Also let's not forget for how many years we operated with a tax freeze even though inflation was still with us. We still haven't recovered from that.
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H
Hydrogen
Guest
Not only is dear Dalton insisting on higher taxes, and more taxes, for Toronto (now that he has given the city the power to do what he is afraid to do), he is now promising higher energy costs as well.
JasonParis
Moderator
We get it. You think municipal employees are grossly overpaid and that unions have a noose around Miller's neck. Fair enough, but why don't you ever address the following...
*That Toronto's workers aren't paid more than other comparable cities and that collective agreements at all levels of government have given their membership significant pay increases.
*Why anti-union Mel Lastman never succeeded in "taking on the unions."
*That Toronto has been in a fiscal straight-jacket since Harris' "Who Does What" task force downloaded provincially mandated services without providing municipalities the tools to pay for them.
*That since Harris, 75% of the operating costs of Ontario's transit agencies were dumped onto the cities who have no tools to pay for this, save increased fares and property taxes.
*That Toronto has consistently won awards for being an efficiently run city, despite its ongoing budget problems.
*That cities are where most of our wealth is generated and where the increasing majority of Canadians live, yet they are treated like confederation's black sheep.
This discussion is far more complex than a personal opinion about unions and wages.
H
Hydrogen
Guest
Twenty-one bucks an hour does not exactly allow you to buy a home, drive a car and have a rip-roaring time out on the town in downtown Toronto - not unless there are two people making twenty-one bucks an hour in the same household.
3cp1
New Member
I'm not saying that litter pickers are rich, but I am saying that they're making more than twice what they would be if they did similar work in the non-unionized private sector. And just imagine how high the cost of living would be if the minimum wage suddenly jumped to $21/hour plus 23% benefits. Just about everything you buy would be at least 50% more expensive, because companies control costs by paying low wages to low skilled labour. The city pays extremely generous wages and benefits to low skilled labour, thanks to the unions. I am sure there are plenty of people with university degrees who are making less than Toronto's low skill employees, who don't even require a high school diploma.
Admiral Beez
Superstar
That's because half our unversity graduates have near useless degrees in low demand fields. It's not the garbagemen's fault that most uni grads are not able to negotiate better salaries due to their near useless credentials. If the garbagemen are overpaid relative to the private sector for their education level, I fully blame the city for accepting their demands for said compensation.
Second, the garbagemen do a job that is far more essential than the vast majority of us. If I quit my job, some Canadian consumer products won't get exported to Malaysia. If the garbageman quits, many will become ill and/or die of disease. Ask yourself, what is the value to greater society of your vocation? Most, like myself will have to answer in the negative.
AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
From the Star:
No sympathy from 905
GTA politicians want 416ers to cut the drama and get financial house in order – like them
Jul 26, 2007 04:30 AM
Phinjo Gombu
Staff Reporter
Durham Region Chair Roger Anderson is finding it increasingly hard to be sympathetic to the City of Toronto's latest financial crisis.
"It's hard for me to criticize the City of Toronto or support the City of Toronto when the City of Toronto seriously thinks that the sun rises and sets in Toronto," Anderson said yesterday.
What's lost, he says, amid the noise and dramatic headlines over Toronto deficit horror stories is that many other GTA municipalities face similar problems yet quietly go about doing what is necessary to balance their budgets.
Usually it means making harsh choices between two things: cuts to services or property tax hikes, something 905 municipalities and regional councils have not been afraid to do in recent years.
"Toronto is in the same position as the rest of us," said Anderson, referring to the financial problems posed by downloading of many services to municipalities by former premier Mike Harris.
"We deal with it through good management of our services and very unfortunately by raising property taxes," he said.
Toronto, which has kept tax increases relatively small, has typically waited for a bailout by the province, a luxury not afforded to other GTA municipalities.
Like Anderson, long-time Peel Region Chair Emil Kolb can only dream about the aid Toronto has received from the province. As they see it, that's part of the problem.
"If I had a shortfall of 500-and-some million dollars, I wouldn't present that to council," said Kolb flatly, adding his council would never approve a budget unless they could pay for it.
Toronto's cash crunch – a shortfall of $575 million is expected in next year's budget – was supposed to have been fixed in part with taxes on house purchases and vehicle registrations, but city councillors deferred the decision on those taxes until October, in a 23-22 vote.
News that Premier Dalton McGuinty has no intention of bailing out Toronto this time has heightened the sense of crisis in Toronto, with possible solutions including mothballing the Sheppard subway line and closing libraries on Sundays.
"I don't see how they can do it without raising residential property taxes," Kolb said of Toronto's problems.
Whitby Mayor Pat Perkins, who has been watching Toronto's budget contortions, scoffs at Miller's proposed solutions based on new taxing powers granted by the province.
