budget by raiding the city reserves or scrounging from the provincial government. But now the province is deep in deficit itself and the reserves have run out. As the Board of Trade puts it, the city's budget practices have brought us to the edge of a fiscal cliff we are still moving toward the edge, with no one planning our escape.
They were saying the same thing about GM for years, as its pension and health-care liabilities piled up. Instead of doing something decisive, like slashing benefits or cutting losing product lines, the company drifted steadily toward the edge before finally falling off when the recession hit car sales this year.
Turning around big, bureaucratic, unaccountable organizations like GM and the City of Toronto is a challenge. They have layers of hierarchy, dug-in unions and semi-independent sub-organizations that act as independent principalities think Pontiac in GM's case, the Toronto Community Housing Corporation in ours. Toronto is further hobbled by a political system stocked by independent councillors with no party allegiance and no common platform to campaign under.
Such organizations easily lose sight of their original purpose. Instead of serving customers or taxpayers, they serve themselves. They become like a bland version of an autocratic Third World regime whose only purpose is to stay in power. Clinging to a stagnant status quo, they rot from within.
Eventually there comes a reckoning. In GM's case it was collapsing sales and then bankruptcy. Toronto isn't bankrupt, at least not yet. But the combination of severe recession and serious strike are a wake up call if there ever was one. GM ignored those calls until it was too late. If only Toronto could be wiser.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...article1197951/
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Mismanagement is killing this city. From unions to out sourced consultant contracts; we will all suffer in the years to come. |
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| Dj Smitty20 |
| quote: | Originally posted by DigiNut
Maybe, maybe not - but it damn well makes me more knowledgeable about how things work in the private sector than somebody who's never set foot in an office before.
It's so obvious that you have no idea what you're talking about. Every time somebody makes a point that you don't know how to defend against, you retort with whatever "fact" (or more like insinuation) you think would win the argument IF it were true, except it isn't true.
You are transparent, boring, irritating, and carry an unshakable belief that your heavily-politicized education grants you a free pass to make whatever claims you want without having to worry about pesky nuances like experience or evidence. Just stop. |
How do you know that I've never worked in an office? What "facts" do you ever use in your arguments? Because I have some strong political beliefs (shared by many), my education you assume has been heavily politicized? You inject your right wing rhetoric into every post. You don't have any real retort here, so you resort to name calling. Thumbs up. |
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| Orko |
| quote: | Originally posted by Dj Smitty20
Because I have some strong political beliefs (shared by many), my education you assume has been heavily politicized? |
hmm....in chronologic order in this thread...
| quote: | Originally posted by Dj Smitty20
Are you familiar with the term "scab"? You sound like you were a big fan of Maggie Thatcher, the breaker of the British unions. |
| quote: | Originally posted by Dj Smitty20
I guess this is why people like you vote for ing morons like Stephen Harper and gang...whereas I don't. |
| quote: | Originally posted by Dj Smitty20
You sound like right wing Republican voting Americans.
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and the clincher, which was IN YOUR LAST POST:
| quote: | | You inject your right wing rhetoric into every post. |
You really are a moron. Those are just quotes from this single thread, not to mention all the other threads that you spew out 'right wing this, and republican that'. Funny enough that you use those terms in the wrong country. |
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| Orko |
Thanks workers, you just ed up Canada day for millions of people.
| quote: | Toronto's Canada Day celebrations cancelled
It's appears Canada Day is going to be a big fizzle in many parts of Toronto, with festivals, celebrations even the city-sponsored fireworks display cancelled
City officials say they cancelled the festivities because of the continuing strike by municipal workers.
Without the unionized workers the shows can't go on so the city is pulling the plug on about a dozen planned festivals, a sports tournament and even the traditional Canada Day fireworks display at Ashbridge's Bay.
"I know many Torontonians look forward to our Canada Day celebrations," city manager Joe Pennachetti said at a Thursday afternoon news conference.
"While we remain hopeful there will be a timely resolution to the strike, July 1 is fast approaching. Please be reminded that the city-run Canada Day events
and those that have permits to take place on city property, are cancelled."
The Ashbridge's Bay fireworks display has been held for decades and brings thousands of people to Toronto's east-end beaches for the show.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/st...ns.html?ref=rss |
Celebrate your countries freedom by ing up the celebration for so many others. |
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| Dj Smitty20 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Orko
You really are a moron. Those are just quotes from this single thread, not to mention all the other threads that you spew out 'right wing this, and republican that'. Funny enough that you use those terms in the wrong country. |
Maybe because some of the comments on here, yours included, actually are steeped in right leaning pro-corporate and anti-union drivel and demanded some perspective? |
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| Jayx1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by ShadoWolf
Privatize it. |
OH !!!
Look whos back!! |
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| Jayx1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Orko
Thanks workers, you just ed up Canada day for millions of people.
Celebrate your countries freedom by ing up the celebration for so many others. |
I understand why city run events are cancelled.
But why would private ones needing a permit be cancelled? This just shows you all thats wrong with the city. You need to hold the city's hand just to do a private event? Give me a break! |
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| Spam |
| quote: | Originally posted by Dj Smitty20
Maybe because some of the comments on here, yours included, actually are steeped in right leaning pro-corporate and anti-union drivel and demanded some perspective? |
Or maybe it's not right-wing drivel at all.
In Canada, it's the LIBERALS with the heaviest ties to big corporations. That's why the Conservatives are able to raise so much more money than the libs from smaller, private-citizen donations. So a pro-corporate stance would actually be holding a LIBERAL position.
Much of the right-wingers here, as I'm able to put together through their posts over the years, seem to be for small, private-business. Not corporations, not unionized, publicly funded work, but SMALL, or smallish, privately owned and run businesses.
That being said, being anti-union doesn't make a person right-wing either. Unions are famously inefficient, the workers are MORE than fairly compensated for jobs that are typically easier to carry out than those in the private sector. When they are PUBLICLY funded, it is completely outrageous to be held hostage by a bunch of idiots who are crying because their (already lucrative) contracts aren't giving them enough MORE stuff to keep them happy. Unions are ALWAYS demanding more and the public rarely, if ever, sees an improvement in service for these continuous, unsustainable increases in cost to deliver the service. We believe that a less-constrained private sector could deliver the service for a better price, with better service, and are rightly pissed off that those options are not available for when some retarded union decides to hold the entire damn city hostage when they're ALREADY being fairly compensated in the first place. |
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| The Highroller |
| I heard on the news that Pride hasn't hired any private garbage collectors for this weekend. :nervous: |
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| Jem_hadar |
| quote: | Originally posted by *~LiSa-LoO~*
Best of luck guys...we're going on week 11 over here. |
A friend whos going to U of windsor was up visiting in cwood for reading week and he was telling me about how bad it is in windsor bc of the strike... CRAZY.
Apparently some individuals/families are even personally taking care of some parks around teh city, cutting the grass, picking up garbage, etc. so that their kids can still use them, andrew was saying.
I cant believe it's come that... |
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| Jayx1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Jem_hadar
A friend whos going to U of windsor was up visiting in cwood for reading week and he was telling me about how bad it is in windsor bc of the strike... CRAZY.
Apparently some individuals/families are even personally taking care of some parks around teh city, cutting the grass, picking up garbage, etc. so that their kids can still use them, andrew was saying.
I cant believe it's come that... |
Apparently its against the law to do that here? Thats what ive heard anyways. |
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