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nfitz said:
The current Etobicoke contract was untendered?
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? I would like to see the rest of Toronto go to an open tender process.

Presumably Ford and his friends could wait until after the job seniority provisions expire to consider putting the garbage collection contract out for tender, but my guess is that will almost guarantee a garbage strike during Ford's reign. If that strike does happen though, the response is what everyone will be watching. I'd guess that city residents wouldn't be happy about it, but would tolerate it more if Ford could actually significant change the shape of the contracts, or else go to someone else altogether.
 
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The garbage union is nearly as powerful as the TTC's ATU.

You could put it out to tender, accept the tender, sign all the paperwork, and it would take a number of months for the new provider to set up and take the reigns.

Potentially, the municipal workers would walk out when it was tendered (seriously, what do they have to lose? Their jobs? Oh, right), and almost certainly would if a private tender was accepted. There would be a transition period gap there of at least four months, possibly more, where there would be no garbage collection. More, if the company has to find replacements for city guys that can't be rehired. It couldn't be expidited either as the private collectors (many of whom would be former city employees) won't cross picket lines.

That's assuming you get enough councillors to cross the picket line to ratify the privatization agreement. That itself would be a huge problem as there is a BIG ideological difference between crossing them to negotiate a new collective agreement and crossing them to lay off thousands of people and rehire them at lower salaries by a private company. None of the ex-millerites would do it, and I bet you'd find enough mushy middle and right wing councillors to void quorum.
 
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Potentially, the municipal workers would walk out when it was tendered (seriously, what do they have to lose? Their jobs? Oh, right), and almost certainly would if a private tender was accepted. There would be a transition period gap there of at least four months, possibly more, where there would be no garbage collection. More, if the company has to find replacements for city guys that can't be rehired. It couldn't be expidited either as the private collectors (many of whom would be former city employees) won't cross picket lines.

That's assuming you get enough councillors to cross the picket line to ratify the privatization agreement. That itself would be a huge problem as there is a BIG ideological difference between crossing them to negotiate a new collective agreement and crossing them to lay off thousands of people and rehire them at lower salaries by a private company. None of the ex-millerites would do it, and I bet you'd find enough mushy middle and right wing councillors to void quorum.
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All well presented and logical however almost every major city in North America has some how managed to do it.
 
spider said:
All well presented and logical however almost every major city in North America has some how managed to do it.
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Contracting out is a much bigger deal than it was a few decades ago. Over the last decades wages have eroded in the private sector, while mostly staying the same in the public sector. This both increases the potential savings of contracting out, but also increases the amount of salary current workers stand to lose. It's now higher stakes for everyone.

The important question is: does the government want slow down or speed up the erosion of working class wages? The decline of real wages and increasing income inequality is a growing problem in our society. Maintaining things like the fair wage policy and public control over city services helps serve as a bulwark against these trends.
 
SimonP said:
Contracting out is a much bigger deal than it was a few decades ago. Over the last decades wages have eroded in the private sector, while mostly staying the same in the public sector. This both increases the potential savings of contracting out, but also increases the amount of salary current workers stand to lose. It's now higher stakes for everyone.

The important question is: does the government want slow down or speed up the erosion of working class wages? The decline of real wages and increasing income inequality is a growing problem in our society. Maintaining things like the fair wage policy and public control over city services helps serve as a bulwark against these trends.
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Huh? In other words, we should tax private sector workers so that the "working class" in public sector can have wages higher than the market equilibrium? Furthermore, by denying private sector access to public works, we contribute to the erosion of private sector wages, but that's ok since they are not the "working class"?
 
archanfel said:
By denying private sector access to public works, we contribute to the erosion of private sector wages, but that's ok since they are not the "working class"?
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In the last decade Ontario has lost about 200,000 manufacturing jobs, and those that survived have seen their wages rolled back. Should the government be adding to this trend, or trying to counter it by maintaining stable employment and wages? Privatization is almost certain to mean lower wages and fewer total jobs in the long run. This will also hurt private sector employment. Public sector job cuts increase the supply of unemployed workers and thus decreases wages in the private sector.
 
Let's not get carried away here. This isn't about social decay etc, it's about contracting garbage to ensure workers are made accountable and a
message to the rest of the unions to shape up and enjoy their recession proof, well paying jobs.

They had a chance to work co-operatively, but unfortunately followed the militant direction of the union heads...

Sleep in the bed you make, Torontonians are tired of being held hostage by a small group.
 
SimonP said:
In the last decade Ontario has lost about 200,000 manufacturing jobs, and those that survived have seen their wages rolled back. Should the government be adding to this trend, or trying to counter it by maintaining stable employment and wages? Privatization is almost certain to mean lower wages and fewer total jobs in the long run. This will also hurt private sector employment. Public sector job cuts increase the supply of unemployed workers and thus decreases wages in the private sector.
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I am sorry, but how many manufacturing jobs is the public sector of the city of Toronto providing again?
 
I'm curious if anyone knows how many service providers there are that are capable of bidding on the city's contract? Waste collection doesn't come to mind when I think of competitive industries.
I would hope that when time comes for the first renewal, all bidders don't "coincidentally" start the bidding much higher than when the city had it's own workers to fall back on. Remember, when contracting out, you are not just paying the workers wages, but also the managers and executives.
 
archanfel said:
I am sorry, but how many manufacturing jobs is the public sector of the city of Toronto providing again?
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None, but jobs like garbage collector and TTC driver match the demographics of your average manufacturing job and thus draw from the same pool of workers.
 
SimonP said:
None, but jobs like garbage collector and TTC driver match the demographics of your average manufacturing job and thus draw from the same pool of workers.
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No, it doesn't. These are service jobs, not manufacturing jobs. The big difference is that manufacturing worker pool includes foreign workers, whereas service jobs (with some exceptions) are very hard to out source. Unless they invent remotely controlled ED-209 soon, it's pretty hard for a Chinese police to stop a fight on a Toronto street.

Unless your argument is that higher paid government workers will stimulate consumption, there's little point of artificially inflate worker wages. These jobs are staying in Canada no matter what. You are simply shutting out private sector workers. Moreover, you are doing that using the tax money from the very same private sector workers.
 
archanfel said:
No, it doesn't. These are service jobs, not manufacturing jobs. The big difference is that manufacturing worker pool includes foreign workers, whereas service jobs (with some exceptions) are very hard to out source. Unless they invent remotely controlled ED-209 soon, it's pretty hard for a Chinese police to stop a fight on a Toronto street.

Unless your argument is that higher paid government workers will stimulate consumption, there's little point of artificially inflate worker wages. These jobs are staying in Canada no matter what. You are simply shutting out private sector workers. Moreover, you are doing that using the tax money from the very same private sector workers.
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You're wrong, unionization drives up the wages of workers in the entire sector. It has spillover benefits for everyone. And you're assumption that unionized wages are "artificially inflated" has no basis whatsoever. If anything non-unionized wages are artificially depressed. They've been stagnate for decades while productivity and management pay has skyrocketed.
 
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