"This is going toward the ridiculous," Perkins said just before the council took its deferral vote. "They've got to get control of their own house and start balancing their own budget."
_________________________________________________________________
Let's start by dumping the poor people from 905 who are living in 416 where they belong?
AoD
No sympathy from 905
GTA politicians want 416ers to cut the drama and get financial house in order – like them
Jul 26, 2007 04:30 AM
Phinjo Gombu
Staff Reporter
Durham Region Chair Roger Anderson is finding it increasingly hard to be sympathetic to the City of Toronto's latest financial crisis.
"It's hard for me to criticize the City of Toronto or support the City of Toronto when the City of Toronto seriously thinks that the sun rises and sets in Toronto," Anderson said yesterday.
What's lost, he says, amid the noise and dramatic headlines over Toronto deficit horror stories is that many other GTA municipalities face similar problems yet quietly go about doing what is necessary to balance their budgets.
Usually it means making harsh choices between two things: cuts to services or property tax hikes, something 905 municipalities and regional councils have not been afraid to do in recent years.
"Toronto is in the same position as the rest of us," said Anderson, referring to the financial problems posed by downloading of many services to municipalities by former premier Mike Harris.
"We deal with it through good management of our services and very unfortunately by raising property taxes," he said.
Toronto, which has kept tax increases relatively small, has typically waited for a bailout by the province, a luxury not afforded to other GTA municipalities.
Like Anderson, long-time Peel Region Chair Emil Kolb can only dream about the aid Toronto has received from the province. As they see it, that's part of the problem.
"If I had a shortfall of 500-and-some million dollars, I wouldn't present that to council," said Kolb flatly, adding his council would never approve a budget unless they could pay for it.
Toronto's cash crunch – a shortfall of $575 million is expected in next year's budget – was supposed to have been fixed in part with taxes on house purchases and vehicle registrations, but city councillors deferred the decision on those taxes until October, in a 23-22 vote.
News that Premier Dalton McGuinty has no intention of bailing out Toronto this time has heightened the sense of crisis in Toronto, with possible solutions including mothballing the Sheppard subway line and closing libraries on Sundays.
"I don't see how they can do it without raising residential property taxes," Kolb said of Toronto's problems.
Whitby Mayor Pat Perkins, who has been watching Toronto's budget contortions, scoffs at Miller's proposed solutions based on new taxing powers granted by the province.
"This is going toward the ridiculous," Perkins said just before the council took its deferral vote. "They've got to get control of their own house and start balancing their own budget."
_________________________________________________________________
Let's start by dumping the poor people from 905 who are living in 416 where they belong?
AoD
ShonTron
Moderator
Member Bio
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2007
- Messages
- 12,521
- Reaction score
- 9,480
- Location
- Ward 13 - Toronto Centre
This is exactly the reason why the City of Toronto has decided to lobby to Queen's Park on its own, and not as part of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario. Incidentially, I believe Roger Anderson is or was chair of the AMO.
The 905 got their wish from Ontario - the phasing out of the 905 pooling.
The 905 got their wish from Ontario - the phasing out of the 905 pooling.
H
Hydrogen
Guest
I love it when politicians (so-called) show zero political acumen. United we stand, divided we fall - whatever.
JasonParis
Moderator
3cp1...you still haven't addressed my questions?
H
Hydrogen
Guest
I wouldn't worry about illness and death due to a lack of garbage collectors. There are all those university graduates with useless degrees, after all. But from what I understand, an individual employed as a garbage collector can't exactly negotiate a better salary on the fly, either - regardless of the skill to do so or not.
3cp1
New Member
National Post, Published Thursday, July 26, 2007 10:06 PM by Barry Hertz
Meet the salaries of the workers who move Toronto
What do you call a municipal employee who makes almost $27 an hour to collect tokens and cash in a booth? A TTC worker, apparently. Several city councillors, in a bid to get Toronto out of its current fiscal crisis, are taking aim at the wages of city workers (including TTC workers, police officers and firefighters).
The Post's Kelly Patrick updates us on an earlier story she filed about critics who are looking at reducing wages instead of mothballing entire subway lines:
When the nine city politicians on the Toronto Transit Commission met last week amid the gloom and hysteria of a threatened Sheppard subway closure, councillor Peter Milczyn made a simple suggestion.
Why, he asked, could the TTC not hold annual wage increases to the rate of inflation and ask its 8,600 unionized employees to return $6-million a year in provincial health premiums, a cost most Ontarians pay out of their own pockets? Mr. Milczyn’s motion failed, five votes to four.
“Five commissioners are supporters of the NDP or left-leaning and four aren’t. We’re politicians, so it boils down to politics,†Mr. Milczyn said after the meeting ended with TTC bosses unearthing only $4-million to $5-million of the $30-million in cost savings they had been asked to find for this year.
