Toronto Mayor David Miller Did An Excellent Job Handling The Strike

The Toronto Star, The Globe & Mail and the National Post have gone all out to attack Toronto Mayor David Miller's handling of the strike and of the deal he reached with the unions. They claim that he caved in and gave the unions what they wanted from the beginning. If not directly saying that he failed, they put a negative spin on his name and his achievements regarding the strike.

However, he was very successful in his handling of the strike and of the deal finally reached.
He set up temporary dump sites all over the city right away.
He got injunctions against strikers right away if they caused undue delays (so they couldn't keep on delaying people at those sites).
He organized existing management staff to work on keeping the streets and parks as clean as possible.
And, regarding the deal, he managed to get it so the banking of sick days will be phased out - this will save the city millions of dollars.

The unions wanted to completely keep on banking sick days. The city wanted to get rid of the banking of sick days. A compromise was reached to phase the banking of sick days out. This is about as fair a deal as could be reached. And, that's what you end up getting when you negotiate - a bit of give and take - a compromise.

The MSM seem to think that he should have been able to get rid of the banking of sick days all at once. This would have been very unfair to the workers, and impossible to get through the negotiations during the strike. And, it would have been impossible to get if the mayor had got the Province to legislate the workers back to work. If this had happened, the negotiations would have gone to binding arbitration. And with this, the unions always get a better deal - they most likely would have kept the banking of sick days completely.

So, what would you have preferred - a harder approach by the mayor, resulting in either the strike going on for months (and getting no better of a deal than we got), or back to work legislation sending the workers back to work and binding arbitration with no change in the banking of sick days,
OR
The deal we got with the phasing out of banking of sick days?

All in all I would say Well Done David Miller!