Following the PR and news nightmare that CUPE has generated over the last several weeks of the strike it seems like the local labour brain trust has decided to bench CUPE boss Sid Ryan and local reps Jim Wood and Jean Fox.
Next up to the plate is local labour leader Gary Parent with his threat to withhold funding from kids sports leagues. Not content with intimidating the Mayor and Councillors by picketing their houses, the union figures that threatening kids and their pastimes will bring everyone rallying around their banner.
Next week we can look forward to former CAW head honcho Buzz Hargrove being called in to pitch hit in a crisis. My guess is that Buzz will continue the unions game plan to date, flipping off the City's chaplain and then proceeding to scare a tourist or two for good measure.
Bonus: “There was just this anger and lack of respect for unions" said Lewenza (Senior not Junior).
Strange that in all those years of leadership seminars that Ken has been attending at Port Elgin that he still hasn't learned the lesson that respect is earned not given and certainly not demanded.
"If this city council and this mayor think that they can starve out the workers of the City of Windsor, have another thought my friends, because we will shut down this whole city," Gary Parent, president of the Windsor & District Labour Council, told more than 400 rally participants. "I don't make idle threats. I'm saying to the mayor and the council, you can't resolve this out on the street. I implore you, if you don't get back to the bargaining table it won't be the workers that will be responsible for what happens. You'll have to look at yourself in the mirror and you will be responsible for the consequences."
"They're trying to pave the way to take away post-retirement benefits from every other city worker in this community," said Parent, warning police officers, firefighters and Transit Windsor drivers that they could soon find themselves in council's crosshairs. "We think it's wrongheaded. We think that the fight should not have happened to begin with and they better stop this foolishness before the city is irreparable."
Parent made the comments at CUPE's Parent Avenue headquarters following a strategy session with representatives from unions representing police officers, firefighters, librarians, bus drivers, municipal nurses and other city employees.
Parent urged Francis to take the dispute to binding arbitration. He said continued stalling on the part of management would only succeed in mobilizing the entire local labour movement on the site of the striking inside and outside city workers, now in their sixth week on the picket lines.
Union says it may stop funding children's sports leagues if coaches, parents cut grass during strike
By Frances Willick, The Windsor StarMay 29, 2009 1:01 AM
WINDSOR, Ont. -- The CAW may stop sponsoring children’s sports leagues if coaches and parents take to the baseball diamonds and soccer fields with lawn mowers during the city workers’ strike.
“We don’t have a habit of funding scab organizations,” said Gary Parent, secretary-treasurer of CAW Local 444.
Mowing the sports fields would be tantamount to being a scab, he said, and that sort of interference would “absolutely” affect the council’s sponsorship.
Anyone that knows me, reads this blog or is a friend of mine on Facebook knows my position on the current CUPE strike in Windsor. I support the Mayor and Council completely. I have always been passionate about my opinions and beliefs and this situation is no different.
That being said, I recognize that some of the material I've been posting and comments made are very broad based and generalizing, especially in terms of strikers behaviour on the picket line. We should always recognize that the behaviour of some does not represent the entire group. Mayor Francis put it well in the article regarding the garbage spreading incident:
Woman's garbage strewing 'disgusting and disgraceful'
Francis and CAO John Skorobohacz stressed it was an unruly minority of striking employees that were tarnishing the reputation of the vast majority who are peaceful and respectful and merely following union instructions so they can earn their strike pay.
“They are the actions of a few. Don’t allow that to be a reflection on all the members,” said Francis.
I apologize to any friends and acquaintances I may have offended. I certainly should have been clear that I didn't believe that the various incidents were reflective of all of the City's employees. Passion is a very powerful emotion that can often lead someone astray.
Strikes, the politics and opinions that surround them are very divisive in nature. I recognize that and will keep it in mind in future posts.
