Murray Dobbin asks a lot of Toronto strikers
Murray Dobbin’s post on the Toronto municipal strike points out how much effort goes into making public sector workers unpopular. He’s big on the value of the public sector and here I agree with him.
But he asks a lot of union negotiators when he suggests they “spend a bit of time imagining how each contract provision might be used against them the next time they strike”.
He’s referencing (and validating) the oft-repeated, oft-misrepresented red flag of the sick leave ‘bank’ that City of Toronto outside workers get.
The locals are trying to avoid arguing the finer points of their several-hundred page long collective agreements in the media, so they’ve been pretty quiet about it.
But this is the age of the internet, so we don’t have to limit our understanding of the issue to the mostly useless coverage in the old school media.
And we have brains so we don’t have to be numbed or driven to despair by the mostly agent provocateur driven drivel on Twitter.
CUPE 416 puts their collective agreements on their website. The document in question is the City of Toronto Agreement. The article you’re looking for is Article 15 – Sick Pay Gratuity. Admittedly, so far, not so good.
Dobbin asks CUPE 416 negotiators to think of the public’s perception of this clause when negotiating the agreement. (He actually says ‘when signing’ but I’m assuming that’s because he’s never actually been part of bargaining a collective agreement other wise he’d know that when you go to sign the thing, it’s a bit too late to make changes.)
But first, let’s imagine how the union and its members perceive the clause. (I think the public perception of this clause is pretty well known by now.)
Say you’re a garbage collector. Someone who has been schlepping garbage from curb to truck – complete with broken glass, needles, rusty nails, rotting food and all.
You’ve been doing this day in day out for 25 years.
Your body aches, you smell of garbage for half your waking hours and you’re looking forward to retiring. When you retire, the only severance you will get will be this sick day buyout.
You’ve been around for 25 years so you remember the eight years when your union agreed to wage freezes and in return, agreed to take cash-able sick days in lieu.
If you never take a sick day in your entire career cleaning up after Torontonians, you will have, after 25 years, 450 sick days. Article 15 lets you cash out half of those sick days, up to a maximum of six months. That’s probably about 120 days’ pay – a maximum of 26 per cent of the sick days you could accumulate.
If you take that in cash, the government will take half of it in income tax. So most people, probably take the days in vacation and retire six months early (as per article 15.05).
And now the city wants to take that away?
Every time your back aches when you lift up your grandchild you will be angry. Every time someone sneers at you because you’re a garbage man you’ll be angry. Every time you think about what you could have done in your retirement with that little bit of cash, you’ll be angry because you’ll know you got screwed.
So that’s how city workers probably look at it. A few caveats:
I’m not even close to being privy to the Toronto – CUPE negotiations so I have no more information than Murray Dobbin or anyone else who can surf the internet.
I don’t know how many retiring City of Toronto outside workers actually avail themselves of this clause.
I don’t know how many days get cashed out. I think the city’s $250 million accountancy-inspired hyperbole – unfunded liability – is less meaningful to negotiations than the actual figure of what they pay out.
I do think using sick leave cash-outs as severance pay is a bit like using a chisel to turn a screw. But I also know that in bargaining, sometimes you need to do strange things to break an impasse. And everafter it can be really hard to fix things.
July 5th, 2009 at 12:00 am
The media are not the city inside-outside workers enemies here. Polls initially showed about 3 in 4 citizens against the trash haulers, but less combative on other workers, I recall. If it worsened further since, the right is not to blame. A greater enemy than the right-wing think-tankards was the leadership of the local that told picketers at the temp. dumps that harassing and venting at citizens as if they were scabs was a viable tactic. Epic PR fail. Most now see Miller as too soft, and favour contracting-out collection.
July 5th, 2009 at 12:00 am
The media are not the city inside-outside workers enemies here. Polls initially showed about 3 in 4 citizens against the trash haulers, but less combative on other workers, I recall. If it worsened further since, the right is not to blame. A greater enemy than the right-wing think-tankards was the leadership of the local that told picketers at the temp. dumps that harassing and venting at citizens as if they were scabs was a viable tactic. Epic PR fail. Most now see Miller as too soft, and favour contracting-out collection.
July 6th, 2009 at 12:00 am
What can I tell you? There's bad behaviour on both sides but people seem willing to forgive people who spit on picketers or hit them with their cars. Rude strikers on the other hand, are grist for a very big mill. It certainly tells me how disciplined we have to be even in the face of abusive residents.I know I started seeing hatemail and hate tweets days before the strike started and even messages complaining about line ups at the drop-off depots on the first Monday (when there isn't normally curbside pick up).I would say that some folk were certainly spoiling for a fight. Just follow #TOstrike on twitter and you'll see what I mean. Are they organized/members of the same political party? I don't know.
July 6th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Folks who're anti-union knee-jerks tend to have real hate-ons for public sector ones, and no picket-line politeness will win them over, tis true. But the close-down-the-mine style of the 'enthusiastic' picketers is a PR disaster. The city is not a private or public mine.My striking friend was at city hall and had to talk down a young woman on the line from blocking strangers who were not even going into city hall, just using an underground passage. Rude boys rule at trash dump lines, and though most other lines are polite, I suspect the other locals feel making a stink at the dumps is their best leverage. Pity.One rare good line tactic: taking trash bags out from car trunks before the drop area, then putting them on the sidewalk–forcing managers to carry it for 10 yards. Helping citizens while annoying the managers, fine. Insulting and harassing citizens, REALLY not; and to me it suggests a lack of self-discipline or worse. Citizen enmity weakens you.
July 6th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Yup. Absolutely. The 'we only have to win at the bargaining table' approach to running a strike doesn't work in situations like this.
July 6th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Folks who're anti-union knee-jerks tend to have real hate-ons for public sector ones, and no picket-line politeness will win them over, tis true. But the close-down-the-mine style of the 'enthusiastic' picketers is a PR disaster. The city is not a private or public mine.My striking friend was at city hall and had to talk down a young woman on the line from blocking strangers who were not even going into city hall, just using an underground passage. Rude boys rule at trash dump lines, and though most other lines are polite, I suspect the other locals feel making a stink at the dumps is their best leverage. Pity.One rare good line tactic: taking trash bags out from car trunks before the drop area, then putting them on the sidewalk–forcing managers to carry it for 10 yards. Helping citizens while annoying the managers, fine. Insulting and harassing citizens, REALLY not; and to me it suggests a lack of self-discipline or worse. Citizen enmity weakens you.
July 6th, 2009 at 12:00 am
What can I tell you? There's bad behaviour on both sides but people seem willing to forgive people who spit on picketers or hit them with their cars. Rude strikers on the other hand, are grist for a very big mill. It certainly tells me how disciplined we have to be even in the face of abusive residents.I know I started seeing hatemail and hate tweets days before the strike started and even messages complaining about line ups at the drop-off depots on the first Monday (when there isn't normally curbside pick up).I would say that some folk were certainly spoiling for a fight. Just follow #TOstrike on twitter and you'll see what I mean. Are they organized/members of the same political party? I don't know.
July 13th, 2009 at 7:16 am
In 1989/90 college faculty went on strike; one of the issues was the accumulated sick- leave bank. The arbitrator,M. Teplitsky (?) resolved the issue thus:
- faculty hired before a given date [1991?] were “grand- fathered”, no change to their sick leave plan
- faculty in this category could buy- out their sick leave at a reduced rate [75%] of their accumulated sick leave days
- faculty hired after a given date [1991?] would accumulate sick days, and could use them for illness; however, they would not be entitled to a cash payout when leaving the college.
The City of Toronto, and its workers, should consider this option; it has worked in the college system.