[URBAN NOTE] On the aftermath of the strike

[rfmcdonald]

While the garbage crews go around Toronto cleaning up what was threatening to be a nasty mess, Torontonians are looking for people to blame. Joe Friesen writes in the Globe and Mail that Mayor David Miller looks to be in a very tenuous position thanks to the way he alienated his labour supporters and angered the right wing on city council.

At the outset his main target was the union's bankable sick days, which can be cashed in for up to six months pay at retirement, and by the end those sick days were still there. Garbage piled up in city parks, pools were closed and swimming classes cancelled. The middle class was put out and angry, while union brass chafed at the mayor's bargaining strategy. In particular, Mr. Miller's decision to take the city's offer public on July 10 enraged union leaders. Politicians rarely go over the heads of union negotiators to appeal directly to workers and the public. Any politician knows better than to alienate the base, and from the early days in 2003 when his support was in the single digits, Mr. Miller's centrist coalition has been backed by big labour. This week the unions were tripping over themselves to say they didn't know whether they could endorse him in 2010, throwing open the possibility they might sit out the next election as they did when Bob Rae was trounced in 1995. [. . .] "We're in a new political moment where the traditional alliance between the mayor's office and organized labour has been severely strained," said city councillor Joe Mihevc, an erstwhile Miller ally who this week refused to endorse the mayor's re-election. "Toronto is 33-per-cent unionized. That's his core constituency....Winning that constituency back, establishing good relations, is something I think is absolutely imperative for him." Mr. Miller doesn't accept donations from unions or corporations, so it's not the money that he'll miss. Unions have provided him with a motivated, organized group of campaign workers who put up signs, canvass support and get their candidates' voters to the polls on election day.

It isn't as if the unions are more popular, as John Spears writes in the Toronto Star, mind.

Striking Toronto civic workers continued to rack up sick leave and vacation credits as they walked picket lines during the 39-day work stoppage, according to back-to-work protocols signed by the city and its union locals. [. . .] Miller had said that trimming benefit costs was one of the city's objectives in this round of bargaining. One of his targets was the sick leave bank, which allows workers to accumulate 18 days of sick time each year. If it's not used, the time can be banked, and workers get a cash payout of up to 120 days when they leave or retire. About 18,000 of the 30,000 striking workers can bank sick time. (Many seasonal and part-time workers don't qualify for sick pay.) In the settlement that ended the strike, workers covered by the current sick leave plan can remain in it and continue to bank unused time. New hires will be covered by a short-term disability plan that doesn't allow them to bank time

Who's going to be the first to fall? Watch this space.