It looks strangely similar to the "We Work, Windsor Wins" signs carried by striking CUPE members in Windsor. The signs are blue on top and white on the bottom. This gentleman can be seen entering the park with the garbage lady and standing behind her, watching the entire incident.
I haven't heard anything to the contrary, so I'm assuming this event is still taking place. If you've never seen a Tatoo and Sunset Ceremoney before, it's worthwhile attending. A great event for the whole family. Best of all - it's FREE!
Tattoo and Sunset Ceremony
May 30, 2009 - The Military Units from Windsor are holding a Tattoo and Sunset Ceremony. Bands will include brass and reed as well as pipes and drums. Along with music, there will be a local choir and highland dancers.
The Tattoo is a show containing Military Bands and Drill teams. There will be static displays of Military equipment as well as a demonstration of manoeuvres and tactics. Seating is limited, so arrive early and also take some time to view the displays. Parking available in the downtown core and garages.
Contact Lieutenant Paul F. Stachow at 519-818-4136 if you require further information.
Venue: Riverfront Festival Plaza
Hours: Military Tattoo will commence at 7:00PM followed immediately by the Sunset Ceremony.
All the Mayor and Council have to do is agree to binding arbitration and we'll all be back to work tomorrow.
Parent urges strike deals
Parent urged Francis to take the dispute to binding arbitration. He said continued stalling on the part of management would only succeed in mobilizing the entire local labour movement on the site of the striking inside and outside city workers, now in their sixth week on the picket lines.
This is now CUPE's fondest wish.
Having failed to hold the City hostage as originally planned, CUPE is now trying to salvage whatever they can from this strike. A continuning string of incidents leading to bad PR and news stories has CUPE on a downhill slope to nowhere.
With summer upon us they were planning on huge piles of rotting garbage and a deluge of complaints from the public to advance their cause.
OOPS!
Now they face an increasingly angry public and calls for outsourcing.
Windsor CleanUp 2009 - a Facebook group dedicated to community efforts to clean the parks (247 members). You can sign up for the first event at the Ford Test Track here.
Taking Back Our Parks - Taking Back Our Parks is a NON-PARTISAN Grassroots committee formed to make our city parks safe and healthy for our children during the current labour dispute. (75 members)
Windsorites Unite - Here is my idea. Starting this Saturday (May 30th), how about spending 1 hour doing something to make Windsor a cleaner place. (134 members)
I also found time to update the WE Speak blogroll. You can "ping" the blogroll by visiting Blogrolling's ping page, by using a service like Pingomatic or turning on the automatic ping feature in your blog. By pinging, your blog will move to the top of the blogroll and will have a "New" tag appended to your blogs name.
There are now 123 blogs on the WE Speak blogroll. That success though, has also lead to a few issues that are affecting the site's load time. For now I've reduced the updates to once every two hours and have also had to disable the Latest News and #wespeak Tweets sections. Between the aggregation and RSS feeds, the shared server I'm on was having most of it's memory used up. I have a few solutions that once implemented should help reduce the server load, but as usual, they will take some time and tweaking to accomplish. In the short term, I've established a #wespeak Tweets page which should work better.
The City's vaunted contingency plan is nothing more than an oversized paperweight:
MoE backs off Thursday garbage deadline
The city’s original contingency plan filed with the ministry identifies seven locations where, if the plan were implemented, residents would be allowed to take their residential garbage during the labour dispute: Ford test track, Memorial and Mic Mac parks, the downtown parking lot at University Street and Bruce Avenue and the Adstoll, Riverside and South Windsor arenas.
Francis said that contingency plan was something “put together very quickly” following the ministry’s earlier order to remove the mound of garbage illegally dumped outside the city’s waste transfer station off Central Avenue early in the strike.
... Wilkki said there are currently only eight non-union workers employed in the city’s solid waste division and that about 50 workers would be needed to operate seven transfer depots. He said there would have to be security hired and that private sector involvement would still be required to handle the wastes.
