JOHN LORINC: Piling on, Part II

37 comments

1. Until he bobbled the ball on the streetcars/stimulus funding and the strike, I was a big Miller booster. I think he demonstrated a profound tin ear in both cases.

   In the case of the streetcars, the federal conservatives knew they had a winner. He handed them the opportunity to poke Toronto in they eye using the “they think the rules don’t apply to them” argument. Done deal! They must have been drinking to Miller in the Tory caucus. Pure political win for them, handed to them on a silver platter by Miller.

   In the strike, he had the population 95% on side. The strike could have stretched on for months and he would not have lost the city. If he’d had the will to do it, all he needed to do was start using a private contractor to empty the temporary dumps ever few days and he could have left CUPE on the picket lines until the next election. And I think he would have carried the city’s support all the way. That’s why his sudden reversal has me so confused. Did he lose his nerve? Or did he completely mess up his public rhetoric? Either way, from street level he does not come out of it looking good.

   This leaves me suspecting Miller’s long term viability. But with regards to being careful what we wish for, I think CUPE may be wishing they’d been more co-operative in a few years time. In provincial politics, the bull headed and short sighted public unions confronted and abandoned the NDP, and for their trouble they got Mike Harris. How did that work out for them? Unfortunately the rest of us are still trying to clean up the mess.

   The exact same thing could happen in Toronto politics. If someone with a shred of credibility picks up the “crush the unions” banner and runs against Miller on a platform of contracting out garbage service, there’s a strong chance they’ll win. That person is also likely to be someone who thinks the single biggest disaster in Toronto’s history was the cancelation of the Spadina Express Way, and that everyone who lives south of Bloor should jump in the lake.

   Thanks CUPE.

2. I think there is only one way to determine if this was a failed or successful negotiation: is there gonna be another great strike in 3 years? My bet: yes.

3. Michael Gee always prefaces “sick-day issue” with “crucial”, as in “crucial sick-day issue”.

   Is it really that crucial? I’d like to see some backup, like how the sick-day provision would cost the city trillions, outweighing all the other issues.

   Of course, it became a symbolic issue, but then again who chose to make it the symbol of the strike? If it was Miller, that’s his bad (the settlement wasn’t going to look real good). But somehow the commentators have made it THE issue, ignoring all the others.

4. Miller is a total screw up. He claims sick days as a hill to die on, then caves, but supposedly had agreed to cave last fall… He acts like there’s no problem in city finances (though for years they’ve been horrible and we should have been on austerity budgets for the past 4 years) and then suddenly sees a crisis just after forcing though a raise for councillors.

   What council should have done was make an aggressive offer – 40% reduction in headcount, 40% reduction in salary, and eliminate all benefits and work rules. We need to get onto an aggressive downward glide path to get the city’s books healthy, and the likely outcome (20-20 cuts and 50% reductions in benefits) woudl have been an excellent start. Council also should have kept the workers out for 2 or 3 quarters and they should have locked them out the minute the contract expired – make them walk pickets in January. Then use injunctions aggressively and treat all delays of citizens as conspiracies to kidnap (eliminating lots of jobs through incarceration). THAT’s how you run a city.

   Miller is useless and will be destroyed for his idiocy. Unfortunately we won’t get the Giuliani type that we really need (even Giuliani and Harris were overly solicitous of their enemies).

5. The “phasing out” of the sick bank provision was a fiscally responsible deal for the City and its taxpayers in this round of bargaining [although future CUPE members are likely to have very different views: they’ve essentially been sold out by their own union]. If that was the principal deadlocked issue in bargaining, it was a good solution — and was probably close to what an arbitrator would have imposed had the strike been ended by back-to-work legislation.

   At the same time, Mayor Miller did not do himself any favours by coming on too strong during the strike and then too weak at the end. His plaintive comments at the press conferences came across terribly, and left many citizens with the sense that, far from having a vision for the city, the Mayor we elected so enthusiastically — twice — is fumbling for lost traction. I don’t buy into the catastrophe-speak, but speaking as a disappointed progressive I’d really like to see some better leadership in the coming months.

