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February 25, 2011 - No. 27

Attacks on Toronto Public Sector Workers

Attempt to Give Free Rein to the
Wrecking of Public Services


Attacks on Toronto Public Sector Workers
Attempt to Give Free Rein to the Wrecking of Public Services - Pierre Chénier

Letters to Toronto Newspapers
Ideology Offers Simplistic Solutions on Waste Pickup
An Attack on One Is an Attack on All
Privatizing Garbage Pickup Won't Save Money

Study
Inside the Labour Market Downturn: October 2008 to October 2010 - Statistics Canada

Greece
Continued Mass Actions to Oppose Anti-Social Austerity Measures


Attacks on Toronto Public Sector Workers

Attempt to Give Free Rein to the
Wrecking of Public Services

The City of Toronto under recently elected Mayor Rob Ford and his brother in crime City Councillor Doug Ford, is spearheading an anti-worker, anti-social campaign to crush the Toronto city workers and their unions in order to give monopoly right free rein. A massive transfer of social wealth from the public sector to private interests is being engineered. No secret is being made that the key to achieving this aim is to crush the Toronto city workers' struggle for working conditions that are commensurate with the services they provide. The monopoly media, the C.D. Howe Institute, various city councillors, professors and so-called political consultants have jumped on the bandwagon to promote total war against Toronto city workers whose only crime is to want security and peace of mind to provide public services which are critical for the functioning of a modern city like Toronto. The war-cry of the anti-worker, anti-social warriors is to end the "privileged life" of city workers. Two contingents of city workers are being attacked with particular venom: the outside workers who do trash collection and the workers of the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC).

Proposal to Privatize Garbage Pickup

The proposal to privatize garbage pickup is an attempt to destroy public services. Let us recall first that on February 7, the City of Toronto provided notice to the Toronto Civic Employees' Union (TCEU), who are part of Local 416 of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), of its intention to recommend a competitive bid process for three areas of work currently carried out by these workers. These are the residential curb-side collection west of Yonge Street to the Etobicoke border, and an increase in privatized city-wide litter vacuum operations and parks litter/recycling collection within city parks throughout the city. In addition, the city notified the union of its intention to issue a request for quotes for contingency collection services to be provided anywhere across the city, as required (i.e., to act as scabs during a strike). The city's plan is to present a report on the contracting out of these service operations to the municipal government's Public Works and Infrastructure Committee meeting on April 26 and to have the report adopted at the May 17-18 City Council meeting.

It must be remembered that CUPE Local 416's collective agreement expires December 31 of this year and the city is hurrying to put facts on the ground to undermine the collective bargaining process. Under the current collective agreement, any permanent city worker who loses his job to subcontracting has to be redeployed elsewhere in the system with no loss of wages, benefits or seniority for at least 30 months. However, the first round of this latest drive to privatize will layoff 300 part-time outside workers involved in trash collection in the area west of Yonge Street to the border of Etobicoke, where curb-side garbage collection is already privatized.

Proposal to Declare the TTC an Essential Service

As concerns the TTC workers, Mayor Ford is advocating that the TTC be declared an essential service so as to deprive the transit workers of their right to strike. Mayor Ford is fully supported by the McGuinty provincial government, which on February 22, tabled a bill to ban strikes and lockouts by TTC workers as he requested. Premier Dalton McGuinty stated to reporters, "We have received a proposal from Toronto city council. We have listened to them. We have talked to representatives of the workers as well and of course we've heard from many Torontonians. Whatever we do, it's all about helping the people of Toronto." It therefore comes as no surprise that the tabling of Bill 150, the Toronto Transit Commission Labour Disputes Resolution Act, 2011 comes at the same time that the monopoly media are reporting that Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, with the backing of the Ontario government, wants to move faster to privatize the TTC.

Main Ideological Components of this Anti-Worker, Anti-Social Offensive

To justify the imposition of this latest round of privatization and of all future privatizations as well, the proponents of these anti-worker, anti-social measures make no bones about the fact that they want to privatize "anything that isn't nailed down."

Their nonsense includes the following:

- That the Mayor received a clear mandate to privatize. Ford claims that he openly ran on the theme of privatization of garbage collection in the October 2010 Toronto municipal election and the electors gave him a landslide majority.

