In an attempt to deal with the dual issue of parents being stuck at home due to city daycare workers being on strike, and trash piling up around the city due to garbagemen being on strike, the City of Toronto has announced an innovative new ‘take your kids to pick up garbage day’ for this coming Monday. However, David Miller did remind Toronto citizens looking to capitalize on this opportunity that there really wasn’t anywhere for them to take the garbage they might pick up, thus his team would be following the kids and parents around to give them $10,000 fines if the garbage is placed anywhere other than their garages. When told that most people don’t have garages in this city, and many don’t even have yards, he noted the alternative option of parents just taking some of their 18 sick days, and whatever else they’ve banked over the years, to stay home for the duration of the strike. When reminded that the only people living on Toronto that have that option are those currently on strike, he reminded us “that’s why we created take your kid to pick up garbage’ day”, before fining a reporter $380 when a wrapper fell out of his pocket.

In a creative effort to bolster union finances heading into what could be a long and stinky painful strike, representatives for City of Toronto workers are asking recently laid off and unemployed people to send their benefit cheques directly to Local 416. As a union rep recently explained:

In these trying economic times, it is more important then ever that workers stand together and fight for the wages and benefits they deserve. And who better to understand the importance of this then the thousands of people in the city that have recently lost their jobs, or haven’t been able to find one in a long time? In turn, we are reaching out to this long disenfranchised group, and asking them to join our fight by signing over their unemployment or welfare checks directly to us. If workers and, er, those without work can unite in this way, we can stand strong and maintain our basic human right to, for example, be able to accumulate our sick days and receive multi-thousand dollar payouts just before we retire onto our gold-plated pension plan.

When queried about whether the union would consider giving up a few of these benefits to create new jobs for struggling workers and provide better service to the city during these trying times, he replied “I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you just said – you must be speaking Korean or something” before heading off to throw rocks at people trying to drop their kids off at now-closed day cares.

As the CBC reported yesterday, the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) has decided that, at a time when all signs point towards a long and painful recession and crippling budget deficits, they might as well turn down a big pay raise and go on strike. While this looks like complete and utter stupidity bad news for everyone involved, the ETFO spokesperson has pointed out the silver lining  – a strike could give what might be hundreds of thousands of newly unemployed parents something to do with all of their downtime. As this dimwit he recently went onto explain:

For many years, we have argued that a good education starts at home – notably when parents spend a lot of quality time with their children. And what better way to foster good home relationships than by going on strike at a time when hundreds of thousands of people might lose their jobs, so that kids can stay at home with their newly unemployed parents? Such is the brilliance of striking during the worst economic downturn in a generation. It’s not like those lazy bums will have anything better to do, and it’s important we take this opportunity to stand up for a good education system, fairness, and something else that I can’t remember but is surely very noble. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve had trouble getting back to work after my two week Christmas holiday, and March Break can creep up on you, then the strike will be right after that, and next thing you know it’s summer holidays – as you can imagine, I’ve got a lot to do in order to prepare for all that time off.