Union Dinosaurs

The year summer died

Union cold-shoulders Centreville plan to keep swings and roundabouts going

By DON PEAT, SUN MEDIA

This is how CUPE killed summer.

A behind-the-scenes solution to open Centreville, Toronto Island's privately owned amusement park shuttered since the strike began, was quashed last Friday with a threat by CUPE 416 to picket park customers.

Shawnda Walker, Centreville's director of marketing, said the month-old civic workers' strike has cost the park $3 million in sales. The majority of its 400 employees, mostly students working for the summer, have been thrown out of work.

"We never thought it would go this long," Walker said yesterday. "They are killing our summer. "They're killing the summer for the little kids ... and they are killing the summer for our students who want to work and pay for university," she said.

Last week the park's owners tried to lay the groundwork to open despite the strike, something the city was receptive to, she said.

To help gain the union's blessing, they offered to make it clear to everyone they were operating under the generosity of CUPE 416.

Just 20 minutes after CUPE received the written proposal, the park got a terse answer.

"The Union will review all of its recourse including but not limited to picketing to ensure that the work of the Local 416 bargaining unit is respected," union officials stated in an awkwardly worded e-mail.

Later, they told Centreville they'd delay customers, set up pickets on the island and at the boats arranged to ferry people to the park, Walker said.

Calls to CUPE weren't returned yesterday.

Centreville staff say they were shocked by the threat.

"That hurt," Walker said. "We really thought there might be some sympathy to the fact we are a privately owned business. We have nothing to do with this and we're caught bang-smack in the middle," she said.

The park is only open 102 days a year and relies on the city's ferries, idled by the strike, to bring the bulk of its customers to the island.

'WE'RE DOOMED'

"If we go another couple weeks, we're doomed. We will not make money (this year)," Walker said.

Despite the threat, they are weighing the risk of opening. "Our concern with opening with the union taking such a strong stance against us is that you've got little kids," she said. Visitors brought over by water taxis to the island were strolling through the amusement-park-turned-ghost-town -- the doors and windows shuttered. The park's 30 rides, including a century-old Dentzell carousel, are in limbo.

Jack Hopkins, 3, was climbing up and down on the park's now-stationary train cars. "All aboard," he shouted as his parents watched him play in the deserted park. "Where's the conductor?"

The family was on vacation from Tucson, Ariz., and their hotel told them, mistakenly, that the park would be open.

"We're definitely disappointed," mom Brooke said.