- The Toronto city workers have only themselves to blame for the election of Ford and what is going to happen to them now because they held the city hostage with their garbage strike in the summer of 2009. It is the workers who paved the way for Ford's election to the position of Mayor.

In this way, the most self-serving arguments are put forward to divert from the substantive issue of the destruction of public services through privatization, where the motive is profit for private interests, not to provide public sanitation with a guarantee or uphold the public right to modern public services on the basis of a publicly controlled and adjudicated system. Thus the anti-worker, anti-social warriors seek to divide the people of Toronto into two camps, namely that you are either "for your city" or you are "against your city." If you support the Mayor you are "for your city"; if you are against the Mayor you are an enemy of your city and if not of "your city" then of everyone else's city. Either way, you don't count. Nay more, if you stand in the Mayor's way, you deserve to be squashed.

To shore up this self-serving nonsense, claptrap interpretations of the "clear mandate" that Ford allegedly received to privatize are used to raise the question of whose side city councillors are on. The view is presented that when Ford's predecessor Mayor David Miller was in office the Mayor and "left-wing councillors" were not on "the side of the city" but "on the side of the unions." Now, with Ford's election, the Mayor and the city councillors who agree with Ford are "on the side of the city" and the "left wing councillors" must not prevent Mayor Ford from implementing his mandate by siding with the unions. Proof of inimical activity is that "left-wing councillors" are attending the meetings of CUPE Local 416 which is preparing to fight the privatization.

From this it is supposed to follow that besides other things, labour and the "left-wing" are waging a losing battle because most Canadian cities contract out their trash collection and in Toronto itself the city is privatizing about 50 per cent of its solid waste management.

This anti-social, anti-worker offensive is based on the big lie that privatization will produce savings for the city because contracting out trash collection services is cheaper for the city than if it provides the service itself. A pseudo-scientific study by the C.D. Howe Institute is used to corroborate this lie. The study says that by contracting out garbage collection, the city will save $48 million a year. Given the enormity of the lie, during the municipal election Ford had to back-track from this and said the savings would be in the $20 million range. This equally wild estimate has now been reduced to about $8 million.

Undermined by their own self-serving use of fabricated figures these forces also resort to saying that in any case, the figures do not matter very much. According to them, the issue is to go all out to privatize waste disposal, from the collection to the landfill operations, either because this is what people want or because it is the right thing to do. The lie then takes the form of saying that only when the whole operation is privatized will the city realize the "savings."

Another stated aim of privatization of trash collection is to prevent a city-wide disruption of the service by a strike. Thus, not only must the unions' ability to deploy the strength of their numbers and organization to bargain effectively be smashed, but the contracts with private contractors must allow for the maximum initiative of the private sector to "be flexible" in collecting and disposing of the waste. The contracts should merely "establish parameters," for example, how many times a week the garbage is to be collected. Within this parameter private companies awarded the contracts must be allowed maximum flexibility in how and when they collect and dispose of the garbage.

Self-Serving Logic of the Anti-Worker, Anti-Social Forces

The anti-worker, anti-social warriors are exuberant that privatization of garbage collection in Toronto is a step towards the privatization of all garbage collection services in all the cities of Canada, and, in fact, towards the privatization of all municipal services. The main point in their enthusiasm is that privatization is integrally linked with an overhaul of all the labour relations governing city workers across the country.

To show how bankrupt these anti-worker, anti-social warriors are, they actually claim their campaign is "anti-monopoly." They argue that what stands in the way of the all-out privatization of garbage collection and city services is the monopoly that the Toronto city unions have on the jobs that are provided by the city. It is this monopoly that has to be broken, they say.

The main instrument of this "monopoly," they say, is the job security provision of the outside workers according to which any permanent worker who loses his position to subcontracting must be redeployed somewhere else in the system at comparative wages and working conditions. The self-serving anti-worker, anti-social warriors have dubbed this "jobs for life." The suggestion is that it is totally ridiculous to even think that workers should have "jobs for life." The problem with their derision is that is what workers are precisely fighting for -- job security so that they can live and raise their families in peace and be productive members of a productive society. Nobody wants anarchy and chaos in lieu of economic security, and the anti-worker, anti-social warriors are totally ridiculous to suggest that privatization provides prosperity or security for anyone except the monopolies providing the cheap labour and cutting back services to the maximum to keep more money for their sorry selves. Of course, they accuse others of being "ideological" while they are just "practical."

