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Extra, Extra: TTC Union Ads, RoboCop Shots, and Ford on YouTube

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Every weekday’s end, we collect just about everything you ought to care about or ought not miss.

  • ATU Local 113, the TTC workers’ union, has rolled out a snazzy new ad campaign designed to show Toronto how great its members are. In an interview with the Star, union president Bob Kinnear implied that his organization has spent around $1 million on the publicity push. The video spot (embedded above) is being shown both on TV and during movie previews. It’s intended to weaken public support for contracting out TTC jobs, but it’s so slick and stylish that it might end up having the opposite effect. Who’s going to go out of their way to sympathize with a special interest that has enough money to put together something like this?

  • The RoboCop remake is being filmed in Toronto, and BlogTO has some shots of a day’s activity on the set. The new-fangled robo suit looks okay, we guess.
  • Here is a video of Mayor Rob Ford apparently refusing to give pizza money to some (admittedly obnoxious) high-school kids, who he advises to go play football instead. We’ll say this for the man: he’s pretty consistent with his whole no-handouts-except-for-football-equipment M.O. [Via Matt Elliott]

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Comments

  • Anonymous

    The ATU is shooting itself in the foot there. It’s easy to argue (and not be entirely incorrect) that the one million dollar bill for that ad was paid for by TTC riders, in fare increases and more raises-and-other-things-we-don’t-like-grumble-grumble to union employees.

    • Winkee

      How is that easy to argue? The ad was paid for out of union dues, not out of the TTC expenses. Last time I checked the taxpayer has no right to dictate to workers what they can do with their hard earned income. The same people who would grumble about the union commercials I’m sure have no problem with TTC spending far more than that on their annual ad campaigns, or even the Harper cons using public funds to push partisan ads such as Canada’s economic action plan etc.
      Statements like this just feed the idiocy and obscure what is quite obviously an ongoing class warfare that the unions have just started meekly defending themselves in.

      • Anonymous

        Union dues from pay cheques that get bigger and bigger as TTC riders are told to pay more and more – it’s easy to argue because it’s such bad optics, as they say, that any technical explanation (such as yours above) is obliterated by Sun-like headlines screaming “TTC Union Buys $1 Million Ad, As Another Fare Hike Looms” or “Union Spends $1 Million Asking For a Raise”, etc. Class warfare or not, I wouldn’t want to be in the position of defending this.

        (And the anti-union types probably would complain that the TTC “wastes money” promoting itself, but would give Harper a pass because they voted for him.)

        • Winkee

          But the fact that people will perform logical gymnastics to make an expenditure fit into their narrow definition of wasteful does not make it an easy or a good argument.
          Besides ignoring the fact that TTC fares are not going up because of rapidly increasing salaries (2% a year when they volunteered for a pay freeze instead of “bigger and bigger pay cheques”), which go to the ATU’s ad budget exclusively, but because of an utter lack of financial support from all levels of government and an artificially enforced 10% budget reduction. I’m not saying I think everyone believes this or they should believe it, but lets not portray ignorance and blind ideological nonsense as reasonable or acceptable arguments and something that you are saying should dictate the way workers or unions conduct their campaigns. Those class warriors at the Sun and their ilk are going to hate whatever the ATU does, so it seems kind of redundant and irrelevant to say that blind ideologues are going to be angry that their ideological opposites are spending money on an ad campaign.

          • Anonymous

            “lets not portray ignorance and blind ideological nonsense as reasonable or acceptable arguments”

            Union-baiting extremism across the politcal spectrum is the new normal. All our economic woes are caused by unions, and only by unions.

            Without unions, we’d have rampant, dog-eat-dog and the devil take the hindmost capitalism.

            Oh wait, we do anyway.

          • Anonymous

            The new norm? I guess it’s “new” to you. You’re about 700 years late to that party.

          • Anonymous

            Those who google ancient history are condemned to repeat it.

  • http://twitter.com/Brandon_Quigley Brandon Quigley

    That’s not a transit ad… *this* is a transit ad: http://youtu.be/N_Si6Jg8-ds

  • http://twitter.com/nathanng Nathan Ng

    For general amusement, I have remixed the main commercial as a horror movie trailer. Worth a rental…? http://youtu.be/AkJqYSIjh2c

    • Anonymous

      Wow, the mashup works surprisingly well. I wonder if the TTC would cooperate with someone interested in shooting a movie about a subway maintenance worker gone criminally insane. Probably not.