6. I love how people blame Miller for the strike: he didn’t lock them out, workers walked!

   They chose not to be reasonable and until they were they lost money and tonnes of public support. The mayor had no choice. He got a deal that was relatively good for the city in the long-term. Most other mayors, including the hapless Lastman, wouldn’t even take on the unions.

   Put it this way: when Doug Holyday, a self acclaimed neo-con, sides with the mayor on how negotiations went and what we could expect to “get” from the union, then you know Miller did okay. He said it would’ve been impossible to entirely remove the sick day perk. The opposition on council to the deal was 2010 election posturing and had nothing to do long-term thinking.

   And if the media wasn’t lazy they would’ve reported that only a few thousand have the sick day perk, with most of them now willing to take the buy-out, leaving a small amount to take advantage of the perk.

   I wish everyone was so protective of the money they put into private corporations — there is just as much, if not more, waste at that level of the economy that we could save. People can have a greater impact there by spending their money wisely on good businesses.

7. Matt,

   while I agree with most of what you said, I still doubt Toronto (unlike Ontario) will really elect a tough right winger. If there is a strong middle-of-road guy campaigning on contracting out garbage, then I think Miller is cooked; otherwise, Miller may still get to keep his job. I think CUPE probably have learned their lesson from Harris, so that they will come out full-force to support Miller next year.

8. John makes a point that has been bothering me (because it has been absent from all the spin and commentary in the media thus far).

   People have been complaining that Miller (and the City) took a position at the start of the strike, and came down from that position — and that this approach is a betrayal of Toronto residents, that it sold us out.

   This is not the case at all! The City had a position at the start of the strike, and so did the unions. Miller had no choice but to state what the City’s position was. He can’t be wishy-washy about it or say “We’d like this but our bottom line is this”. That’s how negotiations work — both sides start out at their best, hoped-for outcome; they have in their back pocket their minimum offer, or what they would be willing to settle for, but obviously you don’t make that public. In the end the two sides start at their optimistic positions and they eventually meet somewhere in the middle.

   Miller is getting slaughtered in the media and by the right-leaning councillors because he started out saying that the elimination of the sick bank was one of the City’s conditions for settlement, and in the end the sick bank is being phased out. That’s a mediated position between the City’s and Unions’ positions. Miller couldn’t have started the strike saying, “We would like the sick bank eliminated, but we’ll settle for a phase-out,” because then the phase-out becomes the starting point for negotiations, not the full elimination.

9. So once again it’s all the union’s fault? “Answer: CUPE wouldn’t have agreed to it.” Got any sources to back that up?

   Cause vilifying the union does not make Miller look any better in my eyes.

10. Question for Reality Check: What colour is the sky in your world?

11. “And it took the first step in the long move to eliminate an archaic and costly perk.”

    That sounds like there is going to be an additional step. There won’t be. It was the first and only step, and now all we do is wait for the people still entitled to the perk to retire.

12. Yes John, it does feel good. As Dan notes above you have no evidence in your defense of Miller but your own wishful thinking. For years Miller has made a career out of blaming others and gotten away with it because of extremely tight and secretive media control and a press that has been very easy on his duplicity. In MillerSpeak, it is always others who are not being truthful, it is always others who are disingenuous, always others misleading the public, always others who lack guts, others who are cowards, others being irresponsible, others who are hypocrits, always others who are not righteous, etc.. etc..etc.
    Now that the pigeons have come to home to roost and he is rightly getting some of his own medicine, you John are in denial. Miller lost badly to CUPE by committing to the public to do what he was not willing to deliver. It is not that he couldn’t have won but that he was unwillingto win and really face down CUPE and damage his political base. He was unwilling to take the simple necessary and easy actions taken down the road in Windsor; get an injuction to clear out dumpsites every night, get an injunction to defend the public’s right to drop off garbage without long waits and intimidation, show who’s side you are on by walking through a picked line at City hall, something you demand your management to do, instead of slinking around in basements and child care centres. When Miller obfuscates about how it was complicated and difficuly to get injunctions, he was intentionally misleading the public to cover his ass, period.
    When Cupe caved in Windsor this became clear to virtually everyone and the Mayor’s popularity started to plummit like a stone because the Public and the press realized that he didn’t have will to deliver even though the public were solidly supporting. So he caved when confronted with Ferguson’s grandstanding and cut his loses hoping friendly helpers like John Lornic would help him spin defeat into victory. No John, the public will not forget or let the Snowman of the hook.
    And by the way John, trying to spin Councillors Carrol and Davis as ‘gutsy chicks’ is like trying to claim a chicken is a falcon just because they both have feathers. They are just 2 of the gutless mayority on the Mayor’s Executive Committee who disappeared during this crisis in leadership and didn’t even show up for work a City Hall. Some leadership, eh.

