A Union Strikes

A Union Strikes

Nick operated a restaurant and takeout business next to a Toronto subway station. In business 10 years, Nick was doing well. He had a regular clientele and had 5 full-time and 15 part-time staff. Nick believed in paying his employees a decent salary which was above the hospitality industry average.

In the summer of 2009, the City of Toronto inside and outside workers went on strike. The workers were represented by a union, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE). Nick knew that the workers had a right to picket their workplaces. The strike was a major inconvenience for Nick as the garbage from his business was no longer picked up. Nick’s garbage was mostly food leftovers and it soon began to rot in the summer heat when he left it behind his restaurant. The City had established several sites where citizens could drop off their garbage but these sites were some distance away from Nick’s business so he had to rent a truck to use to haul away his garbage. A bigger problem arose when his truck got to the drop-off site. There were CUPE picketers at the site and they delayed every person entering which meant the drop-off took several hours to complete. The pickets were illegally stopping every vehicle for at least 15 minutes and the City was doing nothing about it. The stench of rotting food at the site was almost unbearable and was starting to attract rats and mice.

As the strike went on, Nick’s resentment for the CUPE workers grew. The garbage workers were paid well, averaging $25/hour and they also had generous benefits. Also, the workers had the right of permanent employment and the union collective agreement imposed strict work rules that increased the cost of garbage collection. Nick had read in the newspaper that the cost of garbage collection in Toronto was $317/dwelling and that was 63% higher than the average Canadian city.

Nick was also not impressed by the City politicians. They agreed to these generous employee contracts simply to maintain labour peace. They seemed unwilling to stand up to the unions. In the last 5 years, City employee salaries had increased 32%. Taxes had increased along with salaries. The union garbage workers had a monopoly on garbage collection in the city and knew they could hold the City to ransom. Nick’s customers all complained about the strike and the fact that the garbage workers were already very well paid.

Nick got to thinking about what could be done to reduce the imbalance in level of influence that some unions had in society. Two solutions were evident; declare garbage collection an essential service, and, introduce competition into the garbage collection business. If garbage collection was made an essential service, the garbage workers would lose the right to strike. It was unlikely City politicians could achieve this without a prolonged strike.

The media, along with Nick’s customers, had talked about contracting out the collection of garbage as other Ontario cities had done. The Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation (CTF) advocated for the privatization of waste management and the introduction of competition in awarding garbage collection contracts. The CTF estimated that when the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba had done this, they saved about $5.7 million/year.