Results tagged “cityworkersstrike”

On the second full day of the city workers' strike—June 23—Torontoist photographer Christopher Drost set up a camera rig in a window at the corner of Runnymede and Annette streets. Set to shoot one photo every ten minutes (and one every two minutes once the deals to end the strike were in place), the camera looked out towards the street and over two waste bins, one on the south and one on the north side of the street, snapping shots all day and all night for the whole rest of the strike.

Well, not really. It will live on in political grandstanding and pre-election speeches and in all manner of rhetorical asides for months to come. But, in real, day-to-day terms, it has come to a merciful end. By two 21–17 votes, after a day-long debate, City Council has just approved contracts with CUPE locals 79 and 416.

       

With agreements with both striking unions fully agreed on and ratified, the City's service resumption plan fully in place and workers returning to work, today—barring a disaster at Toronto City Council—will be the final day of Strike Watch, which saw Torontoist's photographers checking in on garbage and recycling bins around the city throughout the strike, an attempt to follow the tangible effects of the strike and complement our other coverage.

680 News is reporting that, as expected, CUPE Local 416 has ratified the City's offer and will return to work just after midnight tonight, meaning the City's strike resumption plan is still a go. (CUPE Local 79 ratified their offer yesterday, but said they would not return to work until 416 had done so as well.) There's only one final vote left to seal the strike's fate: City Council's, tomorrow. And all indications are that that will be very, very interesting.

The City has released their service resumption plan, detailing any and every service affected by the strike and when that service will resume, pending CUPE Local 416's ratification of their deal with the City (and approval of those deals at the special City Council meeting tomorrow, which we'll be keeping a close eye on). Of particular note:
• nearly all City-run offices re-open tomorrow, Friday;
• child-care facilities re-open on Tuesday;
• regular residential curb-side garbage collection, as well as collection for "Apartments/condominiums and apartments above businesses" resumes starting Tuesday, with pickup according to the regular pickup schedule;

With a tentative agreement reached and partially ratified, we'll be glad to stop accumulating photos of accumulated trash—soon. Torontoist's photographers have been checking in on garbage and recycling bins around the city throughout the strike, an attempt to follow the tangible effects of the strike and complement our other coverage.

The Globe is reporting that CUPE Local 79 members have ratified the four contracts necessary to make their deal with the City official; now, the date of the strike's last breath depends on two groups: CUPE Local 416, who were supposed to hold a ratification vote on their offer today, and without whom CUPE Local 79 will not return to work; and city councillors, who will vote on the deal themselves at a just-finalized special council meeting on Friday morning. Unsurprisingly, all attention is on Mayor David Miller, especially now that details of the tentative settlement between the city and CUPE Local 79 are out (here's a PDF, hosted on the Globe's site)—an agreement that includes the much-contested sick day bank and cash-out intact, though only for workers who already have the sick leave plan (according to the terminology of the tentative agreement, it's being "grandparent[ed]").

With a tentative agreement reached and the deal waiting to be ratified, we'll be glad to stop accumulating photos of accumulated trash—soon. Torontoist's photographers have been checking in on garbage and recycling bins around the city throughout the strike, an attempt to follow the tangible effects of the strike and complement our other coverage.

With a tentative agreement reached and the deal waiting to be ratified, we'll be glad to stop accumulating photos of accumulated trash—soon. Torontoist's photographers have been checking in on garbage and recycling bins around the city throughout the strike, an attempt to follow the tangible effects of the strike and complement our other coverage.

It's not just you, Random Internet Guy.

With a tentative agreement reached and the deal waiting to be ratified, we'll be glad to stop accumulating photos of accumulated trash—soon. Torontoist's photographers have been checking in on garbage and recycling bins around the city throughout the strike, an attempt to follow the tangible effects of the strike and complement our other coverage.

It's official: both unions for inside and outside workers have announced a deal with the City of Toronto, hopefully putting the final nail in the coffin of this summer's notorious strike. The ratification vote will take place on Wednesday, and CUPE Local 79 representative Ann Dembinski says that picket lines will remain in effect until then. "Labour relations have been set back for decades," she said in a press conference today. "It will not be the same for years to come."

