Garbage Strike - Give Me a Break

[tboy]

They should have it because they negotiated it a long time ago. A labour contract is a business contract not some kind of favour extended to people. The idea that the market sets wages is dangerously nieve man do your parents know where you are?

do your parents know how poor of a speller you are? lol.....

Yeah, and the contract is now up for RE-NEGOTIATION and they're on strike because someone wizened up!

Also, a union negotiation is not really a fair representation of fair market negotiating. With a union you are in peril of what we're going through now...a strike.

If you want to compare a union contract with a business contract that would be like dell negotiating with intel for a new shipment of processors and if dell doesn't pay what intel wants, Dell can't produce computers (yet they can still because they can go with another OEM). With unions, you are strong armed into dealing with them and them alone.

If you think negotiating a union contract is like any other business contract then YOU are incredibly naive......

 

[tboy]

You know what, we need people of all walks to make this world go round. Calling them "stupid" is a bit demeaning and quite condescending. We simply all don't have the smarts to be neurosurgeons. And if we did, who would do the shit jobs that we ask the uneducated, or not so smart to do?

A hard working not so smart guy should be making a decent wage in my eyes. I don't consider minimum wage to be decent.

A great many people will argue that we don't need unions, etc. that there are labour laws to protect people, blah blah blah. I'm not so sure. I think that if you gave allot of employers the chance, it would be 1900 all over again. Someone has to stand up for the little guy and try and win him a decent wage because the truth of the matter is that we need people do do unskilled work.

To me, it's a tug of war and if it lands somewhere in the middle, I'm good with it.

Why? Why do you think an uneducated, underachiever with no ambition or goals should be paid the same as someone who has scrimped and saved and worked hard their entire lives, gone to university and passed?

Sorry, shit jobs deserve shit wages. If you don't want the shit job, educate yourself, learn a trade or skill, apply yourself and get a better paying job.

Hey, wait, maybe that's why there are so many people on unemployment and our manufacturing sector is a barren wasteland! Because everyone wanted top dollar to do menial labour to the point where it isn't economically feasible.

So, as I have always stated: unions want the most money and benefits they can squeeze out of a company until that company goes broke or ships their jobs over to china. Then the unions cry the blues about no work.....

As I have said and always said: I would rather make a decent wage with decent benefits for 20 yrs than make 2x the going rate for 5 yrs.....the total opposite of how unions think.....

 

[blackrock13]

I found an interesting read and I'm not going to comment on it except to say read it.

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/71-211-x/2009000/part-partie1-eng.htm


Too many numbers for me today but it sure gave me something to ponder and made me remember a project work/task theory.

The length of time it takes to do a job is quite often directly proportional to how much time is available.

 

[PDSAjax]

Having lived through the various strikes in the UK... watching the '84-'85 miners strike on TV, friends whose fathers were unable to work for fear of being labelled a scab, having my education disrupted by teachers strikes I do have a quite jaded view of unions. But to be honest, this strike has gone beyond the point of reasonable.

And I notice on the news, that my previous employer is under threat of a strike from the union as the union has rejected their contract offer - an offer made to employees that have probably the best pay and conditions in the particular industry.

It astounds me that the unions do not realise that the company has had to set aside millions of dollars in contingency for shutting down or idling operations and shipping in skeleton staff during a strike, not even counting lost revenue. If they came to the negotiating table with a more reasonable outlook and not basically threatening to strike if they didnt get their way.... perhaps those millions of dollars would not have to be set aside and may be used to provide an even better offer.... A sentiment that is not just my own, the then CEO of the company expressed the same feelings at the last round of contract negotiations....

I was trying to find a sketch from Not the Nine O Clock News to attach to this... A very young Rowan Atkinson partaking in union negotiations... very funny but YouTube is not being my friend right now...

 

[Rockslinger]

If they came to the negotiating table with a more reasonable outlook and not basically threatening to strike if they didnt get their way....

The same old UAW and CAW tactics that killed GM.

Old Irish proverb: "They never forget and they never learn."

 

[PDSAjax]

The same old UAW and CAW tactics that killed GM.

Old Irish proverb: "They never forget and they never learn."

Same as Britsh Leyland.... and this happened

 

[Mrbig1949]

I love all you know nothings pontificating on subject where you have no knowledge

The same old UAW and CAW tactics that killed GM.

Old Irish proverb: "They never forget and they never learn."

What we have here is a group of people with no knowledge of the Labour Movement, Labour negotiations, Labour law, pontificating as if they actually knew what they are talking about. You can tell from the "fire them all" "they come to the table threatening to strike" idiocy that passes for comment.

