Positions harden in Toronto garbage strike

TORONTO, July 13 (UPI) -- Both sides in the month-long Toronto garbage and municipal workers strike have dug in, making an agreement less likely, a dispute resolution expert says.

"What they've done now is they've both put their feet in cement," Alan Levy, a professor of alternative dispute resolution at Brandon University, told Monday's Toronto Sun.

As the fourth week of the dispute with 24,000 city workers began, garbage collection had ceased, creating piles of makeshift dumps, while daycare was suspended for 2,800 children and pools and summer recreation programs were shut down. The issuance of building permits and restaurant inspections has also been put on hold, the newspaper said.

"One of the parties may blink," Levy said, adding, that reaching a resolution will become harder as time passes, with union members becoming more unwilling to accept concessions.

"There is a psychology in this that the longer the members are on strike, the more entrenched they become within their positions," Levy told the Sun, predicting that Liberal Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty will soon come under pressure to order the strikers back to work and reach an arbitrated settlement later.