A Candy Store With Depleted Stock.......

.....and it is obvious that the candy suppliers, feds/province, have become disenchanted with Comrade Miller and are reluctant to ship stock so he will have to get the customers to pay up front.

Miller gave away the candy store

By SUE-ANN LEVY, TORONTO SUN

"Being mayor is about doing what's right, not what's easy."

-- Mayor David Miller yesterday as he defended his sweetheart deal with the CUPE unions after a 39-day strike

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His Greyness must have been talking about some other mayor, because after listening to him trying to spin his highly indefensible and unaffordable deal with the 30,000 members of CUPE Locals 416 and 79 in a positive light, I can most assuredly say our mayor took the easy way out.

In other words, our union-friendly mayor caved. His union sympathies did him in. He gave away the candy store to end the strike.

If citizens are asking today was it worth it to put up with cancelled city services and harassment by the union thugs at temporary dump sites and trash transfer stations for more than five long weeks, I can honestly say it was not.

No one really won -- and taxpayers lost the most.

DROPPED THE BALL

The mayor and his negotiators dropped the ball on union wage hikes. After offering the unions 1%, 1% and 2% over three years -- according to the city's published offer of July 10 -- the unions got 1.75%, 2% and 2.25% over three years.

If I were one of the city's 3,800 management employees whose wages were frozen this year -- and who worked 12-hour days to prop up the city during the strike -- I'd be livid.

But after claiming -- almost like a broken record over the past 39 days -- that the city can't afford the union's sick-leave demands and that the world has changed, His Greyness backed down pretty much completely.

Mind you, it took nearly 40 minutes of prodding the mayor to confirm that -- after Miller claimed that the deal "eliminates the provision of bankable sick days" to employees. "This is a very strong achievement," he crowed, insisting Torontonians "should be very pleased" with the deal.

Not so fast Your Greyness. We're on to you and your double-speak.

True, all new city hires will no longer be eligible for the lucrative sick bank -- that pays out up to six months upon retirement -- or 18 sick days per year. They will be subject to a new, "modernized" short-term disability plan.

But the lucrative sick leave benefit will be grandfathered for all employees who already have it. I repeat, all employees will continue to be eligible for the sick leave payout upon retirement -- and will be able to collect 18 generous sick days per year. Or they can take a buyout, based on a "quite complicated" (Miller's words, not mine) formula that takes in years of service.

Our Harvard-educated mayor insisted the "very, very significant" $150-million liability on the city's books will be capped and "decline" over time because employees will elect to take the buyout option.

Miller also claimed that there is some $200 million in an Employee Benefit Reserve Fund to pay for the buyouts.

Geesh. Why should the Harvard economics graduate's numbers be any more accurate this time than in the past?

For if even 25% of the current 20,000 full-time employees elect to keep the sick bank until retirement and add to it every year (with the 18 days they're still allowed) the liability will escalate.

NOT JUST FOR PAYOUTS

According to information provided to me yesterday, there is $240 million in the Employee Benefit Reserve Fund. But that is to fund all employee benefits, not just sick-leave provisions, and most particularly payouts.

Details, mere details from the mayor who claims he's always right -- er, "did what's right." Councillor Stintz summed it up best yesterday when she said the city gained absolutely nothing.

"The residents of the city have sustained a five-week strike," she said, "with nothing to show for it."

SUE-ANN.LEVY@SUNMEDIA.CA