Self-serving arguments include:

- The entire world opposes monopolies. Why would Toronto city workers still enjoy their monopoly on jobs?

- The conception of "jobs for life" is no longer applicable because of the need to overcome the economic crisis. It is absurd to think that while nobody else enjoys "jobs for life," Toronto city workers should have such a "privilege."

- Privatization does not mean that Toronto city workers will necessarily lose their jobs. On the contrary, from now on, they are going to have to "prove that they are good at what they do" and "deserve the job" and are not loafing around on the tax-payers' dime. And this is going to be decided by their new private employers. Workers can also keep some of these jobs by becoming contractors themselves. They can submit tenders and bid for the contracts like anybody else (by undercutting everyone else's price). Then it is up to them as contractors to decide what wages and working conditions they can afford to give themselves and their employees.

- For this to function, they say that besides the "jobs for life," the Toronto city policy called Fair Wage Policy also must go. This policy requires that employees of firms doing contract work for the City receive prevailing union wages and benefits. The self-serving logic is that unless "jobs for life" and the "Fair Wage Policy" are eliminated, privatization will not bring the desired results.

- With privatization, wages and working conditions are set by the markets and are therefore "good." If wages cannot be set by "the market" then it makes no sense to privatize. Therefore the unions must agree that the wages be set by "the market."

- The city must be "transparent" about its intention to remove "jobs for life" and the "Fair Wage Policy," which means it must openly hire strike breaking garbage collection contractors in advance, force a strike if need be to crush the city workers and make an example of them for the other city workers in Toronto and for city workers across the country.

Previous negotiations under Mayors Lastman and Miller were lost opportunities in terms of crushing the workers and going for all-out privatization. They either caved in to the power of the unions (Lastman) or were on the side of the unions and not of the city (Miller). Now, with the Ford team, there is an "opportunity to get the job done."

Ford's dream for Toronto is not of a city taking responsibility for taxpayers' money as he pretends, but of a magnet for competing private empires grabbing the city's resources and lowering all working and living conditions for their own narrow interests. Most importantly, the attempt to generate hysteria with the claim that it is the workers who are driving the city to financial collapse is also to cover up that both the federal and provincial governments are reneging on their responsibilities to finance Canadian cities thereby putting them into an untenable position. Because of his anti-worker, anti-social stand which lets the federal governments off the hook, Mayor Ford's electoral campaign was fully backed by the Harper Conservatives while the campaign of his opponent Smitherman was fully backed by the Ontario Liberals who are now nonetheless supporting Ford.

The attacks on the Toronto city workers are tangled in the web of privatization and wrecking of public services at both the provincial and federal levels of government and show that this is not a local Toronto affair but concerns Canadians and their public services nation-wide. It is a fundamental matter of whether Canadians will force governments to uphold public right and a civil society based on the recognition that this is what governments are presumably mandated to do, or whether the very conception of a civil society is ended and mafia governments which carry out the behest of the monopolies will be permitted to rule the roost, cause anarchy and chaos and then blame the people for the result.

More than ever the time to stand up for public right against monopoly right is now.

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Letters to Toronto Newspapers

Ideology Offers Simplistic Solutions on Waste Pickup

Simple answers rarely, if ever, satisfy complex questions. The idea of contracting out Toronto's solid waste collection presents complex questions.

Mayor Rob Ford's announcement that he intends to begin selling off our city's solid waste collection to private, for-profit operators clearly demonstrates his preference for sloganeering and crass attacks over real solutions for the real problems Toronto faces.

Garbage and recycling are two critical public services, two of the most effective examples of the tremendous benefit and advantages of delivering services under direct community control.

Under public delivery of the collection service, Toronto has one of the highest diversion rates in the country. Torontonians enjoy many green initiatives and our high diversion rates because this is a public service.