Mr. Milczyn’s failed motion was an illustration of all that is tangled, complex and intensely political about reducing city workers’ paycheques, even in the midst of a financial crisis sparked by a deferred vote on two new taxes.
City workers, even the unskilled kind, make a considerable hourly wage. Janitors make at least $19.56/hour, litter pickers $21.11/hour, garbage collectors $24.14/hour, meter readers $26.58/hour, bus and subway drivers $26.58/hour and bylaw enforcement officers $28.67/hour, to cite a few examples.
“When you hear daily laments about dire consequences and how the [city] budget is going to have to be cut to the bone, and meantime those kinds of wages are being paid, boy that infuriates people,†said Judith Andrew, the Ontario vice-president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, which has mined census figures to show government wages vastly outstrip private-sector pay.
Nearly 50% of Toronto’s operating budget is spent on salaries and benefits. Critics say the only way city hall can meaningfully cut costs without reducing services is to begin paying city employees more like their private-sector cousins.
Mayor David Miller is on record as saying the city, as a matter of public policy, has an obligation to pay its workers a decent wage, but as contract talks grow nearer for two of the city’s largest unions — those representing police and TTC workers — some of his opponents say the municipality should try to force wage freezes, wage rollbacks or unpaid days off in the next rounds of bargaining.
“The city is up against a financial wall,†said councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, who’s been busy peddling a plan similar to the “Rae days†of the early 1990s at Queen’s Park around city hall. “We’re left with very few options. The city has to take a tough line because we’re out of money and we can’t afford these salaries anymore.â€
Michael Thompson, another councillor who says both unionized and non-unionized staff should cut back, put it this way: “In my view, you just cannot get blood out of a stone. If we don’t have the money to pay, why would we put ourselves in the position of paying funds that we actually don’t have?â€
The difficulty with these suggestions, of course, is that could bring a war with labour unions.
The city does not have the legal power to crack open existing collective agreements, or to impose settlements packed with pay and benefit cuts. The province has to legislate an end to any strikes. That means city negotiators must convince unions to take less money.
“Trying to rollback wages from an existing collective agreement is always disastrous,†said Anil Verma, an industrial relations professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.
Such fights rarely win cities the cuts they desire. In the fallout of Toronto’s 2002 strike, which involved 6,800 outside workers and 15,000 of 18,000 inside workers, an arbitrator wound up imposing a settlement that included 3% wage increases in 2002, 2003 and 2004. The current contract, which was negotiated without a strike and expires at the end of next year, includes only slightly higher wage hikes overall.
In fact, wage increases for the city’s inside and outside workers have held relatively steady since 1999, through the right-leaning Mel Lastman years and the left-leaning Miller era. In the case of the TTC, its workers’ union — Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113 — contract expires on March 31, 2008.
About 75% of the transit system’s operating budget goes to salaries and benefits, and it could achieve significant savings by cutting back on some salaries or not paying the Ontario health premium — which was imposed by the courts. But at last Friday’s meeting, while Mr. Milczyn and his transit authority colleagues were debating fare hikes and the mothballing of $933-million subway line, Local 113 president Bob Kinnear was outside telling reporters they would get no concessions from his workers.
“There is no way that our men and women out there are going to bear he brunt of the city’s inability to acquire the proper funding from the upper levels of government. It just will not happen,†he said.
Meet the salaries of the workers who move Toronto
What do you call a municipal employee who makes almost $27 an hour to collect tokens and cash in a booth? A TTC worker, apparently. Several city councillors, in a bid to get Toronto out of its current fiscal crisis, are taking aim at the wages of city workers (including TTC workers, police officers and firefighters).
The Post's Kelly Patrick updates us on an earlier story she filed about critics who are looking at reducing wages instead of mothballing entire subway lines:
When the nine city politicians on the Toronto Transit Commission met last week amid the gloom and hysteria of a threatened Sheppard subway closure, councillor Peter Milczyn made a simple suggestion.
Why, he asked, could the TTC not hold annual wage increases to the rate of inflation and ask its 8,600 unionized employees to return $6-million a year in provincial health premiums, a cost most Ontarians pay out of their own pockets? Mr. Milczyn’s motion failed, five votes to four.
“Five commissioners are supporters of the NDP or left-leaning and four aren’t. We’re politicians, so it boils down to politics,†Mr. Milczyn said after the meeting ended with TTC bosses unearthing only $4-million to $5-million of the $30-million in cost savings they had been asked to find for this year.
Mr. Milczyn’s failed motion was an illustration of all that is tangled, complex and intensely political about reducing city workers’ paycheques, even in the midst of a financial crisis sparked by a deferred vote on two new taxes.
