Outside workers of CUPE Local 416 have ratified a new contract with the City that gives them a five percent increase over four years. Seems okay. They number 5,400, and importantly, they do garbage removal. Workers in Local 79 are still engaged in a so-called work-to–rule although this action seems to have as many forms as the Toronto Star has stories. It is not fully clear what is required but it is apparently not money. Tim Maguire, the president of the local, talks of his members not being asked to do things that are not in their job descriptions but there are no examples of that so far that would shock anyone. Some suspect it is an attempt to define jobs so narrowly that the City would have to add to the 23,000 (!) inside workers it already employs. As Mayor Tory has put it succinctly: “These are good jobs”. CBC