13. I love how McD has some kind of conspiracy theory for everything, yells about lack of facts and then makes bold, baseless statements.

    His comments should be IN ALL CAPS SINCE HE SEEMS TO BE YELLING AT ANYONE WHO DOESN’T AGREE WITH HIM.

    No rational comment will sooth his anger.

    And who would have the better analysis: John, an award-winning urban affairs writer that has the respect of all political stripes and a slew of contacts — the who’s who of Toronto — or a raging commenter who doesn’t have the guts to put his own name to his comments? Hmmmm…..

14. McD for Mayor!

    BTW John, did we really need a Negotiating for Dummies primer?

15. I think the city and the union each got the best deal they could. Miller is to be commended for sticking it out and not running to the province for help.
    Toronto proved they could put up with a bit of mess for a short term, I hope we won’t turf Rae for Harris again.

16. Glen,

    Yes.

17. Angus,

    Toronto is saving its cries for help for budget time.

18. Wow, the comment section on spacing.ca/wire is startign to look like the comment section at the G&M or the Star. Not a good thing.

    John, thanks for posting. I enjoyed your article and generally agree with your POV.

    Did you notice how many articles in the G&M were actually supportive of Miller?

19. Thanks, John, for that emotional and pointless screed. Assuming that readers don’t know how negotiations work is patronizing, and ignores what citizens are actually saying.

20. Those who suggest that aggressive anti-union, anti-public servant tactics will work have short memories. The Harris government tried this approach in 1995 and although to some it appeared successful in the short-term, it diverted the government’s energies in the subsequent multi-year fight that ensued. That and the huge cuts to public expenditures set back Ontario for at least a decade. Just like the school yard, picking a fight doesn’t result in justice, only chaos. You don’t believe me? Look overseas at the American involvement in Iraq.

21. I would like to thank Mayor David Miller for all his hard work in coming to a negotiated settlement with the two unions! Negotiated settlements are always better than settlements through binding arbitration for both the employees (the workers) and the employers (us) as the parties directly involved agree to all the terms in such cases.

    Thank you Mayor Miller, CUPE Local 79, and TCEU 416 for bringing about labour peace in a fair and just manner that all Torontonians SHOULD appriecate! I certainly appreciate all your hard work! 🙂

22. To Joseph Kelly,

    Based on my reading of the strike coverage (including website comment strings, on this site and others), there was very little public or media understanding of the dynamics of labour negotiations. You can say I’m being patronizing. But I don’t expect voters with no direct experience to comprehend the nature of a complex and prolonged negotiation over a huge collective agreement. My hope is that the media coverage would attempt to convey the nature of the exercise with greater insight.

    There is an obvious impediment: as in a war, the media is privy to strategically disseminated misinformation, and lacks detailed knowledge of what the negotiating teams want to achieve. Most newspapers have long since eliminated their labour beat reporters; in this strike, that lack of in-house expertise really showed.

    But once the end game became apparent, and then after the details of the deal came to light, especially with the information released last Friday, I’d have expected the pundits to adjust their hypotheses, which is what journalists are supposed to do. Didn’t happen. Instead, we got a pile-on.

