Wednesday 29 July 2009

Banked Sick Days Frozen, Toronto To Save $Millions (MSM Misleads Public In Toronto On Issue of Banked Sick Days)

TheStar.com | GTA | Banked sick days in city offer
The title, todays poll on the Star's site, and the article seems to stress the point that workers will continue to bank sick days. This is very misleading.
In the article, you can see that new workers will not be able to bank sick days and that current workers will have their banking of sick days frozen to what they have already. This means that they will no longer be able to bank any more sick days from here on. The Star reported on the freeze of sick days yesterday as well

Here is the quote from the article:
New employees will not have the option of banking unused sick days. Current employees can cash out their banked days at a discount and move into a new short-term disability plan, or may have their sick bank frozen to draw on for days that may not be covered by the new plan.


And the Globe and Mail completely leaves out this point and claims that they can continue to accrue credits

The MSM has been attacking the unions stance and the mayor David Miller's handling of the issue from day one. They don't like the mayor and they would like to see a more conservative person in the mayor position. So, they are doing all they can to smear the current mayor. But, he has done a good job in handling the strike. The city has been far cleaner than during the last summer garbage workers strike (which went on for a shorter period). And, the city has managed to stop the workers from continuing to bank new sick days - which is what the city wanted all along. This will save Toronto millions of dollars.
The headline, more realistically should have been Banked Sick Days Frozen, Toronto To Save $Millions

UPDATE
Okay, so the details are finally released.

Current employees can either continue to collect and bank sick days (the collecting is not frozen at this point for these people, contrary to what was reported in the Toronto Star over the past 2 days)
Or
They can cash what they have in now and switch to the new short-term plan (which does not include banking sick days)

New employees will be enrolled in the short-term sick leave plan and will not be able to bank sick days.

Here is a link to the agreement.

Still, this phases out the banking of sick days and it seems like a number of current employees will opt for cashing out and joining the short-term plan.

Prior to the strike, the unions did not offer this, nor, would they agree. If the strike had gone to binding arbitration (like, if the workers were legislated back to work by the province - which probably would have happened with a more conservative mayor), the city would not have gained this phasing out of sick day banking, but would have been stuck with it for all employees, current and new.

So, hats off to Miller and his team for accomplishing this phase out for the city.



1 comment:

Toronto real estate broker said...

Finally a clear and obvious statement. It was quite difficult to find out the actual deal details, since each article claims something different. Well, good for Toronto's budget. Best, Elli.