Labour council says contracting garbage services the wrong idea
Posted Nov 15, 2019 11:19 am.
Last Updated Nov 15, 2019 11:20 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
CALGARY (660 NEWS) -The City of Calgary is looking at contracting out garbage collection, but one group says it’s not the way to go.
The Calgary and District Labour Council says such a move will only result in higher costs for the city.
“There’s a profit motive in contracting out,” said president Alexander Shevalier. “What we find is workers make less money, and there’s a profit, and the service quality suffers.”
Shevalier says contracting out those services hasn’t worked in other cities they researched.
“The City of Edmonton has 50 per cent of their waste and recycling services contracted out. Under the theory of contracting out, they should have lower per-capita costs, but that’s not the case. They actually have higher per-capita costs than the City of Calgary.”
He adds the City of Winnipeg is moving to return service to the city after several complaints were issued against the contracted company as well as thousands of dollars in fines.
When it comes to how the city can save money in waste collection, Shevalier has some ideas.
“From our perspective, the best way for the city to save money is to actually look at processes internally. What’s happened over the years is cities have built up silos, and if they started to break down those silos and they started to look at processes, they could actually save substantial sums of money.”
A notice of motion on contracting garbage services is expected to go before council next week.