23. Well it’s always good for Lornic to make an Miller apologia as it always good to get some action. My analysis will stand the test of time much better than John’s in the minds of the public, but who knows.
    To Bruce to say that Spacing looks like G&M commentary is to make my point. It is not the fault of imaginary neo cons, the press or moderate Councillors who get branded as right wing because they question the Mayor’s judgement. It is Miller’s fault. Gentle Joe Mihevc, a Miller loyalist from day one came out saying the Mayor and his office are disregarding Council opinions and running things as a one man shop where everyone is kept in the dark. Brian Ashton a left of centre Councillor his whole life is trashed and caste out by the Miller camp for voting against Miller tax increases.
    I am just as anti Harris as anti Miller because, as has been pointed out by others they are both politicians cut from same cloth. The conceited ego school of political thought where if you disagree or question you must be attacked. Both are doomed to failed legacies for hubris and intolerance and the inability to creat concensus that is the true test of leadership where both have failed.

24. And yes John, your comments to Joseph Kelly are patronizing and I can assure you your assumed presumption of superior insight and knowledge about labour relations is completely misquided. There was plenty of Labour Relations comment going on, your problem is that virtually all of the experts say Miller sold out, so you have to pretend they did not exist.

25. John,

    anyone with kids knows complex negotiations.

26. I’m not a union fan, at one company I had staff from two different unions. I’ve done strike duty (replacing striking workers) and had a number of militant jerks yell and call me names waiting to get through a picket line. But…

    I don’t like the idea of ‘benefits’ that were negotiated being called an aberation or perks. The sick days bank might be a costly feature of the deal but it was worth something to the city and to the union. The city got something in exchange for granting it to its employees, over the years that something may have been forgotten but it was there.

    One other thing I haven’t seen in the press – for many of the staff that went out on strike they won’t be much ahead financially with the deal that was worked out. They’ve lost 5 weeks of pay, just shy of 10% of the annual salary – the increase is less than that. (caveat – some will be able to make some of it back in overtime over the next few weeks as they play catch up)

    Once a strike goes past the point where people can’t break even it goes from the realm of rational economics to ideological battle. And that’s a dangerous territory to be in. Mayor Miller is not a ‘bust the unions’ type – he never campaigned that way either. Expecting him to be ideological and want to fundamentally change the labour relations dynamic is too much to ask from him.

27. John Lorinc is right on the mark. The media shouldn’t be jumping on board the hysterical citizenry reaction to what they perceive is wrong (the pile on) – the media should inform and educate on what is being presented by all of the parties. When City staff, last Friday at Council, presented the timeline and background about how the final negotiated agreement came to fruition it identified to me that the agreement negotiated with the unions had followed a logical and thoughtful approach – and that all of the councillors who had been at briefings up until July 8 were aware of the options being considered – including the one that made it to the final agreement. The media should have played up this news much more prominently than actually happened, instead of reporting to the lowest common denominator hysteria that implied that the city had blindly given in to the union. The media didn’t do its job properly this time – it fed the hysteria and gave justification to those who, through the comment pages like these in all of the newspapers, clearly want to engage in long-term, messy, nasty and expensive fight with labour.

28. Bruce, John, et al,

    Where was the media, laying bare the facts, during the last number of years when city expenses were growing at 6% per year and revenues were not? Where was the media explaining that Toronto has been raiding its reserve accounts, bleeding them dry, to cover the city’s structural deficit?

    Any indignation should be applied consistently.

29. Glen, can you give examples of any increases in spending that were particularly egregious? Obviously you think that the city should have been engaging in radical austerity measures over the past few years (I seem to recall you’re usually complaining of being overtaxed, forgive me if I’m wrong).

    I tend to be of the opinion that a major metropolis needs to spend on certain things, to attract investment and new residents and grow the tax base. I also think that many of the expenses the country’s largest city has had to deal with would properly be taken care of by the provincial, or even federal government. I think talking about “financial mismanagement” by city managers while ignoring the role of other governments from Harris onwards is only telling half the story, and expecting the city to slowly shrivel and die while those governments rob it blind is pretty sad.

30. I agree with Paul. If you look at major cities around the world, those which are successful are either provided significant funding from other governments or are provided with the authority to tax and raise their own revenues. If you look closely at the City of Toronto budget, you will see that most of the increases in expenditure over the past few years are for a) provincially mandated programs for the City portion of those expenditures (the City has to pay for increases is cost- there is no room for cutting under Provincial law), b) Police and c) TTC.

