Garbage strike road back to Tory Toronto?
Jul 12th, 2009 | By Citizen X | Category: In Brief
Toronto is not the only place with a garbage and civic workers strike this summer. Windsor’s has been going on for three months. (It’s not quite three weeks in Toronto so far.)Â A somewhat different paramedics strike in the public sector is now underway in BC too. And of course nobody outside Toronto cares about Toronto’s problems at all.
A new Toronto Star/Angus Reid opinion poll has nonetheless confirmed that more than three-quarters of the residents in Canada’s largest and usually quite liberal big city “disapprove of the two striking unions.” Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty may not notice “a tremendous amount of visible evidence that we’re mired in a garbage strike.” But out on the certainly less-tidy-than-usual city streets you don’t have to be listening too hard to hear the anger of many ordinary Toronto voters, quietly gathering some big head of steam.
Deep thinkers are already wondering just what is going to happen to this head of steam. You can already see how the growing pressure is starting to pick up the pace of the bargaining process – maybe. And the same new poll shows that two-thirds of Torontonians also “disapprove of [again usually quite liberal] Mayor David Miller’s handling of the strike.”
The most provocative speculation was raised by veteran Toronto Star columnist Richard Gwyn two weeks ago: “Toronto’s garbage strike could turn out to be Canada’s equivalent of Britain’s strike by gravediggers in 1978-79,” which finally led to “the election of Margaret Thatcher.” This still seems a bit too overwrought. But, believe it or not, Toronto used to be a very conservative – and Conservative – town. And the longer the summer 2009 garbage strike goes on, side by side with the current great recession, the more you can almost smell some new version of an old Tory Toronto rising to cover the waterfront again. Both David Miller and Dalton McGuinty ought to be worried. (And maybe even Michael Ignatieff too?)
UPDATE JULY 18: If you live in Toronto and want to let off steam on all this check out STOP the Toronto city strike – and make your vote count!
Time to go private and fire them all for being so greedy with tax payer dollars… They’re not politicians. Its nice to have paid sick days but thats as far as it should go. Get sick, Get paid thats it, no more no less. No banked sick days, no roll over year to year. You can’t retire on sick days, they’ll have to save just like everyone else. But they should get a fair pay raise, to help offset the cost of living increases, and thats more than most people get anywhere.