TORONTO – All is not lost in Toronto during this year’s municipal workers strike. Two young men from Prince Edward Island have used their entrepreneurial spirit to help out Torontonians who are swamped by their garbage now that municipal workers are on strike.
Strike Garbage photo (source: globeandmail.com )
Bill Hennessey decided to start up a controversial garbage collection business when 24,000 city employees went on strike last week. His main help is his brother Bob, who flew up from Charlottetown to help out. The strike means that garbage is piling up, daycares are closed, and Canada Day has been cancelled. The only thing spared from the carnage was this weekend’s Pride Parade, which Mayor David Miller hired private contractors to run, ensuring that it would survive the strike.
Some people have likened Hennessey’s idea to scab work. Others are quite supportive, glad that their garbage is being removed, or just happy that there’s a private contractor willing to do the dirty work, instead of the city monopoly. Hennessey has hired some 15 university students and area youth to staff his business, giving them some much-needed cash for their education.
Hennessey takes the garbage to an undisclosed dump outside the city, and collects anything that Toronto’s garbage monopoly would collect, if they weren’t on strike. When he’s not picking up garbage, Hennessey ships lobster out to the Muskoka area all summer.
The last garbage strike in Toronto, in 2002, lasted 16 days. If business keeps going as strong as Hennessey says it is, he could reap a nice profit. He says he has been collecting up to 200 lbs of garbage at many stops.
Many people are beginning to question the city’s monopoly. Kevin Gaudet, the Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, says that Toronto “should contract, as do most North American cities”, and feels the province “should legislate them back and impose a one-year settlement”. Competition will increase service, a government-run, union monopoly is the most inefficient way to run anything. Wendy Sullivan thinks that “Strikegarbage proves that there is always a way for the free market to prevail,” but worries that Toronto unions may “start picketing private homes if the residents choose to turn to Strikegarbage.com”. When asked if she would use the service, Sullivan says her landlady has been gracious enough to haul the garbage off, but were she to own her own home, “by now I would have called them.”
CBC is reporting that unions are worried that the private services are “weakening their bargaining position”, and that the private garbage collectors could encourage the city to privatize garbage collection. The union is worried that privatization threatens a “very important public service”, but proponents of private garbage collection argue that privatization makes it more reliable and efficient, and say that it is a convenience service, not an “important public service.”
The service costs $10 per bag for the first 5, or $50 for ten, plus $5 per additional bag. Hennessey hasn’t decided if he’ll stick around when the city gets back on the job.
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2nd Year Engineering student at Dalhousie University in Halifax.