I thought the contingency plan was a comprehensive document that City administrators spent months preparing. Is the Mayor now saying that the plan didn't have contingencies for garbage collection or was the plan to use private operators the only scenario contemplated?
Apparently, if you believe CUPE Local 543 Jean Fox, Windsor just happens to be at the centre of the universe of un-related coincidences that have no bearing whatsoever on the ongoing strike. Spontaneous car combustion, wire seeding of City Parks, all of these incidents are most certainly regular events in Windsor whenever a strike is not happening.
Niagara Falls has nothing on us - the next and biggest Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum is slated to open in Windsor within the next two weeks.
Apparently striking CUPE locals are going to begin increasing pressure on City Councillors to cave in to their demands.
City, strikers dig in
Parent said an appeal is also going out for all those in the labour movement to begin putting pressure on the mayor and councillors.
"We're being told councillors aren't getting any adverse response other than being urged to hold the line," he said, adding he hopes that's about to change.
"I think both sides have got to get back to the table ... there is always room if calmer heads can sit down," said Parent.
He sides with CUPE, however, on the need for the city to back down on pushing to get rid of post-65 retirement benefits for new hires.
"It's not the union demanding those benefits -- those benefits are already there," said Parent.
The best way to make yourself heard is to call their phone lines and either speak with them or leave a message. Next best is to send a letter to them C/O:
Council Services Department
350 City Hall Square West, Room 203
Windsor, Ontario Canada N9A 6S1
If not a letter, then fax your message for Councillors to Council Servies at (519) 255-6868.
Lastly, send your email messages to each individual Council and the Mayor to the addresses listed.
In the meantime, this dispute could be resolved by a city bylaw that states a cab can't be idle for more than 60 days. After that period, the plate can revert to the city. If the owners are about to lose their rent, I'm betting on action.
Personally I'm against the City's artificial management of the market regarding Taxi Plates. It places an artificial price on the plates and guarantees mediocre service at best instead of encouraging competition for business. Those that work the hardest and provide the best service will thrive, those that don't, won't. Instead we have a virtual monopoly market controlled by a select group of individuals who were able to benefit from lax rules of the past.
I know the chance is slim to none that this market will ever be opened to competition, but I really like Jarvis' idea. It could be a real game changer in this ultimate game where the citizens are held hostage in a fight not of their creation.
PS. the cabbies suggestion of allowing temporary plates would be just about the stupidest thing Council could ever agree to. If it is wrong to allow replacement workers during a strike, it's certainly wrong to allow "temporary" cabs to begin working. Since it is the union asking, I'm sure their idea is that the striking cabbies would have first dibs on any available temporary plates. Make it a lottery that absolutely anyone can apply for, and maybe, just maybe this would be an idea that could be tried.
As much as it pains me to say it, I hope that CUPE and the CAW keep up their relentless assault against all odds. In the short term, such labour strife and uncertainty is bad for cities like Windsor, but the short term pain may end up being long term gain for all of us.
As an unabashed conservative in a decidedly left leaning city it is interesting to watch the average citizen begin to wake up to the reality of what has been perpetuated in their name for the last twenty years. The longest uninterrupted boom since World War II has finally ended and the time to pay the piper has arrived.
The problem that large unions like the CAW and public sector unions like CUPE refuse to acknowledge is that the rest of us unwashed masses have been living without their gold-plated perks for years, and doing quite well in spite of it. The ink was barely dry on the CAW's new agreements before they turned around and tried to ignite another class warfare arguement against the "rich" in today's society. Apparently dentists, pharmacists and everyone they employ should do what the CAW refused to do and accept concessions in wages and benefits to satisfy who - the CAW!Quick to blame the company and various levels of government for pitting worker against worker, given the opportunity, they promptly did exactly what they had been preaching against. Blackmail would be the term most people would apply to Ken Lewenza's latest tactic targeting dental and pharmaceutical professionals, their businesses and employees. I spoke with one person in the dental field this evening on this very issue and almost lost an eardrum in the process. To say that the union has alienated another large sector of the community with their latest would be an understatement.
