Solidarity forever or solidarity be damned.
City officials confirmed yesterday 132 would-be striking workers have requested to cross the picket line and report back to work.
As labour leaders told a scorching Nathan Phillips Square rally that the municipal strike, now in its fourth day, would last “as long as it takes,” Premier Dalton McGuinty said he wasn’t ready to step in and end it.
On June 22nd, City of Toronto workers walked off the job leaving garbage uncollected, parks and recreation programmes shutdown, daycares shuttered and a range of services critical to city living suspended. Faced with some one hundred pages of contract demands and concessions, a stark break in the wage pattern already established for other city workers, administrators and politicians, and a major take-back on sick leave banks, the 18,000 members of Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 79 representing inside workers, and the 6,200 members of CUPE Local 416 representing outside workers, voted more than 90 percent in favour of a strike…
So said CUPE Local 79 President Anne Dembinsky referring to the mayor of Toronto. Hey, everyone needs a soundbite.
Posted in The Strike
