Media Condemn Mayor's Handling of Strike

• "The stark facts are the city endured a strike that ate up half a summer in service of stated bargaining goals. The city failed to achieve those goals.
  
  The mayor wears that failure with just over a year to go before the serious part of the 2010 mayoralty campaign starts."

Oh you thought I meant the WINDSOR media.

Oh how can you be so silly. I was talking about Toronto's! Our media would never have the nerve to be critical!

Why take Gord as an example, Please. He was just gushing about how Windsorites beat CUPE:

• "Now that the dust has settled and the wailing and gnashing of teeth has subsided, please stand and take a bow for doing your part to help Windsor win a historic, ground-shifting victory over forces determined to keep city taxpayers forever in chains...
  
  But perhaps our finest hour came last week when CUPE members, acknowledging the inevitable, that they couldn't make Windsorites blink, let alone submit, agreed to suck it up and return to work with a consolation-prize contract after 101 paycheque-squandering days on the picket line...
  
  But CUPE offered only confrontation and intimidation. Alienated by the union's bullying tactic, city residents eagerly embraced the clear, common-sense contractual message delivered by Francis and a majority of councillors. They understood what this fight was about and they took it on."

Fascinating that Eddie's name was only mentioned at the end. No mention in the quoted part about the Protocol fiasco that resulted in what I believe to be a premature settlement once the City negotiating team was unshackled. It is almost as if Eddie now wants no part of the strike since he failed in that too. Just add another one to his list of losses. No wonder we should "move forward."

I decided to take up Marty Beneteau up on his thought:

• "One online commentator accused The Star of polarizing the community, saying, "Why do I bother, this will never be submitted! I need to move to Toronto where the media is non-biased." Think CUPE got a smoother ride in T.O.? Posters to the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and CBC websites on the weekend were visceral in their attacks on the union."

The Toronto media were visceral in their attacks on the Toronto Mayor at strike end. They actually reported on the strike results and the real effect on the Toronto Mayor. What is fascinating as you read these articles is how similar the strike situations in Toronto and Windsor are. The big difference is that Torontonians do not have a fawning newspaper who acts, as the Star's Editor confirms, as messengers:

GLOBE AND MAIL

• "Is Miller really finished?
  Adam Radwanski
  
  The overwhelming consensus is that David Miller comes out of Toronto's strike settlement looking terrible. Marcus Gee sums it up nicely in this paper: "If this is what he calls winning, it is frightening to think what losing would look like." Even the Star's editorialists - generally sympathetic to the Mayor - are inclined to agree.
  
  No argument here, either. I didn't think some of the criticism of Miller during the strike was fair; it seemed hypocritical for people who'd spent years calling for him to stand up to the unions to complain about the inevitable work stoppage when he did. But at that point, it looked like he was prepared to hold firm until he'd achieved meaningful concessions. By folding instead, he validated all those complaints that he put the city through a pointless stand-off that his heart was never in to begin with.
  
  What I'm still less certain of is whether, as pretty well every opinion writer is suggesting, this embarrassment will prove the beginning of the end of his mayoralty.
  
  If there were a referendum on whether to keep him as mayor, he'd undoubtedly lose it.
  ***
  
  Update: Miller's performance at this afternoon's press conference has verged on the ridiculous. In fairness, he's had a long summer, and is probably underslept. But his attacks on other councillors for having the temerity to criticize the settlement are way over the top.
  
  To suggest it's unconscionable to consider forcing Torontonians to go without daycare and garbage collection and the joys of Centre Island doesn't really hold up when you've been the one asking Torontonians to spend half their summer doing just that. Nor is "appalling" to oppose a contract that doesn't meet the goals that you publicly set out earlier in the dispute.
  
  It's an ugly side of their mayor Torontonians are seeing today. Strong opposition or not, he's not helping his cause."

TORONTO STAR EDITORIAL

• Miller's tactics raise questions
  
  Times of crisis can build political reputations – or shatter them – depending on how well a leader rises to the challenge. As mayor, David Miller has confronted no crisis greater than the strike by 30,000 Toronto municipal workers, now in its 39th day. If not shattered, his reputation as an effective leader is certainly cracked.
  
  At the outset of this labour dispute Miller served notice that he was determined to end a costly and outdated "sick bank" system giving workers cash for up to 130 unused sick days on retirement. Yesterday he declared victory and repeatedly claimed that the tentative agreements reached Monday had "eliminated" the sick bank provision...
  
  Pressed on this matter yesterday, Miller finally conceded it is more accurate to say the sick bank is being phased out rather than eliminated now. In truth, it is being phased out in slow motion. While that is a step forward, some Torontonians may see it as scant reward for enduring a strike that lasted almost six weeks, especially after Miller made progress on this issue a defining measure of his success.
  
  Even before the walkout, Miller didn't adequately prepare Torontonians for the struggle to come. There was never a real sense of looming crisis until the crisis actually hit. Miller's warnings about hard times facing the city, and pleas that "the world has changed," were contradicted by his defence of a 2.4 per cent, business-as-usual, pay raise pocketed by city councillors. Having made that mistake earlier in the year, Miller compounded it during the strike by refusing to support a determined effort by some councillors to roll back the salary hike.
  
