Torontonians are more on the side of Mayor David Miller and city hall than the workers in the current labour dispute, but mostly they want the 19-day strike ended, a poll finds.

Miller and the city can't take too much comfort from their support level, according to the poll conducted by The Strategic Counsel for CTV and The Globe and Mail.

The city has the support of 33 per cent of Torontonians, while the union can only claim 13 per cent support, according to the poll released Friday.

However, 55 per cent of respondents say they support neither side. Forty-five per cent of respondents say their opinion of the mayor and city council has worsened, while that jumps to 65 per cent for city workers and 68 per cent for the unions.

"It's a plague on all their houses," pollster Tim Woolstencroft of The Strategic Counsel told ctvtoronto.ca.

At least 90 per cent of the respondents either strongly or somewhat agree that the city has gotten dirtier since the strike began on June 22 and that the garbage strike poses a health hazard.

Three-quarters want the provincial legislature recalled to order the strikers back to work -- and once the strike is over, 65 per cent would approve of privatizing garbage services to prevent further strikes.

Support for privatization jumps to 76 per cent in Etobicoke, which already has privatized garbage collection.

About three-quarters of respondents say municipal employees should not go on strike during a economic recession and that they should go back to work and accept the terms the city has offered.

Only 27 per cent of respondents agreed that the city should give the strikers what ever they want to end the dispute.

"There's really nothing supportive of the unions or striking workers," Woolstencroft said, adding, "It's not an auspicious time to be out on strike."

This poll was conducted online between July 8 and 10.

Miller made public the city's offer to 24,000 striking inside and outside workers on Friday morning -- an offer rejected in the afternoon by the leaders of CUPE locals 416 and 79.  It isn't known how many respondents might have known of the announcement. The poll didn't ask any specific questions about the offer. Woolstencroft said the announcement wouldn't have influenced this poll.

Despite the apparent support for direct action to end the strike, about three-quarters of respondents say Torontonians are coping well with the disruptions, but Woolstencroft said that 50 per cent claim to have been affected by the strike in some manner.

Only three in five agreed that the measures the city had put in place to cope with the strike were helping. That dropped to 49 per cent for Etobicoke residents.

How people cope

People say they have been greatly or somewhat affected by the absence of the following services:

  • garbage - 58 per cent (64 per cent outside Etobicoke)
  • other cancelled/disrupted services - 53 per cent
  • closed parks/recreation programs - 46 per cent
  • closed swimming pools - 31 per cent

Forty-three per cent of respondents say their garbage is still being picked up. This jumps to 87 per cent in Etobicoke and drops to 36 per cent outside that borough.

Only 27 per cent of those who say they are being greatly affected by the strike still have their garbage being picked up. Forty-two per cent of those say they are stockpiling it at home.

Here's how people outside of Etobicoke deal with their garbage:

  • Stockpile it at home - 38 per cent
  • Use temporary dumps - 24 per cent
  • Drop it off with friends/family outside Toronto - 10 per cent
  • Leave it in parks or public areas  - 2 per cent

Methodology

The poll is an online survey of 785 Torontonians conducted using the Research Now Web Perspectives online panel.

Traditional telephone polling based on random sampling generates a sampling error commonly known as margin of error.

"As respondents for this poll were selected from among those who have agreed to be invited to participate in online surveys, no estimates of theoretical sampling error can be calculated," Strategic Counsel said.

However, Woolstencroft said it should provide a solid measure of Toronto public opinion on the strike.

"We did a whole bunch of parallel polling" using traditional methods, and the results are very similar, he said.