City workers, even the unskilled kind, make a considerable hourly wage. Janitors make at least $19.56/hour, litter pickers $21.11/hour, garbage collectors $24.14/hour, meter readers $26.58/hour, bus and subway drivers $26.58/hour and bylaw enforcement officers $28.67/hour, to cite a few examples.
“When you hear daily laments about dire consequences and how the [city] budget is going to have to be cut to the bone, and meantime those kinds of wages are being paid, boy that infuriates people,†said Judith Andrew, the Ontario vice-president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, which has mined census figures to show government wages vastly outstrip private-sector pay.
Nearly 50% of Toronto’s operating budget is spent on salaries and benefits. Critics say the only way city hall can meaningfully cut costs without reducing services is to begin paying city employees more like their private-sector cousins.
Mayor David Miller is on record as saying the city, as a matter of public policy, has an obligation to pay its workers a decent wage, but as contract talks grow nearer for two of the city’s largest unions — those representing police and TTC workers — some of his opponents say the municipality should try to force wage freezes, wage rollbacks or unpaid days off in the next rounds of bargaining.
“The city is up against a financial wall,†said councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, who’s been busy peddling a plan similar to the “Rae days†of the early 1990s at Queen’s Park around city hall. “We’re left with very few options. The city has to take a tough line because we’re out of money and we can’t afford these salaries anymore.â€
Michael Thompson, another councillor who says both unionized and non-unionized staff should cut back, put it this way: “In my view, you just cannot get blood out of a stone. If we don’t have the money to pay, why would we put ourselves in the position of paying funds that we actually don’t have?â€
The difficulty with these suggestions, of course, is that could bring a war with labour unions.
The city does not have the legal power to crack open existing collective agreements, or to impose settlements packed with pay and benefit cuts. The province has to legislate an end to any strikes. That means city negotiators must convince unions to take less money.
“Trying to rollback wages from an existing collective agreement is always disastrous,†said Anil Verma, an industrial relations professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.
Such fights rarely win cities the cuts they desire. In the fallout of Toronto’s 2002 strike, which involved 6,800 outside workers and 15,000 of 18,000 inside workers, an arbitrator wound up imposing a settlement that included 3% wage increases in 2002, 2003 and 2004. The current contract, which was negotiated without a strike and expires at the end of next year, includes only slightly higher wage hikes overall.
In fact, wage increases for the city’s inside and outside workers have held relatively steady since 1999, through the right-leaning Mel Lastman years and the left-leaning Miller era. In the case of the TTC, its workers’ union — Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113 — contract expires on March 31, 2008.
About 75% of the transit system’s operating budget goes to salaries and benefits, and it could achieve significant savings by cutting back on some salaries or not paying the Ontario health premium — which was imposed by the courts. But at last Friday’s meeting, while Mr. Milczyn and his transit authority colleagues were debating fare hikes and the mothballing of $933-million subway line, Local 113 president Bob Kinnear was outside telling reporters they would get no concessions from his workers.
“There is no way that our men and women out there are going to bear he brunt of the city’s inability to acquire the proper funding from the upper levels of government. It just will not happen,†he said.
Pep'rJack
Active Member
You lost me right there. Do you honestly expect this to be taken seriously?
The horror... The horror...
Yes, "people" are infuriated - typical Faux News-esque tactic, but the Post doesn't even bother with the "some" qualifier, instead going straight to the universal.
Ditto - these "critics" being conveniently unnamed and unquoted. The handful of councillors
pitching wage cuts aren't "critics", they're opposing politicians - only the Post would equate the two.
Commie bastard.
What a crazy, terrible place this is.
Good for him - there is absolutely no reason why those at the bottom of the chain should bear the brunt of thoroughly unfair political bullshit from Ottawa and Queen's Park. But that won't stop hard right idealogues from blaming 'labour' for all our woes.
Ridiculous. Peddle your propaganda elsewhere.
.
H
Hydrogen
Guest
It's weird. The bad tax situation and service responsibility is foisted on us, and the idea is to somehow then punish someone in the city for it - be it library workers or the people who use libraries, or TTC employees or people who use the TTC, or anyone else who is the target of cuts or demands for cuts.
This city is short-changed by the province and by the federal government (which is busy short-changing the province). Cut wages, fire workers, close services, raise new taxes - and the provincial government will say "see, you don't have a cash problem anymore? So you don't need our help, do you?"
This city is short-changed by the province and by the federal government (which is busy short-changing the province). Cut wages, fire workers, close services, raise new taxes - and the provincial government will say "see, you don't have a cash problem anymore? So you don't need our help, do you?"
JasonParis
Moderator
But he's our local anti-union one trick pony!