How not to run a city Exhibit A - David Miller of Toronto

Local unions that encompassed members who performed garbage collection duties in the City of Toronto engaged in a strike throughout the summer. Parks were used to store garbage in 30C heat and day care centres werepicketed and closed. Direction from the city's managers, acting on the alleged instructions of councillors, permitted the strikers to harass members of the public who travelled to public dumps with their garbage. Police did nothing to enforce the freedom of movement of Canadian citizens, supposedly enshrined in the Charter of Rights. Perhaps, brighter minds than mine can explain the legal basis for a civic employee instructing citizens not to exercise their right to freedom of movement. Maybe, the better minds could also explain why non-union citizens should not pass through a picket line to conduct their own affairs. Undoubtedly, the unions are free to strike, but their freedom should not impinge upon the rights of others to act freely.

The core complaint of the unions was that their members wanted to be able to bank up to 18 days of sick leave per annum until they retire. In other words, they wanted an extra 18 "vacation" days paid for every year that they worked if they had not used these days because they were sick. My initial error was that I thought sick days were to be used for when one is sick and unable to work, however, the fearless and feckless Mayor David Miller worked it all out for everyone before moving on with his anti-car agenda.

Miller was upset that no one congratulated him for "settling" the strike. Miller managed to talk the unions down from demands for a 7.2% raise over 4 years to a mere 6% over 3 years and this less than magnificent achievement is a subject that should henceforth be included in business school studies. He managed to leave the unfunded sick day liability to fester for another administration, and he almost was able to set up an additional new funded sick day entitlement! The timing of Miller’s capitulation on the City’s behalf was just in time to ensure the strikers get overtime pay for working over the weekend of statutory holiday. Pure genius!

There was absolutely no point to the Mayor allowing a strike to go ahead if he was just going to give the unions all that they demanded. Why make the populace suffer for weeks if he was going to give in?

David Miller has been supported in his candidacies for mayor by certain unions ( let's call them CUPE Local 416 and 79 for example), whose members comprise most of the workforce of the city. CUPE employees were even seconded to his campaigns. David Miller and his cohorts “negotiated” with the unions and managed to settle on rises far above inflation, in recessionary times. There would appear to be a conflict of interest here.

The fabulous Mayor David Magnificent Miller refused to contemplate refunding 1/365th of increased property taxes for every day that his unionized support was on strike.

Somewhere, there must be a handbook of how to ruin a city, its finances and traffic flow by overtaxing the populace for niche feel-good schemes whilst producing less services. It has been implemented in cities across Europe, and David Miller should have a chapter devoted to him now.

Miller has now announced that he will not seek re-election. It will be interesting to see if CUPE give him a job.

Miller claimed that nobody won in the strike. Nobody won in the strike…er… except for Local 416 and 79.