Tension rising on the line
City strike turns ugly
By Trevor Wilhelm, The Windsor Star [Ontario]
May 22, 2009
Tempers are boiling over and nerves are wearing thin as the CUPE strike drags into week six, with the frustration manifesting itself in allegations of picket line fights, vandalism, threats and stolen garbage.
Papa Cheney’s owner Alissa Coutts said her business has been one of the most recent targets of striking city workers. She said her employees, who have been removing the bar’s garbage during the strike, are getting “harassed” by pickets.
“I definitely feel that some lines have been crossed,” Coutts said Thursday. “They started by harassing some employees who offered to help. They yelled derogatory comments at them. One comment was they hope maggots crawled in their mouth and out their — I won’t say the word.”
“Just screaming profanities at them. At that point, they told us we were in for it.”
About 1,800 of the city’s inside and outside workers went on strike in April. The long strike appears to be taking its toll, with reports of several incidents from mischief to fighting.
Staff Sgt. Daryl Hall said Thursday night police have been to a few calls, but nothing serious. Members of CUPE and the general public make different claims.
Mayor Eddie Francis said his chiropractor wife Michelle Prince received veiled threats against her business while working a home show booth in late April. Retired Star columnist Gord Henderson, who still contributes a weekly opinion piece to the paper, said his car was vandalized the day he wrote about taking trash to a private service.
There have been reports of people putting clothes hangers in tall grass at city parks to prevent it from being cut. Somebody put crazy glue in the locks of the washrooms outside The Bistro at Dieppe Park.
“That’s not our members,” said CUPE Local 543 president Jean Fox. “Our members have done nothing. We are peaceful. We’re walking pickets and that’s it.”
Rob Delicata, co-owner of the Pillette Transfer Station, said strikers have targeted him since he cleaned up a massive dump site outside the Central Avenue transfer station in April. He said people threw beer bottles at his truck. Last Friday, he said, someone spread a box of nails on the road leading to his waste disposal service.
On Wednesday, someone torched a luxury car in the parking lot of the CUPE building.
Fox said the allegations aren’t true.
“We have no reports of our picketers doing anything,” she said. “There have been no police reports, no charges laid. There has been no vandalism, no damage, no anything. We’ve been accused of bombing a car, which we have nothing to do with. The guy that shares the lot beside us parked his car there and God knows what happened.”
She said CUPE members have been the ones taking the brunt from residents.
“I know that our picketers are being harassed,” said Fox. “We have court injunctions that we are honouring. We are doing our best to inform the public of our position. It’s unfortunate that people treat each other the way they do.”
Last Friday, a striking outside employee said he suffered a broken ankle and cuts to his nose and face after a confrontation with a private contractor mowing grass on Kildare Road. Police said the CUPE member suffered the injuries after somebody threw a punch.
Other pickets have called police after people nudged them with their vehicles. A scuffle broke out Tuesday after a few pickets got hit by a slow-moving car while blocking the road into Dieppe Gardens. Someone apparently took the keys out of the car and a woman who had been riding in it put a picket in a headlock to get them back. No one was hurt.
Earlier this month, the union said a picket was the victim of a hit-and-run at City Hall Square, while other irate motorists shouted obscenities and drove aggressively without regard for the safety of those on the picket line.
Coutts said her employees have had a couple of run-ins with pickets. The bar has received phone calls from someone identifying themselves as a CUPE member.
“They said if we didn’t call them back by 5 p.m., we were going to get it,” said Coutts. “We finally did and no one would take responsibility for the phone call. When we finally did get through to someone, they just started screaming and didn’t want to hear anything about it.”
The day after that, bar employees continued cleaning up garbage. The strikers were back, she said.
“They once again tried to stop us,” said Coutts. “While we were out taking a load to WDS, maybe 15 to 20 of them showed up and took some of our garbage, and apparently took it back down to the waterfront. They were running. Our employees were chasing them down the road. We don’t know what happened with that garbage.”
Confrontation 
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