Watching the local news reports of striking picketers holding up residents at Toronto’s temporary dump sites - forcing homeowners to wait 15 minutes per car, making people walk their garbage into the site, etc. – I find myself wondering just how stupid they are.
I know what they - in their limited intellectual capacity – think are trying to do. By harassing and blocking citizens, they believe that this will put pressure on the city. And they are, but not the way they think. When Torontonians hear stories of little old ladies being subject to verbal insults and people with physical disabilities forced to hobble across the picket lines with their garbage bags, taxpayers get angry – but at them, not the city. They don’t say to themselves, “Why doesn’t the city cave into the strikers’ demands, thereby allowing them to keep cashing in their accumulated unused sick days when they retire. After all, it’s a small price to pay for labour peace.” No. Instead they say, “What pampered princes. Who the hell gets to cash in their unused sick days, and who else gets 18 paid sick days a year? Screw ‘em. Order them back or privatize garbage collection!” That’s what they think.
What the strikers don’t understand – because they are full of indignation about their own rights – is that the highest court in the land is the court of public opinion. This is the court that ultimately decides matters like this and it is a court from which there is no appeal.
What union members should be doing is helping people drop off their garbage. Instead of yelling at the little old lady who showed up at the dumpsite in her 1975 Dodge Dart, they should help her unload the garbage from her trunk so that she goes home thinking, “What a nice young man, helping me get rid of my garbage.” That’s how you win the public relations war.
By behaving like overpaid hooligans, they present the worst possible face to the public. They make themselves look like the kind of people you want to see get it good and hard
When the same thing happened in London, Ontario a few years ago dump sites were setup and the public loved them so much that permanent sites were setup in the summer months after the strike was over. All the dump sites were manned by management and the public never had to get out of their cars. There were packers setup and the garbage was thrown straight into them. I don't recall any holdups at these sites.
Posted by: WTF | July 20, 2009 at 01:41 PM
Hi WTF:
I guess that is what happens when the mayor thinks he represents the people more than the unions.
Posted by: Cincinnatus | July 20, 2009 at 07:58 PM
You're giving them ideas.
The next thing you know, they'll be providing good service ALL the time, so as to fool us into giving in to their demands when there's a strike.
Posted by: WiseGuy | July 20, 2009 at 08:25 PM