    Looking closely at the TTC, it receives the lowest subsidy of any transit system in the western world. Vancouver, Montreal, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, London, Paris (all of Europe), Melbourne, Sydney, Hong Kong and so on all received a subsidy from the National or State/Provincial governments significantly greater than Toronto to cover operating expenses. I don’t know the exact figures, but in previous years I understand while Toronto had to pay 85% of costs (approx.) from the fare box, other cities only needed to find 50 or 60 % from the fare box.

    So, although the City expenditures were high, not investing in the City would make things over the long-term worse as infrastructure crumbled even more than it is. Anyone who thinks there is significant fat in the system and that hundreds of millions of dollars can be found are fooling themselves. Considering that billions of dollars are taken by the Federal and Provincial governments from Toronto tax sources (sales, income taxes, etc…) and used to subsidize other parts of Canada, isn’t this an allocation problem not an expenditure problem? The City generates more than enough tax revenue to support itself – and create wealth to subsidize those who choose to live in small towns. Toronto doesn’t need all of the wealth it generates, but it certainly needs some of it back.

31. Paul,

    I don’t think that the city has been spending recklessly, save for Transit City. I do think that there is room for considerable savings though.

    Nonetheless, what I have always maintained is that one cannot have it both ways. It cannot increase spending at a 6% per year while increasing property taxes at half that amount. Keep in mind that property tax makes up only half of city revenue so the disparity is even worse.

    Yes Toronto is a big city, and therefore has a lot of expenses. Yet that is not reflected in the residential property class burden (the opposite for all other property classes). Using 2006 data from the Municipal Performance Measurement Program it shows that Toronto spent $8,422 per household (residential class) in 2006. Yet the average household paid only $2100 in property tax. On the other hand Mississauga and the region of Peel combined, spent $3,848.29 per household with taxes averaging $2,600 per household (residential class). This contrast is shared with every other municipality in the province. Toronto spends more and charges less, and cries poor.

    I have always been clear. Toronto residential property class (that excludes renters) pay far too little, while the other classes pay far too much. It is no coincidence though that the class paying the least dominates the voter turnout.

32. So Bruce and Paul think Miller is wondeful because he will spend, spend and spend without regard for whether there is the money. I completely agree that we need to spend but only if we are honest and in control of what we are spending which is not the case with Miller. The Mayor has a picture on his wall of Tommy Douglas who balanced the budget during the depression in Saskatewan before introducing medicare. Tommy is rolling over in his grave thinking that someone as fiscally iresponsible as Miller is abusing his heritage.

33. Bruce,

    One of the fallacies in urban planning is the simplistic view that an expanding tax base automatically provides extra revenue. Along with adding residents comes additional expenses to keep the same service levels. Of course there are savings via economies of scale but they would only be realized once the initial cost is covered. As I list in my post above, any savings would be infinitesimal compared to the built in shortfall.

    So for every new household the city adds its expenditures must rise by an average of $ 8,400 to keep service levels the same. On average the city will receive $2,100 (using 2006 figures) in property tax, add in user fees, Provincial and Federal Grants, plus other income like rental fee and permit and TTC fares, etc and the shortfall remains.

    The last time I looked that the issue I came up with a shortfall of $3,787 per year per household (2.55 persons)

34. I will also note that my experience with John Lornic in this and past postings is very similar to my direct confrontations with the Mayor. He will not address my arguments for fear of exposure of failed misinformed pretence. Going forward, if John wants to have any credibility in his postings he will address my positions directly instead of questioning those who support my comments. This is a fun slap down, full out confrontation between you and me John, about your obsequious fawning over your hero the Mayor that pervades your commentary and discraces your pretence of journalist independence.
    The start of future discussions is the end of your article where you expose your bias by stating that Miller is a man of “brains, integrity and vision” done in by those of lesser quality. This is journalistic crap. But more fundamentaly, I agree that the Mayor has brains, which are a valuable tool to deceive, I will agree that he has vision, however misguided, but state that he is lacking in integrity or for use of other words, virtue and truthfulness. So let us begin the logical struggle for integrity between the esteemed Mayor/Journalist and me, the construction worker.

