Are there accredited reports/studies that the differences are as big as you say? If they are then I guess that there would be reason for concern.
I doubt that the difference is that drastic - but I don't know.
it's all here in black and white ... prime example within GTA.
http://www.nationalpost.com/scripts/story.html?id=1726873
Private or public? Guess the winner
Peter Kuitenbrouwer, National Post
Published: Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Eden Valley Drive lives up to its name, especially this week. The serpentine street near Islington Avenue and Eglinton Avenue West, developed in 1975, features fat brick homes on verdant lots. Best of all, yesterday paper bags of yard waste and grey bins sat expectantly at the ends of the driveways under the shade of the maple trees. The green bins were already empty, some lying upside down, some sideways on the curb.
Ah, to live in Etobicoke! While the rest of Toronto moves into the third day of a municipal strike that has halted garbage collection to single-family homes, garbage pickup is continuing as usual here.
In 1995 Etobicoke, then a separate city, put its garbage contract out for tender and hired a private company. The arrangement endures.
"It makes sense," said Graziano Monestier, a tiling contractor who was shirtless and mowing his wide front lawn. "If they save money and you have a good result, then why not?"
Doug Holyday was the Etobicoke mayor who hired the private contractor.
"The cost was getting out of line," recalls Mr. Holyday, now a Toronto city councillor for Etobicoke Centre. "We had a huge strike with our people and it got me thinking."
The council simply tendered the garbage collection contract, and invited the Canadian Union of Public Employees to bid, along with private operators.
"Their price was nowhere near what the private sector offered us," he says. Initially, Waste Management won the contract.
"In Etobicoke we had 71 people collecting the garbage and the contractor did it with 35."
Today, Turtle Island employs unionized workers to pick up Etobicoke garbage, Tuesday through Friday, and Mr. Holyday says the company does it for $2-million less than it would cost to pick up the trash with city crews.
The beauty is that the contractor must sign a deal with labour before it can bid on the work, so there are no walkouts, he said.
Two years ago, city council voted to bring garbage collection in York, another amalgamated former metro city, in-house. City hall argued it would see a savings because, with mechanization of garbage trucks, Toronto had plenty of surplus garbage workers who needed work. Mr. Holyday calls the decision "foolish," and he has a point: Today, York has no garbage pickup.
Councillor Rob Ford (Etobicoke North) says the city should contract out all the garbage collection.
"We'd save $10-million if we contracted out," he said. "It's not antiunion, it's making the union compete. Sell the trucks off. Private companies will pick them up."
He notes that, among Ontario cities, only Oshawa, Toronto and Windsor have city employees picking up the trash. Windsor city workers have been on strike for 10 weeks.
But Mr. Holyday notes that privatizing garbage now will be tough because former mayor Mel Lastman gave the workers jobs for life.
Yesterday, even as Mayor David Miller hectored Toronto's beleaguered citizens to keep the city clean, garbage was piling up -- even in Etobicoke. Along commercial strips, city crews normally pick up the organics and recycling. Outside George the Greek, corner of Long Branch and Lake Shore Boulevard West, stood 12 piles of cardboard, five bags of bottles and cans and one commercial organics bin. An adjoining litter bin was taped shut with a sign: "Temporarily out of service. Please do not litter."
George Sklifas, the restaurant owner, said he normally pays the city $1,600 a year to remove his organics; the city removes his recycling free. But city workers haven't come this week. He said he's planning to call a private contractor to haul the stuff away. Even so, he supports the striking workers.
"These people, the garbage guys, I don't know why they have to go on strike," he said. "Whatever they ask for, they deserve it. That job is no joke. They're out on the streets, it's plus 40, it's minus 40. I like those guys."
But back on Eden Valley Drive, Mr. Monestier, whose tiling business has slowed in the recession, had no patience for the strikers, and blames Mr. Miller for giving away too much to other unions, such as police.
"I think [the strikers] deserve to be fired, and all of them," he said. "You have sick days if you are sick, but if you are not sick they don't belong to you. When I stay home, I don't have anyone to give me a penny."