This vital public service is far less expensive in Toronto than in neighbouring communities that use private collection. In 2009, the City of Toronto spent an average of $72.22 per tonne for solid waste collected. Durham Region, with mostly private collection, paid $85.74, while in Halton Region, where all collection is private, residents paid $86.79. Peel Region paid $106.79 per tonne and Vaughan paid a whopping $168.40 per tonne -- both use private collectors.

If Toronto goes the route of our neighbours with private waste collection, the costs of waste pickup may increase here by 20 per cent, 48 per cent or 133 per cent -- or by an additional $6 million to $42 million per year.

Unsurprisingly, right-wing ideologues and the business lobby seize on garbage and recycling as an opportunity for cash-strapped communities to realize "big savings."

Picking up the trash is more than just a dirty, dangerous and labour-intensive task. Waste disposal is also vital to the community's well-being, protecting us from hazardous materials, vermin and the communicable diseases they can carry.

This is difficult, dangerous and often back-breaking work. As municipal employees, the men and women who perform this work do so with a clear mandate and commitment to the residents of the communities they serve. The same cannot be said of the owners of private waste management companies whose sole mandate and commitment is to make a profit.

The most recent Ontario Municipal Benchmarking Initiative report shows that for 2009 residents of Toronto paid 30 per cent less than the provincial average for waste collection.

Advocates of contracting out garbage and recycling continually fail to back their claims up with valid data.

Ford began contracting out discussions using a C.D. Howe Institute report that claims the city would save $49 million. Even he dropped that to $20 million during his campaign and now the city is claiming $8 millions in savings but isn't able to tell us where that figure came from. Nor has anyone yet seen the city's business case.

According to a city report, the effect of bringing York collections back in-house saved Toronto contract costs of $4 million annually. These savings were realized beginning in 2008. Why would we want to reverse that trend?

In Port Moody, B.C., solid waste collection came back in-house in 2008, following a failed 10-year experiment with private collection. The promised savings from contracting out never materialized, and the community had to dispatch crews to follow behind the private operator and fix its mistakes.

We can't stop vested interests from using questionable statistics to justify schemes designed to line their pockets. We can only hope Toronto City Council will make informed decisions about the services residents receive, and the manner in which they are delivered.

According to Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, Toronto taxes will not go down if garbage is privatized. He also said in a recent interview that Etobicoke's private collection is equal to, not better than, the publicly delivered service in the rest of the city.

Sadly, residents are going to be treated to politicking, empty promises and "facts" so watered down by ideological filters as to be meaningless.

That's not leadership. It is following an ideology that respects few, least of all Torontonians, who deserve far better.

(Toronto Star, February 14, 2011)

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An Attack on One Is an Attack on All

Re: Ideology offers simplistic solutions on waste pickup, Opinion Feb. 14

As CUPE 416 President Mark Ferguson maintains, further privatization of Toronto's garbage does not benefit the people. It will be one more step to handing over everything public attractive to the corporations salivating at the prospect.

The Ford regime's concern for generic "taxpayers" is an obvious fraud to cover up the assault on rights and interests of municipal employees and the other workers and poor forming the majority. It is typical "divide and rule" strategy mendaciously positing general benefit from depriving municipal workers of the modest security and benefits they now have, eliminating jobs with conditions of some dignity.

On the contrary, ravaging the livelihood of one group of workers exerts pressure on all the rest. The issue is not that those workers with modest levels of security thanks to past struggles should lose this to be in line with the insecurity of so many others. Rather, all, and in particular workers, who create the wealth and services of society, must acquire at least the modest security workers threatened by Ford's privatization have had.

Benefits of neo-liberal privatization in Toronto and elsewhere accrue to the very rich and their corporations. Governments and politicians at their service are handing to them the resources of society, wealth of state and what remains public, and degrading workers' livelihoods, the flip side of wealth concentration. The times call for our opposition to this disastrous course.

(Toronto Star, February 16, 2011)

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Privatizing Garbage Pickup Won't Save Money

There can be no mistake; the privatization of Toronto's waste collection is an ideological decision, plain and simple. The C.D. Howe study claiming savings through contracting-out is flawed and biased. The data used in its study has been engineered, stretched, massaged and bent through the complexities of econometrics, to reach preconceived results which neatly fit the anti-union point-of-view.

