Amy Withers: staff roles if Dufferin Grove Park becomes a park conservancy

Amy is part of the CELOS group working on this park conservancy research. Amy worked as a part time recreation program staff at Dufferin Grove from 2003 until 2012 and was an active member of CUPE Local 79.

Plan:

Our plan is to maintain onsite unionized staff (unionized already by CUPE Local 79) at Dufferin Grove Park, integrated with a CELOS Program Manager hired by a CELOS Conservancy Board to run the park with excellent programming and rewarding work.

Goals:

We want to provide a dynamic example of how unions and large municipalities can provide excellent locally-grounded parks programming and rewarding work for union members. Currently workers at Dufferin do not have accurate job descriptions, and they lack autonomy and creativity at work.

The City of Toronto knows that they have a “quality” problem in their parks and rec programming. They have tried to fix it by outsourcing standardized training at a significant cost and by allowing new governance models to bloom across the City.

The opportunity for the City at Dufferin Park is to work with community members, workers, and their union for a new governance model that holds up three pillars: - excellent programming
- rewarding work, and\\ - engaged citizens.

What should workers be doing under the conservancy mandate?

Everything they currently do, and more, but better, happier and with more input from the community. The Conservancy’s aim at Dufferin Park is to provide the City an opportunity to try a hybrid model of authority that encourages excellence and innovation in programming and rewarding work.

What is the structure going to be?

As the Conservancy consults and moves from Draft to Proposal, CELOS will meet with the City and Local 79. CELOS will hire a Coordinator to manage the shaping of the proposal and the transition, while the City would continue to fund programming at Dufferin Park. The CELOS coordinator working on the proposal and the transition will be funded through a sole-source service contract by the City of Toronto.

Can union members be in supervisory positions?

Yes.
Dufferin Grove Park needs on-site managing but that role does not need to correspond with the power to hire or fire. Instead, Dufferin’s on-site coordinator must have the confidence and goodwill of both City Management and the Conservancy Board.

Why are you talking about workers, don’t volunteers run Dufferin Grove?

No.
Day to day unionized recreation staff at Dufferin Grove do almost everything. Here is an incomplete list of programs and tasks: food preparation, cash handling, monitor the wading pool and rink, run the skate rental, garden and coordinate volunteer gardeners, monitor campfires, help coordinate community events, do park upkeep work (picking garbage, moving benches, fixing fences) and of course on site daily coordinators manage workers and prioritize the tasks.

What is wrong at Dufferin Park now?

Silos of Authority: passing the buck
At Dufferin Park there are two sources of authority, the union and the employer. When Dufferin park staff want to innovate, the union and the City point fingers at each other to explain why something is impossible. For example, staff who kept track of the park finances for a decade can no longer do so.

Silos between on-site workers: not-my-job-ism
Currently at Dufferin Grove Park the workers you see in the park are part of numerous different City of Toronto divisions. There is no structural way of connecting Solid Waste staff who pick up the garbage with Parks workers who pick the litter, or with Recreation staff who work with programs or events that sometimes result in litter. City staff on different crews in the same park work side by side but rarely together!

Aren’t these problems facing other parks too?

Yes and No.
All parks have a unique character and potential. Dufferin Grove park has had years of incubating local programming ideas, many of which grew into City-run programs. But with management off-site and unengaged with the unusual pressures and requirements of work at Dufferin Park, the one-size-fits-all strategy fails.

The internet connects people, right?

Yes, and no.
We all experience the great and not-so-great aspects of the internet every minute of our lives. Using social media and volunteer apps to contact new neighbours and volunteers is a great tool. Also Dufferin Grove Park has some very niche programs that have always attracted interest from across Toronto, programs like campfires, bread baking in wood fired ovens, and cob building, to name a few.

But, person to person contact between onsite staff park users at the park is so important. At the playground we see parents of young kids, newcomers including refugees the homeless, youth-at-risk, drug dealers. Staff connect with these park users, introduce people to each other and help with neighbourhood resources.

Staff at Dufferin Grove Park formerly viewed connecting with these people as their job too. The results were individual and mixed. But we will pride ourselves on friendly, curious and capable staff who connect in person with all park users.

In the winter at 9.30pm on a weeknight there are often kids from age 7 or 8 upwards playing shinny endlessly. Rink staff have already checked in with them: did they get dinner? If not, how about a trade of skate shelving for a hot dog? Where are you going to sleep? Who is picking you up? Sit down to read your homework with me, then a checker game?

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