Controversy!

I’ve never been one to shy away from it, and this time around I can’t help but feel that most people would agree with my thoughts and opinions.

Come to think of it, is there anybody who agrees with the striking workers at this point?

Controversy!

Yes, me and controversy are like Joey Chestnut and 64 1/2 hot dogs.  No, wait….that would mean that I eat garbage.

Me and controversy are like Tom Cruise and Scientology.  No, wait….that would mean that I use garbage to lure former Dawson’s Creek stars into wedlock…

Me and controversy…..umm….what’s that one about a moth and a flame?

Honestly, I couldn’t care less at this point who I offend with my thoughts and opinions on the garbage strike, and while I took the impartial path on my post about the Tamil protesters a while back, I can’t hold in my frustrations this time around.

Let me start by being incredibly cynical: I understand the workers’ plight.  Because not just anybody is qualified to deal in human refuse.  Not just anybody can put garbage into a truck…

Seriously, let’s call this what it is: a union flexing its muscle.

I’ve never been a fan of unions…

I’m a capitalist, although I’m not a pure, hardened capitalist as I have witnessed with the rest of the world what happens when capitalism goes awry.  My Dad loves to say, “Capitalism failed!  Look at what happened to the global economy and all the bankrupt companies in the United States!”  Perhaps he has a point, but what’s the alternative?

I am, however, anything but a socialist, and I fear that the garbage strike in Toronto is an excellent example of socialism gone wild.

Forgive my naivety, but why can’t we just fire all the garbage-people and replace them with new ones?

Isn’t this possible?

What gives them the right to hold the city hostage while the streets are literally littered with rotting human waste?

Our city smells like sh!t, plain and simple.  I stepped outside my building today, and I caught a fantastic whiff that reminded me of the kybo at Camp Kawabi, circa 1986…

So why can’t the city just hire a few thousand new, “capable” people to handle our refuse?

Why can’t these striking workers be replaced?

At the risk of this becoming an unsophisticated rant, let me suggest a remedy: privatize the garbage collection.

Sure, this has been suggested before on many occasions, but it wasn’t until I read Margaret Wente’s column in Thursday’s Globe & Mail that I was really irked by how ridiculous the costs have become to continue employing public servants in this sector.

According to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business:

*public-sector workers across Canada earn 8 – 17% more than people with similar jobs in the private sector.

*public-sector workers’ work-weeks are only 33.5 hours compared to 37.3 in the private sector.

*calculating the value of benefits and shorter work time, the total compensation advantage adds up to 35.9% for municipal workers, 24.9% for provincial, and 41.7% for federal

As for the garbage workers, their hourly wage is twenty-percent higher than in the private sector.  As Wente writes, “They have a gold-plated benefits plan to which they contribute not a cent.  After ten years of service, their jobs are guaranteed.  Workers with top seniority get seven weeks vacation.”

Ridiculous.

These people are dealing with GARBAGE!

I remember being a kid when my parents would use “flipping burgers” and “picking up trash” as the two worst examples of occupations that could befall me if I didn’t get my act together.

Nowadays, it seems that there are huge financial gains to be made from having a job as “secure” as picking up garbage!

But what really bothers me about this is the unanswerable question: WHY?

WHY does the city continue to employ these people and give them generous pensions, benefits, and wages, when the work can be out-sourced for a third-less the cost?

Again, forgive my cynicism, but I think my evil friend socialism is the answer.

Instead of being a hardened corporate machine that grinds out every penny in every budget, our dear City of Toronto is allowing overpaid workers to keep their jobs simply so they have jobs!

This is effectively a make-work project since we know the massive benefits that privatization would bring about.  Just think of how many bike-paths David Miller could ruin the city with if only he had the costs savings from hiring outsourced garbage-people!

I know Miller is a bleeding heart; that much is apparent.  But why after nearly three weeks of this literal mess hasn’t he made threats to privatize the industry to get these lazy bastards back to work?

This reminds me of an incident that happened in Major League Baseball about a decade ago.  There was talk of an umpire strike, and a fraction of umpires had the idea of a “mass resignation” in which all the umpires would resign at once and the league would have no choice but to ceed their demands.  Somewhere along the way, majority of the umpires came to their senses, but about twenty umpires sent in their resignations, and the league accepted them.  The next day, the twenty umpires found out that the other 50-60 umpires didn’t send in their resignations as planned, and they clamoured to get their jobs back.  The league simply said, “Too bad, so sad, you resigned, goodbye.”

Why can’t David Miller take that attitude?

If these “skilled workers” are striking, why can’t he just tell them, “I’m sorry you feel so hard-done-by, so I’m going to employ the private sector to take over the jobs that you feel you were being underpaid to do.”

He won’t because his testicles were removed a long, long time ago…

So will the workers be paid for their three weeks of striking?  It wouldn’t surprise me to hear that they will be.

In a recent poll, 73% of Torontonians said that municipal workers should accept whatever the city is offering, and get back to work.  It begs the question: who the hell are the other 27%?

Perhaps they’re the people that don’t have children that could be spending their summers playing tennis or roller-hockey on the rink below:

Or perhaps they’re the people that have no qualms about the health and safety ramifications from our streets looking like this:

Or, perhaps they’re the people that don’t understand how important tourism is to Toronto’s economy, and have no worries about the bad press our city has been getting – like being ranked the NUMBER ONE place to avoid in the San Francisco Chronicle’s travel advisory:

Who knows what makes people tick?

27% of Torontonians think that the garbage workers should get what they want.

The garbage workers think they should be able to trade in their saved-up sick days for cash when they retire.

And I think these workers can be replaced with homeless people, since they already have the experience in dealing with garbage…

But I’m sure his esteemed greatness, Mr. David Miller, will eventually cave and give the smelly-people whatever they want.

It’s a trickle-down effect from there.  There is blood in the water, and people know how weak David Miller is when it comes to playing hard-ball.

I hope everybody likes the bleeding-heart society we’ve become.

What’s next – government housing in Rosedale?

(yes, click here)