After thirty-five full days, the city workers' strike is one big step closer to coming to an end, as the City and one of the two striking unions—CUPE Local 416—reached a "basis for a deal," according to the Star, citing CUPE Local 416 President Mark Ferguson (who 680News quotes as clarifying that "this is not a signed deal by any means"). The announcement came about fifty minutes ago, after overnight negotiations held between the City and the two striking unions at the Delta Toronto East Hotel. There's still CUPE Local 79, who placed no midnight ultimatum on a deal but who represent almost four times the number of employees as 416, and with which a deal, tentative or otherwise, has not yet been announced. And, again according to the Star, once that happens, CUPE members will still have to vote to pass the deal before going back to work.

WHERE: Dovercourt Road, near Dundas Street West.

WHERE: Keele Street and Glenlake Avenue.

WHERE: Bremner Boulevard and Lower Simcoe Street, and Queen's Quay West and Rees Street.

Nope, no hundreds more waste drop-off locations; not yet. For now, the City's continuing to keep their numbers low and has announced today the closure of two locations at 7 p.m. tonight (Caledonia Park and North Toronto Memorial Arena), and the opening of two new ones at 7 a.m. tomorrow: Amesbury Arena (155 Culford Road) and Otter Creek Centre (140 Cheritan Avenue). Expect otter chaos.

"Nothing ever ends," the bright blue Doctor Manhattan tells Adrian Veidt towards the end of Watchmen, the seminal graphic novel about costumed heroes. Consistently emotionally unaffected, Doctor Manhattan thinks in purely logical terms, and Veidt, the world's smartest man, has (spoiler alert!) just killed millions in an elaborate plot intended to rescue a deteriorating world. For the first time, though, Veidt seems in some small way insecure about whether that end justified the means, and asks Doctor Manhattan if he "did the right thing," because "It all worked out in the end." "'In the end'?" Doctor Manhattan replies, "Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends."

Walking down Spadina Avenue between College and Dundas streets, you might completely miss them, so well do they blend in with the street scene. But stop by one of Chinatown's many municipal trash bins, let your eyes wander up slightly, and you might see one, attached to a utility pole, doing its best imitation of a yellow-jacket. Chinatown has some new signage, and the gist seems to be that you really must drop that bag of miscellaneous rotting crud someplace else, no matter what language you speak.

WHERE: Trinity Bellwoods Park.

Are you suffering ill effects from the temporary disruption of your yearly prescription of trips to the Toronto Islands via the Sam McBride or the other ferries? Do you miss riding your bicycle from Hanlan’s Point to Ward’s Island, hearing the sound of children playing at Centreville, or other island-centric activities? True, you can hop on a water taxi or find your own means of crossing the harbour, but those methods of transport cannot handle the crowds the islands are accustomed to seeing at this time of year. Fear not if you are suffering withdrawal symptoms (or feel, as the blood-red headline in yesterday’s Sun shouted, that CUPE killed your summer)—cultural archivist Retrontario provides you with a minute’s glimpse of how the islands normally look at this time of year. This provincial ad first aired around 1980 and enticed visitors from all corners of the province to check out, in the narrator’s words, “a walk on the grass kind of place.”

WHERE: Lake Shore Boulevard West and Burlington Avenue.

WHERE: Yonge Street and Eglinton Avenue.

One of the less expected results of the city workers' strike, about to enter its second month, has been that its most visible effect—you know, the garbage on city streets—has not accumulated consistently across neighbourhoods, even neighbourhoods adjacent to one another. Our daily Strike Watch feature has demonstrated as much: while some stretches of the city's main streets seem to only get progressively dirtier, others seem to have their level of cleanliness ebb and flow, and others seem to have never gotten near dirty in the first place. While some credit for the cleanliness should go to the elusive but much-heralded management staff tasked with cleaning up parks and streets, some of the city's Business Improvement Areas (or BIAs)—the organizations that watch over commercial strips across the city—have been quietly stepping in and up, too.

WHERE: Dundas Street West and Kensington Avenue.

WHERE: King Street West and Bay Street and Wellington Street West between York Street and Bay Street.

WHERE: Bay Street and King Street West.

WHERE: Keele Street and Sheppard Avenue West.

We’ve heard a fair bit about the state of Toronto’s parks during the current municipal strike. Most tales have tended toward the negative, from fears of contamination stemming from temporary garbage depots to the unattractive aesthetic state that some green spaces have fallen into. But what if the withholding of certain services led to a positive effect on the local environment?