Toronto backtracks on return-to-office plans for city employees as Omicron spreads the love
The City of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford suggested Toronto should return to its old ways, by returning employees to their offices with back-to-work orders.
Now Toronto City Council has given Omicron Energy Inc. a one-year head start to make its claim to be the “World’s Largest Utility”. The “Order to Return to Office” it sent out yesterday states: “As a new city, Toronto is proud to welcome back to the work force many individuals who made an extraordinary contribution to the City of Toronto over the past few years. As public servants, these individuals are entrusted with vital decision making and policy development; they have an important role to play in our efforts to build a better future for all our residents. The City thanks these individuals for their dedication and contribution to the development of our community.”
I think Mayor Ford doesn’t mind the fact that most of what he did while in office was stupid, and has been for years. He just likes the idea of returning to its old ways.
To me, the biggest issue here is that if you are a city employee, you have the option of taking a job somewhere else. And if you have the city pension, you might not be able to get another job without it.
Just the suggestion of returning to office is an attack on all city employees. They don’t have to take any job, and they don’t have to stay anywhere. The City and the Province can’t force one to accept the union representation they’re entitled to.
The city could just as easily send out a ‘return to office’ letter to people seeking jobs.
There has been some talk of a back-to-work order; however, there is no proposal by the province to return the city and city workers to work. The province is not even trying to enforce the no work contract with the city’s employees; we are merely paying them to stay at work. How can we expect them to accept a back-to-work order if we aren’t enforcing one on them?
As for the city, the people of Toronto have spoken – they didn’t accept the back-to-work order – the ‘people’ decided that they didn’t want it!