35. “They’ve lost 5 weeks of pay, just shy of 10% of the annual salary – the increase is less than that.”

    According to my morning paper a good chunk of that was made back over the weekend. I guess a public holiday is a good one to pick if you’re going to engineer a return to work with a Final Deadline.

    I see Miller took a swipe at Ootes (Mel’s no2 remember) over the fact that Mel hadn’t done anything about sick days and in some ways you can see his point – when you’re freezing property tax one trick you can do is offer a benefit a future mayor will have to consider how to fund.

    But as Ootes pointed out the Province didn’t allow the City to reach an endgame when they legislated the City back to work so the Pope wouldn’t have to hold his nose.

36. To defend the deal achieved with the unions is one thing. To defend the Mayor’s performance during this whole mess is another matter. Many of those who try to defend the Mayor on the basis that this is probably the best deal the City was likely to achieve (such as the author of this article as well as “gutsy girls” AKA “brown-nosers” Janet and Shelley) gloss over the fact that the two issues are separate.

    Yeah, I would agree that this is deal was the best that could be achieved by the City at this stage — and the fairest for all sides. But I also think that the Mayor’s performance as deplorable, disgusting, destructive of public values, deceitful (etc.). Sorry but I do think that he’s guilty of more than just “incautiously over-selling the substance of the deal”, as the author of this piece so kindly puts it.

    Yeah, it’s not realistic for anyone to think that a perk such as the “sick-day bank” is gotten rid of in one go. That’s not how things work and most people know that. But the Mayor lead the city (and the public) into the longest strike in Toronto’s history on the promise of doing away with this perk. But from the get-go the Mayor encouraged that unrealistic expectation; that promise is why many many citizens to put up with the weeks of disruption and inconvenience caused by the strike. Once again, you have a situation of the Mayor promising the moon, failing to deliver, and then trying to justify what was achieved as the best possible outcome. I think much of the anger is not so much a result of the actual deal but from the fact that many people feel they’ve been taken in by this Mayor’s promises.

    As for the author’s comment that CUPE would not have accepted the deal achieved prior to the strike, I don’t buy that. I’m sure the City knew it would never achieve the long-shot of getting rid of the “sick-day bank” — basically, the weeks of disruption endured during the strike were about saving the City some money by not having to pay union salaries…. oh, and also of course about improving the Mayor’s brand/appeal for the 2010 election.

    Yeah, I would agree with the author that “negotiations often involves staking long-shot positions”. But achieving those positions has less to do with gambling as it does with acting in a manner that is consistent with the position one takes, ie has “integrity” with one’s stated position.

    Yeah, I would agree with those who say Toronto has a fiscal problem not entirely of its own making. It’s bigger problem is that we have a Council lead by a Mayor who wants to pick and chose when the City is in a fiscal crisis (union negotiations, going cap in hand to the province and the feds, road repairs, new fees for services previously covered by tax base) and when it is not (aggressive new hiring, costly recycling programs, increasing City funding share for streetcars, development fees, etc.). Why is the latter a bigger problem? Because it weakens/destroys the City’s case with the feds, the province, and its union.

    One final note, what was perhaps most disappointing in the Mayor’s performance was his willingness to use the recession and fiscal crisis to grandstand against CUPE members. In doing so, he unleashed a level of anti-union/anti-labor rhetoric than is perhaps angrier than anything I’ve ever seen. I’m sure that he and his advisors think he had to do this to improve his chances for the next election. But it’s a very destructive move, especially with respect to any sense of shared civic values. One expects this behaviour from right-wing hacks bent on privatization, not a former NDP candidate.

37. Miller? Integrity and vision? You gotta be kidding… unless raising taxes to buy those silly countdown stoplights while swimming pools are shut down, and banning target shooting and dogs on the beach instead of dealing with real social problems count as vison. Even Mel Lastman was a better mayor- at least he was so feckless he didn’t mess things up too badly.