An unbiased look at the numbers shows Toronto's waste collection service is one of the most effective in Ontario. Ontario Municipal CAO's Benchmark Initiative shows the city of Toronto cost per tonne has consistently been below the provincial average, and below many cities which have already contracted-out their garbage collection.

There is no solid proof contracting out will lead to any long-term savings. In fact the privatization ideology will allow a private company to low-ball their way in only to hike their fees once entrenched.

(National Post, February 10, 2011)


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Study

Inside the Labour Market Downturn:
October 2008 to October 2010

In October 2008, employment peaked in Canada. During the following 12 months, employment declined by more than 400,000, but began to recover quickly in the subsequent year. January 2011 Labour Force Survey data indicate that employment took 27 months to fully recover its October 2008 level.

While employment has recovered, more people remain out of work than before the downturn. Between October 2008 and October 2010, the number of individuals without a job increased by 800,000. These include people who were classified as unemployed, as well as those who were not looking for a job and consequently were not considered participants in the labour force. [Total officially unemployed January, 2011 numbered at 1,449,600 -- Statscan.]

Several indicators of slack labour market demand (for example, the number of unemployed, long-term unemployment and involuntary part-time work) were still above their pre-downturn levels.

Unemployment

Between October 2008 and October 2010, the number of people classified as unemployed rose by 341,000 (+31%).

Between October 2008 and October 2010, the number of permanent layoffs rose by about 86,000 (+30%).

Other categories of unemployed workers also increased at a slower rate. For example, the number of "new entrants" (those with no previous work experience) and "re-entrants" (those who returned to the labour force after a period of non-participation) rose 33% during the most recent downturn.

Permanent layoffs accounted for [around] 30% of the increase in the unemployed population during the most recent downturn.

Long-Term Unemployment

Long-term unemployment is an indicator both of slack labour demand and its consequences for individuals. Just before the recent downturn, more than 80% of unemployed individuals had been without a job for 25 weeks or less, while less than 8% had been unemployed for at least one year.

Between October 2008 and October 2010, the number of unemployed people who had been without a job for at least one year almost doubled. Together with those who had been without a job for 26 to 51 weeks, these workers represented 23% of unemployed people in October 2010 compared with 15% in October 2008.

Non-Participants in the Labour Force

Between October 2008 and October 2010, the number of individuals aged 15 and over who were neither employed nor actively looking for work (the non-participants) increased by 458,000 (+5%).

Discouraged job seekers (those who give up looking for a job because they believe none is available) are frequently cited as a source of growth among non-participants in labour market downturns. However, the proportion of non-participants (less than 1%) is so small that it has little effect on the total.

Rather, the number of non-participants during the recent two-year period grew mainly as a result of an increase in the number of students. The number of students grew by nearly 250,000 (+17%) over the period. An increase in the student population is not necessarily indicative of a back-to-school movement among workers. It could also mean that current students did not participate in the labour market due to the slowdown in hiring.

The number of seniors aged at least 65 also contributed to the overall increase in the number of non-participants, a natural consequence of the aging population.

Involuntary Part-Time

There were 113,000 fewer full-time jobs in October 2010 than in October 2008.

In contrast, the number of part-time workers rose by more than 50,000, but that increase was not uniform across all categories of part timers.

Individuals who worked part time but would have liked to work full time (also called involuntary part timers) increased by 140,000 (+20%) over the period. Meanwhile, the number of individuals working part time on a voluntary basis declined by about 87,000.

The article "Inside the labour market downturn" is now available in the February 2011 online edition of Perspectives on Labour and Income, Vol. 23, no. 1 (75-001-X, free).

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Greece

Continued Mass Actions to Oppose Anti-Social Austerity Measures

On February 24, a 24 hour general strike in Greece shut down much of the country's infrastructure to oppose the so-called austerity measures being imposed by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. There were protest marches nation-wide, with an estimated 100,000 people participating in Athens, while 15,000 to 20,000 took part in the northern port city of Thessaloniki. Mass actions across Greece to oppose these anti-social measures have been taking place since last year.


Athens


Piraeus; Igoumenitsa

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