Toronto coping with garbage strike, mayor tells CNN

TORONTO – Toronto Mayor David Miller took to the international airwaves Thursday to counter fears that an 18-day-old strike by civic workers has turned his city into a stinking dump that would turn off tourists.

In a live interview, Miller told CNN host Ali Velshi – whose parents live in the city – that Toronto is coping remarkably well despite close to three weeks without curbside garbage collection and said that the city has managed to put on a number of events despite the picket lines.

He cited recent gay Pride celebrations and the Honda Indy this weekend as reasons to visit Toronto.

Miller insisted that Torontonians have been taking responsibility for their trash, residents are dropping off their waste at contained sites and cleanup crews are out sweeping the streets and picking up litter.

But CNN showed video of garbage piles and overstuffed litter bins as he spoke.

Velshi, a Toronto native, cited his parents’ experiences, crossing picket lines and seeing raccoons in the dump sites in parks.

Meanwhile the leaders of two striking civic unions said Thursday they were still waiting for any sign of the "flexibility" Miller and councillors said they would extend at the bargaining table.

Some 30,000 city employees have been on the picket lines for weeks and garbage is pungently soiling the city’s streets and some parks, where bagfuls of trash are being dumped.

Ann Dembinski, president of Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 79, representing 24,000 indoor workers, and Mark Ferguson, president of CUPE Local 416, representing 6,000 outdoor staff, joined a rally in Nathan Phillips Square Thursday where the United Steelworkers held a barbecue for its members.

Ferguson called the city’s offer – reportedly a zero wage increase the first year and one per cent the second year – a "race to the bottom" that threatens to "gut" employees’ collective agreement.

He said he wasn’t buying the mayor’s tough talk that "the world has changed" and that looking to past agreements with transit, police or fire unions is unrealistic in these economic times.

Dembinski said the unions met with a mediator Thursday morning, who passed the message along to the city that the unions are prepared to negotiate a settlement, but that the so-called flexibility from the city ought to include dropping concessions.

About the only thing the unions and the city agree on is that they don’t want arbitration.