July 18, 2009, 9 e-mail

B. L. wrote:

I have looked for the law that allows pickets to detain vehicles for 30 mins and have been unable to find it anywhere. Can someone provide a link or a source for this?

J. H. wrote:

Where to begin?

Ok, the 30 minute wait time legally allowed to picketers is a well known figure in union circles, it's just that most unions don't choose to make people wait that long. A police officer told a driver who had just run at some picketers at city hall (where many picketers have been hit or nearly hit at the underground parking, including two staff people from Dufferin Grove hit) that they had the legal right to detain drivers for 30 minutes each. It is the union's discretion to lower that time, but not raise it.

If you want to get some information, you can always go to the picket lines and ask the workers about the issues. Here are a few things from the picket lines:

They don't want to be on strike (getting yelled at every day and sometimes attacked, getting hit or nearly hit by cars, lost wages, unpaid bills, mortgages etc). The city's offer included 200 concessions, or take-aways, they wanted the union to acquiesce to, and no pay increase. This was the only offer the city was willing to consider, no matter how the union negotiators danced and sang, for 8 months unchanged. Is this bargaining in bad faith? Some would say so. Though I wouldn't really use the word bargaining, since that word implies some kind of real discussion and movement.

Sometimes management negotiators need the push of a labour dipute to justify themselves to their bosses for giving in on issues... even when they themselves agree with the union.

The union saw some movement within the first three weeks of the strike, it was the same 200 concessions unchanged, and a zero percent increase the first year, and a point 1 percent increase the second. This is the time the union walked away from the table, and Mayor Miller announced to the media that the union was "bargaining in bad faith". The union said nothing to the media, or so it would seem. My partner spoke to Local 79 president Anne Dembinsky on the line, and she said she spoke to dozens of reporters but none of them put anything she had to say on tv or in the newspaper.

The most recent offer, you know, the "reasonable one" touted by the media, includes a pay increase (most of which happens in the 4th year and nothing in the first year) and all 200 concessions, with the addition of a moderate (some might say half-assed) attempt to deal with the retirement payouts lost to the sick day concession, which would see the city paying "pennies to the dollar" (Anne Dembinsky's phrase in Wednesday's letters to the editor in the Globe and Mail) to replace the payouts, which are reduced should you be retiring after 2010. As well as a Short Term Disability program which the union describes as "substandard". Many union people think the city is going to try to privatize some city services (which explains the concessions which will make it easier to sell), so the 4th year pay increases might never happen.

For those who think that privatization will save the city money, it does not. But that is a much larger debate.

What are the concessions? Well, as far as I know, they have not been released en masse due to the understanding that negotiations are supposed to be confidential (another convention tossed out by Miller); and I believe that most of them apply specifically to the multitude of different jobs done by city employees, so they would be mostly incomprehensible to people who don't understand the jobs.

There are a few that would see change happen in Dufferin Grove.

One is to do with Flexibility, as it is described. Workers could be sent from site to site at the discretion of city managers. So there would most likely be rotating staff at the park. I'm sure CELOS would find a way to get around that obstacle, but consider the other parks which are working to emulate the highly successful staffing models at Dufferin Grove and become truly effective communities promoting inclusive involvement of the local citizenry. Also consider the staff themselves. This would be a hardship to most of them. Nobody likes to have to shuffle their work-week, and going to a strange workplace at the whim of managers is highly stressful. It could well spell the doom of the culture we have helped grow into fruition at Dufferin Grove. Staff have been a huge part of that success.

Many of the staff have highly educated backgrounds with several PHds. Some are professional artists. Would the building and maintenance of the various cob structures and artwork be possible without the experience and professionalism of the staff? What about the ovens? Many of the staff have been here for years. That would all be gone.

Well I seem to have gone on for quite a bit.

Please, if you want to understand what's going on, and not rush to hasty judgement, consider looking for your information in other places than the usual media suspects. Raghu Krishnan has included in his posts several links to alternate media, which you might want to check out. Thank you, Raghu.

Many thanks to the clear-headed and rational voices on this list-serve that give me hope that this will not end in defeat for the people. It is a struggle, but most worthwhile things in life are.

ps you may want to filter your tap water if you're drinking it, water treatment workers are walking the line too.

M. W. wrote:

It isn't in the Labour relations act, it is precedence based law, thus open to interpretation.

I did read that it is considered illegal to delay entry on to "private" property unless you were delaying people to provide them with information. Once again, precedence based.

Under labour relations act the strike action being taken is entirely legal.

Thus, CUPE employees are exercising their legal right to strike on public property and providing information. They have legal precedence to hold people there.

As much as this strike is a huge pain in the butt to most residents (including myself) it is also demonstrates rights that we as a society have long fought for and are trying to spread throughout the world.

B. L. wrote:

Thanks for the reply. I have again looked all over for support for this 30 minute delay and have found nothing. Also found no mention of a different standard for public vs. private sector picketing.

R. K. wrote:

A.: Sorry it took all of three weeks for you to lose patience with City workers and their union. I look forward to reading your critical review of the City and corporate media's performance.

There is no doubt an interesting discussion to be had about trade- union tactics, but organizing negotiations and then a strike on behalf of thousands of workers spread out over a huge area in a number of very different job categories and workplaces is no easy matter. And to do so in the present economic and political climate further compounds the difficulties. While not always popular or pretty, withdrawing one's labour and ensuring that others do not perform that labour is the principal and often only leverage workers have over their employers and managers. There's nothing "old style" about this. Creative tactics have to supplement this normal and natural response to the unequal relations of power in our workplaces and society, not replace it.

