City workers dispute Rob Ford’s weird response to this week’s bomb threat

Rob Ford’s bizarre response to a city hall bomb threat earlier this week seemed like a relatively harmless (by Ford standards) gaffe—but not so, according to the union that represents Toronto’s indoor workers. Tim Maguire, president of CUPE Local 79, announced in a press release this morning that his organization will be filing a grievance and asking the Ministry of Labour to investigate the mayor’s actions, which the union believes were a violation of city hall’s bomb-threat safety procedure. “From the moment media were first alerted to the existence of a purported bomb threat, there flowed a complete breakdown of policies and procedures to deal with such threats,” Maguire is quoted as saying in the release. “It is not acceptable for policies governing employee health and safety to be infected by the same flagrant and casual disregard for the rules that seem to be a way of life in some quarters of city hall these days.”