Strike Saves Toronto $33 Million

Strikes and lockouts are intended to be painful to both employers and workers.  That is why labour stoppages are expected to exert pressure on the parties to settle.  Workers don’t receive their wages during a strike, and employers don’t receive the workers’ labour.  Depending on the circumstances, the pressure from a work stoppage may be greater on one party than the other.  For example, the recent strike at the Vale Inco nickel mines in Sudbury was expected to have little impact initially on the employer, since it had already planned on closing down the mine for a while due to an oversupply of nickel on the markets.  This can actually put the employer into a windfall position, since it is saving on wages during the strike, as long as the strike doesn’t cause it to loose customers.  In a public sector strike, the employer continues to receive most of its revenues (taxes), while it saves on wages and benefits that would otherwise have been paid to the striking workers.   Unlike  in a private sector strike, the public sector employer is not worried about losing customers per se, but it is concerned about public opinion and how taxpayers will respond to the government’s handling of the strike in the next election.  The pressures at play are different.
In the recent Toronto strike, the City saved over $93 million in labour costs.  It then had to pay out about $60 million in strike-related costs, for a total saving of just over $33 million.  Mayor David Miller says he wants to put that money back into the government’s budget.