  These missteps, and others, are grounds for Torontonians to wonder if Miller is the best person to lead this city when unionized workers are in a position to strike again three years from now.

GLOBE AND MAIL

• Did Miller give up too much to get a deal?
  Marcus Gee, Columnist
  Toronto's mayor puts a brave face on what may be only a partial victory
  
  Mayor David Miller is trying gamely to present his strike-ending deal with the unions as a big win for the city. If this is what he calls winning, it is frightening to think what losing would look like.
  
  The big issue in the strike was sick leave, specifically the city's attempt to take away workers' right to bank their unused sick leave and cash it in when they retire. The mayor boasts that the sick bank has been “eliminated,” a verb he used several times Wednesday.
  
  Eliminated, that is, for notional people who don't yet work for the city...
  
  In short, they get to keep this juicy treat – almost unheard of in the private sector and rarer and rarer in the public – exactly as is. As union leaders put it in a memo to members, “there will be no changes or reductions in your entitlements” under the sick plan...
  
  The city's new wage offer is better, too. Instead of a 7.2 per cent raise over four years, workers will get about 6 per cent over three – not bad at a time when many workers are seeing their wages frozen.
  
  In spite of it all, Mr. Miller says Torontonians should feel “very pleased” about the settlement. It is hard to fathom why.
  
  He says that the sick-leave deal is far better than the city would have achieved if an arbitrator had come in to end the dispute. True, but there was no sign of any arbitrator. The provincial government said all along it had no plans to order city employees back to work...
  
  Mr. Miller gives a final reason for settling with the unions on such unfavourable terms: to get the workers back on the job. “These people were on strike for five weeks, and we needed to find a way to reach an agreement,” he said.
  
  This was the weirdest one of all. The strike was a pain, but the city was functioning reasonably well, the unions' cause was unpopular and there was no pressure on the mayor from either citizens or city council to make a deal at any cost. To the contrary, councillors said they were being peppered with calls from residents telling the city to hang tough.
  
  Now those people feel betrayed, and with good reason. People were prepared to stand behind him as long as they thought he was standing up for them by holding the line on city costs and making sure an unrealistic perk for city workers was eliminated. It hasn't been. The mayor will pay a price.

INSIDE TORONTO

• Mayor's deal with city workers wasn't so sweet
  
  If anyone were thinking they might like to be the next mayor of Toronto, there's scarcely been a better time to start planning an attack.
  
  The current mayor, David Miller, is in trouble.
  
  Indeed, as the summer city workers' strike of '09 winds to a probable close, Miller has never been weaker.
  
  He's steered Toronto through a strike that lasted nearly six weeks, effectively shutting down the city for everyone from homeowners seeking building permits to children looking to enjoy a summer recreation program. And his promised outcome at the end of the ordeal - that the city would rid itself of a cumbersome and antiquated sick leave bank, and hold the line on union salary increases to help the city get through a punishing recession - never materialized.
  
  As much as Miller tried to pitch the five new tentative agreements as a win for the city this week, the details that emerged have shown it to be anything but.
  
  Miller tried to claim the sick bank, which lets employees accumulate 18 sick days a year and then take a payout based on any they haven't used, was eliminated.
  
  It was not. Employees with more than a decade at the city will be able to keep the sick bank and if they stay healthy, retire out with six months extra salary.
  
  Thirty years from now, it will be gone. But not until then.
  
  The salary package, meanwhile, sees a total compensation increase of 5.6 per cent over three years, with 1.75 per cent this year and two per cent next year. In most years, you'd call those modest pay increases. But, this year Miller and council set the bar at a very austere zero in 2009 and one per cent in 2010, when they set non-union compensation at that level.
  
  And Miller made, repeatedly, a powerful argument for that restraint: Toronto is going to be hit hard with growing social assistance costs as the recession takes its toll. The next two years at least will require austerity.
  
  The public bought that argument. The public understood it was important to deal with the sick bank. When on July 10 Miller unveiled the city's then-bargaining position, public reaction was supportive.
  
  Armed with widespread support, and facing two unions who had not managed to muster anything like that, it seemed as though the city couldn't lose.
  
  Yet all it took, in the end, was a threat by the smaller of the two unions, CUPE Local 416, to walk away from the bargaining table if a deal wasn't reached on the weekend.
  
  And the result?
  
  Capitulation.
  
  When Mark Ferguson, CUPE 416's president, said the city had removed all its concession demands from the table, he wasn't exaggerating. If there are any gains the city made in the short term, they are hidden in the shadow of those losses.
  
  Now, there may be good reason for capitulation. Miller maintained if the workers had been legislated back - a slim possibility now, but one he worried might expand along with H1N1 nervousness - the city would have done worse in arbitration. Better to come up with some kind of a negotiated phase-out now, rather than be saddled with a complete loss from a provincial arbitrator.
  
  That's all speculative, though. The stark facts are the city endured a strike that ate up half a summer in service of stated bargaining goals. The city failed to achieve those goals.
  
  The mayor wears that failure with just over a year to go before the serious part of the 2010 mayoralty campaign starts.
  
  Not an enviable position.

No wonder that Eddie on CKLW does not want Councillors or others starting to mount a campaign against him now. He knows he would lose badly to anyone with credibility. Heck, the Chicken Suit would give him a good fight.