As for strategy, I would be quite critical of the union leadership -- but for reasons diametrically opposed to those put forward by Andrew. The leadership of the municipal workers has actually been far too close to the Miller team. This has meant that it has neglected to do the kind of creative and independent long-term planning, organizing and campaigning that would have made it much easier to rally public support, build alliances and mobilize the membership -- to better resist the City's rollbacks during negotiations and, in the event, carry out a more effective (and shorter?) strike.

Instead, we now have quite a pathetic situation. The only thing that has shown itself to be definitely "old style" in this whole business is the naive reliance of some union leaders on elected officials and narrowly delimited collective bargaining. This approach has blown up in their faces. Miller and many councillors would probably not even have been elected (especially in 2003) were it not for the campaigning done by the labour movement, CUPE in particular. Now the same administration pays back the favour by demanding more than a 100 pages of contract rollbacks to the point of provoking a strike; and to my knowledge not a single "labour-friendly" councillor has criticized the City's hardline approach. It's a fiasco, and probably something of a turning point in the history of labour and left-wing politics in Toronto.

Miller and his team on council are adults. If they are defeated in 2010 because of some supposed "right-wing backlash" to the strike, they will have only themselves to blame. And if they do win again, it appears they have already decided to cater to more conservative segments of the elites, media and electorate -- and to increase their reliance on super-clever power politicking with various business lobbies and the provincial government. Yawn.

I just hope significant sections of the labour movement and its supporters won't be too discouraged by this latest turn of events; and that they will still have the time and energy for building a new kind of progressive and working-class politics in this city. We certainly have to set our sights beyond the miserable affair that the 2010 municipal election is already shaping up to be.

ps. by the way, 89 percent of Local 416 voting members gave their elected leadership a strike mandate in late May. The figure for Local 79 was 90 percent. I don't know what percentage of members voted, but CUPE is generally known as one of the more democratic and active unions out there. (And if it's a matter of voter participation, Miller was elected with only 22% of the vote in 2006. So...why again are such numbers useful in this discussion?)

K. F. wrote:

Very well said. You consistently say what I am thinking and feeling but express it much more articulately than I could. I have really appreciated all your well informed, thoughtful comments. You have a politics of deep integrity and understanding, rare in this day and age. I appreciate your insight about the dangers of the unions being too close with Miller. I think an important lesson to be learned here is that we can never take so called "progressive" governments for granted because the power of neo-liberalism is so intense and any "crisis" will be used as an opportunity to roll back the rights of workers. I guess for me this underlines the importance of worker education and unions investing more in non strike times to build a culture of solidarity and an understanding of the historical and current importance of unions.

I know that I will definitely be pulling Naomi Klein's book "the Shock Doctrine" off my shelf and giving it a long overdue read. I encourage all the others who have chimed in on this list to do the same.

A. W. wrote:

hi there, i was there around 12 or 1pm yesterday. city tv ctv were there. many angry residents. and 2 of our favourite zamboni drivers. the place was filling up FAST. I bet it will be closed in no time flat.

maybe a celos bbq on friday night if there it isn't closed by then?

M. M. wrote:

I was there this morning. There weren't any protestors but there was a steady stream of people leaving garbage. One of the residents on Cambpell told me they had a candlelight vigil last night, but there weren't a lot of people. There's going to be a neighbourhood 'strategy meeting' in the park at 2pm on Sunday.

I was also there yesterday at 5:30. There were some protesters but not a lot. CityTV, Global and CFRB were there. I heard some people including the two organizers, Jack Fava and Virginia Novak, saying that Campbell was picked instead of Dufferin because of Jutta. I asked Virginia about that. She said that's the rumour that's going around. She said the City didn't put the dump at Dufferin because of the community garden there. That remark was interesting because she and Jack had organized the opposition to the community garden at Erwin Krickhahn.

Jack turned it into a compliment. He said Campbell Park needs a spokesman like Jutta to stick up for it, though I'm not sure how sincere he was, because in the past he's posted derogatory comments about the "bio-toilet crowd" at Dufferin. Joe Silva of the Toronto Eagles said when Campbell is full they should start dumping garbage at Jutta's house. I can't decide if he was being silly or nasty.

Himy Syed from the Friends of Christie Pits said the City was afraid the Friends of Dufferin Grove would bring out 200-300 people to protest a dump at Dufferin. I said the Friends of Dufferin Grove is a mailing list not an organization. We got into a discussion about the reality of Dufferin Grove versus the perception.

A. W. wrote:

Interesting...

Adding to the list of strange compliments: the zamboni drivers who were there from 416 (neither were the really difficult ones) both know very well that Jutta and freinds of dufferin grove are quite involved with Campbell as an Ice rink. They said to me "finally you are here, and where is Jutta? she'll get this shut down."

Anyways, for your meeting tomorrow, i think that protest things just grow and often need help from nearby neighborhoods and so forth including maybe the Davenport Perth community centre The Stop, friends of Dufferin Grove etc. Note that Trinity Bellwoods is one of the largest parks in downtown and it hasn't been opened for trash yet either.

Also in the east end of town where I live there are no garbage dumps in the Beaches, Riverdale, Leslieville. Last strike the Forest Hill park called Well's Hill was a dump immediately and isn't this year. And in west end Toronto High Park and Roncesvalles have no dump (except the huge one at Sunnyside).

To me it seems true that there are some very ill chosen garbage sites (sunnyside, christie, campbell) and some semi intelligent sites (Taylor Creek Park, Cherry Beach, commissioners). And some mid range (Ted reeve).

Incidentally I spoke with some Parks and Rec management folks who said they are starting to call in sick with doctors notes, (they got to keep their sick days frozen to use up or to cash them out whenever in their career at full value), they are exhausted with working overtime changing garbage cans in parks and cleaning toilets where they are open. Another hopeful manager said that Outdoor Recreation programming could restart in 4 days at maximum. I said, unless a lot of you are calling in sick, the strike isn't ending too soon.