By Paul Weinberg
TORONTO, Jul 18 2002 (IPS)

A two-week strike by municipal workers in Canada’s largest city that left rotting garbage strewn along streets and piled in neighbourhood parks fits a profile of labour unrest world-wide in recent years.

Developing countries have been especially prone to work stoppages and labour protest because donor governments and international financial institutions have often insisted they deregulate and privatise public services.

Some 10 million Indian workers walked off the job in April to protest privatisation and labour deregulation, following on the heels of eight million employees who struck in mid-2001, according to international trade union tracker Labour Start.

Municipal workers throughout South Africa began counting the costs – including some 23.7 million dollars in lost wages – of a three-week strike over wages, work conditions, and job security that ended Tuesday, media there report.

Privatisation efforts also have met loud opposition from South Korea to Indonesia and Nigeria to Bolivia.

The public assets and services at stake vary from ports and telecommunications to health, wastewater and water, the attempted privatisation of which has drawn high-profile resistance from workers and communities in Bolivia as in Canada.

Local government in Toronto, a city of 2.5 million people a few hour’s drive from the U.S. border, had planned to contract out city positions in garbage collection, planning, inspections, parks, forestry and water to private companies.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) in turn was fighting to guarantee job protection for as many workers as possible.

The resulting confrontation was Canada’s largest-ever municipal strike, occurring just weeks before Pope John Paul II is scheduled to arrive here.

After a back-to-work order from the provincial government, the two sides have entered a conciliation process that includes professional arbitrators.

“Nobody can be happy when we have back to work legislation (but) certainly we may be on the road to resuming something and getting these issues resolved. That’s our hope,” says Ann Dembinski, who heads CUPE local 79, representing the city’s inside workers. It was one of two locals to strike.

The employer is less optimistic. “I am concerned, though, with the kind of deal that will be struck by the arbitrator,” says Toronto councillor Gloria Lindsay Luby.

“I hope they understand the bigger issues that the city has, as far as being able to ensure that our services are as effective and efficient as possible.”

Till now, Toronto had avoided the major selling off or contracting out of municipal services commonly seen at the local level around the world.

But faced with a budget crunch, stemming from a controversial promise to freeze property taxes (the main source of urban revenue) and the downloading of social and housing responsibilities by the senior government, Mayor Mel Lastman has abandoned his centrist position and sought to reduce costs by contracting out of a raft of services.

International water companies like American Water Services Inc. (a subsidiary of German-based RWE) are eying the lucrative potential of managing Toronto’s large water and wastewater operation on a long-term contract basis.

And a powerful firm with links to Canada’s financial community and the Ontario government, Toronto-based Borealis Capital, has been seeking to establish a private transit system using under-used train tracks crisscrossing the city.

Some critics suggest that Lastman and his allies on city council are taking advantage of a latent resentment among some citizens in the private sector towards anyone in a relatively secure government job by claiming that CUPE was seeking “jobs for life” for its members.

A provision in the existing contract states that after 10 years of service municipal employees cannot lose their jobs.

But a research director for the Centre for Social Justice says the city effectively turned the political debate during the strike away from the merits of privatisation.

Put on the defensive, CUPE might have argued that other workplaces would also benefit from a similar form of employment security, states labour consultant John Anderson. “We should be trying to extend those kinds of things that have been won by other workers.”

In fact, says former mayor John Sewell, “in most situations municipalities do not save money by contracting out. They usually make a mess of it.”

As evidence, Anderson points to a current scandal involving Lastman’s former treasurer and the loss of millions of dollars after the city decided to contract out the purchasing, servicing and leasing of computer hardware equipment and software.

“Most private offices don’t contract out that function,” he says.

Linda McQuaig, an author and columnist for the Toronto Star, argues that privatisation and the resulting job insecurity is not inevitable.

“Should we necessarily give in to the corporate vision of a world where workers are gradually stripped of all the protections they won in hard-fought battles over the last century?” she asks.

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