A few of you have a clue and I have some respect for that but the level of uninformed nonsense is overwhelming. There are rules, very clear rules that govern every possible contingency in negotiations and in strikes. There is also a huge body of protocols and precident involved. Please make some attempt to familiarize yourself with them before you shoot off your mouth and make yourself sound like an idiot. "where do these strikers get off making people wait 15 minutes" protocol established BY THE POLICE.

 

[blackrock13]

It's been pointed out many times in the various threads that the police establish the rules by convention and can increase them or restrict as they feel is needed to keep the picket line activity on an even keel. Simply put, the police can giveth and the police can taketh away. Legally.

More often than not, unfortunately, most charges laid against union members are usually dropped as part of the agreement. There are exceptions of course. Charges laid against Joe Public are generally not drop.

Do not hit a picketer with your vehicle. That doesn't go over well with the police and the charge is serious. I wouldn't go anywhere near a picket line with my wheels. Not a chance in hell.

 

[Rockslinger]

A few of you have a clue and I have some respect for that but the level of uninformed nonsense is overwhelming.

The vast majority of the "unwashed masses" exercise common sense and human decency. No decent human being forces 75 year old seniors to wait in the hot sun for 3 hours and force them to walk their garbage to the dump.
Open your eyes and see for yourself!

 

[Rockslinger]

In some cases, I equate unionization to legitimatized blackmail.

Please please make your views known to your city councillior, MPP and MP. They made the law and they can change the law. This is not 18th century France, we do not have to storm the Bastille.

 

[Mrbig1949]

Looks like you didn't learn much in LR course even then

That 'protocol' is only a compromise by the police who are themselves unionized.

It's been years since my labour relations act course in university, but isn't picketing supposed to be just a form of peaceful protest, and not to inconvenience the public who btw, are not scabs taking strikers' jobs?

Enough of this self-imposed blackmail - this service should be an essential one but the provincial Liberals, who are supported by the unions, will never do that if temperatures are moderate as they've been.

What's going to happen is that it will go to arbitration and the taxpayers will lose, and our spineless mayor (who won't bite the hand that feeds him), will wash his hands of this mess and pretend to look clean.

What's worse is that Etobicoke, which benefits from subcontracted garbage removal, will revert to public employees once their contract expires, thanks to our wimpy mayor (sorry, but I detest him).

Taxes go up and services deteriorate. Mississauga and Caledon are managed better.

Nobody said the people going to the dump are scabs. the long established protocol in almost any strike is 15 minutes per car. We saw it at the race track strike a few years ago. The police also establish where you can picket, and where not. It has nothing to do with the fact that the police are unionized. You are against arbitration? They look at all recent agreements in similar jobs and recommend a settlement, yeh I suppose you are against a peaceful settlement. Essential services (like hospitals, cops firefighters) are established because of possible physical harm to the public, not because you are incovenienced. BTW you can't have it both ways essential service arbitrations almost always give far more than management's last offer as a settlement. The cops just love it. Seen the cops wages lately? Essential service arbitration at work.Taxes will go up OMG taxes always go up, mine included, CUPE members included.

It really would be nice if you had a clue what you are talking about. Remedial Labour Relations for you.

 

[blackrock13]

Just heard a radio commercial from CUPE, relating a story of one of their worker named John?, who is looking for his banked sick day money to be a nest egg for his retirement, as he hasn't been working for the city long enough to accumulate a large pension plan balance. He's then asking for some understanding.

What a pile of shit. Even at 300+ days that's approximately $70,000. If that's his pension nest egg he's in deep doodoo. What's he been doing the rest of his life? I hope he plans to retire and move in with family members, or maybe in a CUPE flophouse.

Now I've seen 2 reports that the most a CUPE member can bank is 6 months. That goes against anything I've heard. So is there a cap or not? If s then that puts even more cow pie on the above story.

 

[oldjones]

What fairy tales you believe in! A land where a guy with no real pension goes into work one day and hears from his boss the the $70,000* that had been promised was going to vanish in the new contract, and he says, "Hooray!"

In real life, of course he get's pissed enough to do without a few week's pay if there's a hope of keeping that money. Who wouldn't?

And doesn't it just prove he was right to strike, when the City whose 'final offer' was absolutely no payout for the sickdays previously banked, turns out not to be final after all. Albeit the City's only offering part of the money they had promised to put by.

When the City said, "Final offer. Sign it or strike." just who was blackmailing who?

*No idea where you got—or made up—that number, or "300+ days". The amount's irrelevant; no one takes kindly to having their nestegg disappeared on them.

