Our wonderful mayor of Toronto, David Miller, had a slam dunk with the strike of locals 79 and 416. The entire populace seemed to be behind him in eliminating ridiculously generous benefits that nobody should be entitled to and taxpayers shouldn't have to pay for.
The city has been faring quite well with people managing their own garbage and everyone doing their parts to make do and leave the workers on strike until they gave in and accepted what were clearly reasonable offers by the city.
Even the strikers I've spoken with wanted to accept the deals being offered and get back to work. While anyone would like to be over-compensated for their work as much as possible, it seemed that only the union leaders felt that it was worth striking over and somehow deserved.
With all that in mind, you'd have expected the city to hold fast on their offers or perhaps even begin to reduce them over time. All indications were that if it came to a vote by the union members, they would overwhelmingly support it and all would be well.
And then the Mayor rolled over and gave in, for reasons I don't suppose we'll ever really know.
Regular readers here already know that Miller hasn't done anything good for the residents of Toronto and has only hurt and cost us more and more as each month goes by. This seemed like his shining opportunity to show some backbone and do something good for the city, and there didn't appear to be any way for him to screw it up. And now he has.
Good for you, David Miller. It would have been a shame if your time as mayor couldn't be defined as a complete calamity. Why mess that up with something successful near the end of your term?
There's still a slim chance that enough city councellors may have enough sense to turn down this agreement, but that generally isn't the sort of thing that happens around here. The mayor will get his way, the city will lose, and life will go on.
Too bad. This one seemed like a no-brainer. Of course, it would take a no-brainer mayor to miss that.