The strike ends, but the unions stink anyway!
Toronto’s internal and external municipal workers belonging to two unions walked out from their jobs 36 days back, demanding higher pay and other benefits at a time when the looming recession in the country was/is sparing nobody, …literally. Striking city employees know that they can paralyze city’s services, and their union patrons left no stone unturned in arm-twisting the city to succumb to their outrageous demands. Seriously, what makes the unions think that they deserve better treatment than their fellow citizens? So their already prevailing higher entitlements, government-pace of work and job security weren’t sufficient, eh?
The most visible impact of the strike was the stalling of garbage collection. At numerous locations in the city, garbage was seen strewn around the garbage bins. The City of Toronto converted certain open spaces as dumps, where people could throw their garbage. Some individuals and communities voluntarily put garbage bags on the street, trying to minimize littering. I also read about random volunteer drives to clean up certain stretches of streets.
Seriously, what could be more deploring than a bunch of unionized public sector employees holding an entire city ransom with their unreasonable demands? The strike ended yesterday in some deal that both, the city and the unions, called successful. I just want to see my tax dollars spent well.
I think that public sector unions are irrelevant today. They seem to exist only to cause menace, nothing else.
I am wondering how they were able to exercise so much power because if you see most of the unions agree for cuts these days because they understand that their companies are in real trouble.
Mridula: It’s a government agency, they always have the power to screw. Strikes over pay commission report in India for example.
Bad sight!
its getting better slowly…
That is some overflowing garbage bin!
yeah, ofcourse I photographed the bad ones, but you get the idea…
A different situation but reminds me of what happened in Naples last year. At least the trash problem didn’t get too out of hand. I always think it’s annoying when people just throw the garbage right outside of the can, even when it’s full. Although it’s admittedly tempting.
Hi Anil,
The other thing that annoys me is seeing people dump cans in paper recycle chamber and then giggle about it. WTF?… 🙂
What an eyesore!
Hey Kiran, nice to see you back!
I am interested in knowing what happened at the end? What was the level of compromise.
Oh the unions got more ofcourse.
Yuck, yuck yuck for the garbages! I wonder how long it will take to be clean up… I mean this is a health risk!
It is, and it was quite worrying… but thankfully nothing happened. 🙂