 

[oldjones]

…edit…Now I've seen 2 reports that the most a CUPE member can bank is 6 months. That goes against anything I've heard. So is there a cap or not? If s then that puts even more cow pie on the above story.

Better not to beieve 'everything you've heard' and look it up yourself. Maximum six months, which is far from generous severance, and amounts to the city having the foresight—which they apparently did not—to set aside (and bank and invest) less than a week's pay per year per worker. The one's who didn't book off sick that is.

 

[fuji]

The six day bank is NOT severance pay. The union workers get that in addition to the sick day bank.

The city's offer to the union also allows them to book off sick for SIX MONTHS a year. They just can't roll it over and collect it when they retire.

It is purely a cash issue, the unionista's view the sick day bank as a free savings plan, which it was NEVER meant to be.

 

[Mrbig1949]

Most plans work like this

The six day bank is NOT severance pay. The union workers get that in addition to the sick day bank.

The city's offer to the union also allows them to book off sick for SIX MONTHS a year. They just can't roll it over and collect it when they retire.

It is purely a cash issue, the unionista's view the sick day bank as a free savings plan, which it was NEVER meant to be.

The teachers' plan works the same way, 6 months is the max and of course that amount can be taxed but you are allowed to roll half of it into an RRSP so you don't pay the taxes all at once. It is a retirement gratuity reward for not calling in sick all the time. Of course in education all of management were once teachers so they get it as well. Little pressure to dump it when management gets the benefit. A teacher with enough days might see $40 000 before taxes CUPE workers a lot less.

 

[oldjones]

The six day bank is NOT severance pay. The union workers get that in addition to the sick day bank.

The city's offer to the union also allows them to book off sick for SIX MONTHS a year. They just can't roll it over and collect it when they retire.

It is purely a cash issue, the unionista's view the sick day bank as a free savings plan, which it was NEVER meant to be.

Agreed, it's all about the cash, which the city promised and contracted to pay, then reneged on in their 'final' bargaining position before the strike—in which all banked days disappeared, no matter if you were at the six month's max or had just a single day. Whether it was intended as a savings plan or not, it was one. Hence the term 'bank'.

I didn't say the former sickday payout WAS the severance pay—the contract, law and precedent define that—but it certainly WAS a payment AT severence, and at six months for say 40 years, not terribly generous. Perhaps you'd care to tell us what the union workers get in addition as severance on retirement?

The City's latest offer replaces the old sick days program with SHORT TERM DISABILITY which allows for up to sick months time off sick. Let us hope that better actuaries than the ones who calculated the cost-benefits of the old 18 days a year plan have costed this one.

 

[fuji]

Perhaps you'd care to tell us what the union workers get in addition as severance on retirement?

They get a pension, obviously. If the city tries to terminate them earlier than that... well it's somewhat academic because the job security these guys are provided makes it more or less impossible to terminate them unless they do something criminal.

If the city says there is no work for them, for example, they can displace anyone with lower seniority than they have and take that job, receiving their same current salary for the next several years.

You advance under this agreement based on how long you can avoid doing something criminal. Merit has got nothing to do with it.

The City's latest offer replaces the old sick days program with SHORT TERM DISABILITY which allows for up to sick months time off sick. Let us hope that better actuaries than the ones who calculated the cost-benefits of the old 18 days a year plan have costed this one.

That's the city's problem, but the city believes it will be substantially cheaper. From the union point of view they get six months of sick days if they need them, followed by long term disability if they're still sick.

So they have no worries whatsoever about losing income in the event that they get sick, for however long it takes to get better, if they ever get better.

 

[Rockslinger]

Why don't the union ads mention the 7 WEEKS VACATION and the INDEXED PENSION at age 55? These benefits are so far from economic reality that it appears unionists live in fantasyland.

 

[tboy]

What fairy tales you believe in! A land where a guy with no real pension goes into work one day and hears from his boss the the $70,000* that had been promised was going to vanish in the new contract, and he says, "Hooray!"

In real life, of course he get's pissed enough to do without a few week's pay if there's a hope of keeping that money. Who wouldn't?

And doesn't it just prove he was right to strike, when the City whose 'final offer' was absolutely no payout for the sickdays previously banked, turns out not to be final after all. Albeit the City's only offering part of the money they had promised to put by.

When the City said, "Final offer. Sign it or strike." just who was blackmailing who?

*No idea where you got—or made up—that number, or "300+ days". The amount's irrelevant; no one takes kindly to having their nestegg disappeared on them.

Nest egg? those are fricken SICK DAYS not an early retirement plan.....They are supposed to be applicable when a WORKER is ILL.....