More to follow on this subject, along with some sobering facts and figures to back things up. The types of facts and figures that unions are too afraid to actually give to their own members.
How short people's memories are. Is it possible that they forget the decades long battle waged by bridge owner Matty Moroun when he first purchased the Ambassador Bridge? Started under the Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau and not settled until well into the mandate of Brian Mulroney's Conservative government, Moroun's lawsuit eventually had the government of the day saying "uncle".
Despite all the "bullish" 'talk of Minister Baird, what makes today's bureaucrats and politicians think that anything will change?
Whether it's the City of Windsor, the Province of Ontario or the Federal Government of Canada, the ongoing decision to refuse to engage Moroun is sentencing Windsor to another 15 years of no develpment regarding a new crossing.
Regardless of the spin being broadcast to us on a daily basis, the reality remains something our elected politicians refuse to confront. When it finally does arrive, they will most certainly have numerous avenues to point at as the reason for their failure, with the exception of themselves. The sad story is, we contiune to accept sub-standard representation of our interests at all levels of government. It won't be till Windsor resembles Flint Michigan that the real reality will become evident to Windsor taxpayers.
From today's Windsor Star, we now finally know which Councillors were willing to commit a minimum of $15 million of your tax dollars on a plan that they or you haven't seen. True to form, you still can't find this information from the minutes posted on the City's own website.
COUNCIL VOTE
How councillors voted at an April 29 council meeting.
Moved Ken Lewenza/Fulvio Valentinis:
That administration be directed to prepare and submit an application for federal/provincial infrastructure funding for the Downtown Canal Project.
For: Ken Lewenza Jr., Jo-Anne Gignac, Percy Hatfield, Fulvio Valentinis.
Against: Dave Brister, Caroline Postma, Alan Halberstadt, Bill Marra, Ron Jones, Drew Dilkens.
Defeated 6-4.
I can't say that I'm surprised. The four voting in favour are the usual Mayor Francis apologists. The real surprise in this vote is the about face by Ward 2 Councillors Jones and Postma, usually Francis' stalwart supporters.
The four Councillors voting in favour of this proposal now become the four best reasons to advocate for the 10 ward, one Councillor per ward proposal. 551 days till the next Municipal Election!
None of the reports listed for the Wednesday May 6th Council meeting are accessible to the public. Any link clicked gives a "Can't find the attachment! Please contact with system administrator." message. You can consider this blog post my contact to the system admin.
Not the Staff's fault, but calling this Wednesday's meeting a public consultation is about as accurate as calling this Council effective and efficient.
Even the appearance of proper public meetings has long been abandoned in this City with the absolute complicity of so called "media watchdogs" AM 800 and the Windsor Star. It's now the 6th of May and we still haven't passed our Operations and Capital budgets. How many other municipalities in Ontario are in the same boat as Windsor? Very few, if any.
551 Days until the next Municipal Election, it can't come soon enough!
Make sure you watch the video, email a link to your friends and family, post it on your Facebook page and if you have a blog, embed a copy for everyone to see.
My hat's off to Councillor Halberstadt for finally taking the Mayor to task publicly. A long overdue exercise.
If you haven't seen the A Channel report yet, stop in Chris Schnurr's blog and check it out. Make sure you let all your friends and family know about it. This YouTube video is destined to become a Windsor City Council classic. Forward it, post or blog about it and get out the word.
Another good question to ask yourself is where has our local media been on this story all week. Late night secretive and unannounced "public meetings" and repeated votes on the same issue? It took Councillor Halberstadt blowing up for it to finally make the news. Are we being well served by our local media on City Hall related stories?
I haven't heard anything to the contrary, so I'm assuming this event is still taking place. If you've never seen a Tatoo and Sunset Ceremoney before, it's worthwhile attending. A great event for the whole family. Best of all - it's FREE!