Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

There is a Toronto garbage strike going on right now. The Toronto garbage men receive a salary of $56,000 a year and have job benefits and security unrivaled in the private sector. They are demanding both increased wages and increased benefits and job security, and now inside Toronto City workers are on strike along with the outside workers so almost every public city service has been disrupted.

I understand the good that unions have done historically to help increase minimum wages and bring equality to the working class, but this is fundamentally wrong. This union is a vile version of anything positive they were in the past. Let's take a look at some of the facts that lay out the foundation of this particular garbage strike:

1. Garbage men and other unionized public sector worker are currently making far more than similar workers in the private sector. Not only that, but unskilled union labor is making more than skilled private labor.
2. Every dollar more that union workers get is a dollar taken away from a taxpayer (and thus a reduction in their income). This is not about equal pay or living wages — this is about greed and criminally increasing the quality of life of the unionized worker over the private worker. It is unbalanced, unjust, and it is an attempt to create a new “upper working class” which has no concern for worker's rights.
3. Because the city has contracted with the union to provide garbage service, they can not legally hire private contractors. As far as I'm concerned, the minute the garbage union ceased providing service, it broke the contract, and every last one of them deserves to be fired. If you don't do the job you are being paid to do, you don't deserve the job. If you don't like the wage or conditions, why did you take the job in the first place?
4. When the strike is over, the union workers will be paid double time or more to “catch up”. So every day they strike is a day they will eventually be paid even more than they'd be paid if they just went to work, essentially making it in their best interests to stay on strike and not come to a resolution.

Now I'd like to mention a few things about the tactics of this strike:

1. The dates were specifically chosen to coincide with Toronto's largest international tourist events. This is a corrupt action — unions are attacking private citizens and private businesses in Toronto in an attempt to sway the politicians. I hope it doesn't work, and I hope they're digging their own grave.
2. Union thugs are physically threatening and impeding private garbage pickup companies, even though they have no authority over them legally (and these companies operate at all times; it's not as if they're replacing union workers). Union websites give advice on the most effective way to threaten private workers, and recommend things like “picket at night as well”. What's next? Burning crosses on lawns?
3. Union thugs and strikers are physically threatening and hindering private citizens. Not only that, but they are specifically targeting citizens in expensive cars (I guess class-ism is OK when it goes the other way around, right?). Yeah, it's real funny to block and threaten the girl in the Porsche — she's really going to sympathize with your lazy ass sitting outside smoking, bringing home more money than she does, and laughing about it with your friends as you get paid to terrorize the public.
4. Union thugs and strikers sabotaged all automated systems before leaving work, and continue to do so. As all Trekkies know, the word sabotage comes from workers in the industrial revolution who threw their sabot (wooden shoes) into the machines in an attempt to keep their jobs. It didn't work then, and it won't work now.

I certainly support someone's right to unionize and strike, and I believe in a fair living wage… but that's not what's going on here. Under no circumstances do I support a union's right to use the public as pawns, nor do I support them criminally strong-arming their way into harming the public in an attempt to achieve an unjustly high wage for their members, nor to I support them stealing from the public.

Unions no longer care about social justice. Sure, that's the banner they fly, but unions are protectionist criminal organizations that have zero interest in anyone but themselves. This union deserves to be broken, and this workforce deserves to be replaced with private contracts — not because private contracts are better, but because the union's corruption has made it the only option.

So… If you see these people on strike, don't honk in support. They're just another in the long line of corrupt organizations out to steal from you, and be given handouts they have not worked for. They are a part of the problem at this point. Vote to break this union, vote to break this strike, and if you are threatened by a union thug or striker, retaliate to the full extent of the law. This is not a just action on their part, and they need to get this message.