{"id":5843,"date":"2009-08-04T09:00:55","date_gmt":"2009-08-04T13:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=5843"},"modified":"2013-01-21T13:14:58","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T18:14:58","slug":"john-lorinc-piling-on-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2009\/08\/04\/john-lorinc-piling-on-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"JOHN LORINC: Piling on, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The tawdry conclusion to the Great Strike of 2009 brought to mind those brawls I recall from middle school. You remember the ones I mean, when the over-sized, somewhat ungainly kid finds himself encircled by a gang of increasingly emboldened antagonists who are spoiling for a fight.<\/p>\n

Whoopf, there’s the first kick. Look, he’s down. Give him another shot<\/a>.\u00a0 A smack to the head. A boot to the nuts.\u00a0 Cool, someone’s brought a bat. Even the big kid’s erstwhile friends (Joe\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6) drift over to get a punch in.<\/p>\n

Whack<\/a>.
\nWhack<\/a>.
\nWhack<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A couple of gutsy girls (Shelley, Janet\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6) may try to fend off the bullies, but with little success. After all, there’s nothing that draws a crowd like a one-sided mauling. Ugly, primal, blood-thirsty fun.<\/p>\n

And we all participated. Do you feel good?<\/p>\n

Perhaps David Miller was guilty of incautiously over-selling the substance of the deal, especially the business about eliminating the sick day bank. But if spin was an impeachable offense, we’d need to rely on Athenian-style direct democracy because no modern politician could survive that particular test of rhetorical purity.<\/p>\n

Yet the media’s leading commentators almost unanimously downplayed the confounding information that surfaced in council on Friday, details that mess up the sell-out\/cave-in\/fuck-up story line that has now solidified into received wisdom.<\/p>\n

As the city’s chief negotiator Bruce Anderson explained, council’s labour relations committee agreed during in camera sessions to the grandfathering of the sick day bank as a viable negotiating mandate as far back as last fall.<\/p>\n

The pundits, Monday morning quarterbacks all, have for days stumbled over one another to condemn Miller for pledging to eliminate the sick day bank at the outset of the strike and then failing to deliver. Why, some asked archly, did he not just offer up the grandfathering deal from the get-go and save us all the trouble?<\/p>\n

Answer: CUPE wouldn’t have agreed to it.<\/p>\n

The reality is that negotiating is always about staking long-shot positions in order to bargain your way towards a final offer that’s never revealed early on.<\/p>\n

We all do it when we buy a house or a car. But we somehow convinced ourselves that the vastly more complex task of renegotiating a collective agreement with a powerful union is really about platitudes — lines in the sand, and all that.<\/p>\n

So where are we now? On the edge of a cliff, as The Globe’s Marcus Gee has warned in stentorian tones? New York City circa the late 1970s?<\/p>\n

Hardly. The city came away with a more affordable wage deal than just about every other recent public sector collective agreement. And it took the first step in the long move to eliminate an archaic and costly perk. I’m not seeing failure here.<\/p>\n

Still, we’ve left Miller’s bloodied head in Nathan Phillips Square as a warning to all those with brains and integrity and a vision for cities that they should keep clear of local politics. As the proverb goes, we’ll soon get what we wished for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The tawdry conclusion to the Great Strike of 2009 brought to mind those brawls I recall from middle school. You remember the ones I mean, when the over-sized, somewhat ungainly kid finds himself encircled by a gang of increasingly emboldened antagonists who are spoiling for a fight. Whoopf, there’s the first kick. Look, he’s down.Continue reading “JOHN LORINC: Piling on, Part II”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4051,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[12814,12815,12812,106,1030,12451,12813,115,564,12522],"class_list":["post-5843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-bloodied-head","tag-bruce-anderson","tag-chief-negotiator","tag-city-strike-2009","tag-john-lorinc","tag-marcus-gee","tag-modern-politician","tag-nathan-phillips-square","tag-new-york-city","tag-sick-day-bank"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nJOHN LORINC: Piling on, Part II - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2009\/08\/04\/john-lorinc-piling-on-part-ii\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"JOHN LORINC: Piling on, Part II - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The tawdry conclusion to the Great Strike of 2009 brought to mind those brawls I recall from middle school. 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