Vancouver garbage strike pretty tame by international standards
Photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackbird_hollow/1043723765/
In Athens, a garbage strike last year saw trash collectors and their supporters rioting in the streets. The protesters threw water, fruit and even a flagpole at police; Authorities countered with tear gas. Garbage in city’s streets was piling up in that dispute at a whopping 4,500 tonnes per day.
In New York, an 18-day work stoppage in 1981 yielded an estimated 100,000 tons of accumulated trash in the streets, and stories of city dwellers building walls from their countless bags of diapers, coffee grinds and other waste.
Here in Vancouver, however, a now 27-day-old garbage strike has meant some putrid accumulation - most notably in residential laneways and in the city’s Downtown Eastside - but nothing dramatic enough to merit the likes of tear gas, emergency back-to-work legislation or even dumping fines.
“The vast majority of people are doing the right thing,” deputy city engineer Peter Judd said in an interview today, adding the city has not handed out a single dumping fine during the strike so far.
“It’s not the problem that some of the media are making it out to be,” he added, saying some parts of the city are actually cleaner than normal because people are trying to do what they can to pitch in.
Today, the city and its striking outside and inside workers were still not talking, and instead both sides were issuing public statements about why they felt things had broken down.
The Vancouver Public Library, however, did invite workers from CUPE, Local 391 to return to the bargaining table. This afternoon, union officials said they were not sure what the library was going to offer but confirmed bargaining was set to resume today at 1 p.m.
Read more - http://www.canada.com
