Conciliation talks between the Halifax Regional Municipality and the Amalgamated Transit Union have broken off, which may mean a strike or a lockout by Metro Transit workers on Feb. 2.
Ken Wilson, president of Local 508, said city officials have unnecessarily rushed the bargaining process.
“Our typical negotiations take 12 to 14 months. Look at other business units in HRM. The police have been without a contract for two years. Water Commission, four years,” he said.
Wilson said Metro Transit workers have been without a contract since Sept. 1.
“All of a sudden, they’re done? We’re going to take a strike vote? That’s absolutely unacceptable. That’s why I’m asking the citizens of HRM to contact the mayor, the councillors and let’s get us back to the bargaining table,” he said.
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On the eve of the three-month mark of the York Region Transit (YRT) strike, there’s reason for some cautious optimism among commuters: all sides are back at the bargaining table this week.
Talks between the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 1587 and Miller Transit — the company contracted to operate YRT buses on 51 routes — are set to continue Monday after both sides returned to the table on Friday. Local 1587 president Ray Doyle told CityNews the mood of the talks being held in Markham has been positive. He also said he’s hopeful a deal could be reached on Monday.
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Toronto could be facing either a city lockout or a strike of unionized outdoor workers in 17 days.
Either type of work stoppage will become legal at 12:01 a.m. on Sunday, Feb. 5, under a “no board” report issued Thursday by the provincial labour minister.
News of the widely expected report, which was requested by Mayor Rob Ford’s administration, arrived before both deputy mayor Doug Holyday and Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 416 president Mark Ferguson expressed a new optimism about the state of negotiations.
Holyday said the union had taken a “huge step in the right direction” by tabling written proposals at a Thursday bargaining meeting. Ferguson said the union “noticed a distinct difference at the bargaining table.”
“For the first time, the city was actually willing, and open, and engaging in the discussions that they had with us. If this tone continues through the bargaining process, that is a very good thing,” Ferguson said, calling the shift “a major breakthrough.”
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Thousands upon thousands of union and community members will take part in a mass rally, calling on U.S.-based Caterpillar to end the lock-out of its nearly 500 workers and for the Harper government to put jobs before tax cuts. Community members are already expecting the demonstration at the London’s Victoria Park to be the largest public rally the city has seen in decades.
Already approximately 70 buses have registered from right across Ontario, with hundreds more people driving into the event. The buses have been organized by the CAW and the Ontario Federation of Labour, working with local labour councils and community groups.
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A provincial mediator is bringing a union local and contractor involved in the York Region Transit strike back to the bargaining table following a warning from region officials.
Representatives of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1587 and Miller Transit are scheduled to resume contract talks Friday.
This is the first time talks have resumed since ATU Local 1587 members rejected Miller Transit’s last offer in a labour-supervised vote Jan. 6.
“We will listen to what they have to say (Friday),” said ATU Local 1587 president Ray Doyle. “Our members want to get back to work but it has to be on terms that recognize and respect the value of the work they do.”
Doyle said the union would prefer to end the strike immediately through binding arbitration.
Negotiations are resuming after York Region terminated its contract with First Canada, and warned the other parties involved in the strike, which is now in its 13th week, to reach agreements by Friday.
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The provincial labour minister has authorized Mayor Rob Ford to lock out Toronto’s unionized outdoor workers in 17 days.
The minister’s “no board” report also allows the outdoor workers to strike. A winter lockout, however, appears more likely.
A city lockout or Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 416 strike will become legal at 12:01 a.m. on Sunday, Feb. 5, the city said in a statement.
Garbage collection would be most significantly impacted by a lockout of or strike by the 6,000 outdoor workers. Ambulance service could be reduced by as much as 15 per cent. Snow plowing may also be affected, though most of the city’s plowing has been outsourced to private companies.
The minister’s authorization does not permit a lockout of or strike by CUPE Local 79, which represents 18,000 indoor workers at such facilities as daycares, community centres and nursing homes.
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Residents of York Region could see some striking bus service back in operation by Feb. 5 after the region’s Monday announcement that it has cancelled its contract with First Canada.
Drivers for the company affiliated with the Amalgamated Transit Union walked off the job in late October, along with some from two other companies that together provide about 60 per cent of the region’s bus service.
“What it means is service will resume,” said Rick Leary, general manager of York Region Transit.
While full service won’t be restored all at once, Leary said the region is in talks with another operator to take over First Canada’s routes and a contract will be placed before council for approval on Jan. 26. He would not name the company.
Route 98, the bus that travels Yonge St. between Newmarket and Richmond Hill, should be back in service by Feb. 5, he said.
The region also said Monday that it had given the two other contractors, Miller Transit and Veolia Transportation, until Friday to disclose what they’re doing to end their disputes with employees and get back to work.
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After more than 12 weeks on strike, three-quarters of Viva drivers have rejected the latest offer from their employer, Veolia.
“(Regional chairperson) Bill Fisch can’t perpetuate the myth this is union driven or leadership driven,” Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113 president Bob Kinnear told employees filling a conference room at Vaughan’s Monte Carlo Inn this afternoon.
Mr. Fisch was in his cross-hairs even more than Veolia. Mr. Kinnear said, today, the union has put the labour board on notice it will file a complaint stating the region has interfered and tried to undermine the union’s leadership.
It announced Monday it is dumping First Transit, operators of YRT’s northern routes dating back to its days running Newmarket Transit.
The region’s move was timed to discourage members voting today, Mr. Kinnear said, and also reasserted the union is willing to negotiate around the clock and would return to work immediately if the contractor agreed to binding arbitration.
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It endured a 17-month long strike, beat the United Auto Workers union in bitter labour battles, and so frustrated its workers some of its corporate executives were once kidnapped and held hostage.
Now, U.S. heavy-equipment giant Caterpillar Inc. — which owns Electro-Motive Diesel, through its Progress Rail Services subsidiary — is flexing its muscle in London.
“They are nasty. It is part of their corporate brand that they are tough with unions,” Bill Murnighan, director of research at the Canadian Auto Workers union, said of Caterpillar.
The world’s largest maker of earth-moving equipment, Caterpillar, through Progress, has locked out 465 CAW workers at its London Electro-Motive Canada plant after tabling a contact offer that would slash workers’ wages and benefits by more than half, with pay dropping from more than $30 an hour to about $16.50.
The lockout enters its 16th day Monday, with the CAW planning a massive rally this Saturday in London in support of the workers.
The standoff — some fear the company could move the London work to a low-cost Progress plant in Muncie, Ind. — is the kind of fight Caterpillar observers have seen before.
The big multinational waged numerous battles with the UAW in the U.S. in the 1990s, and twice since 2004 the U.S. union has accepted lean, concessionary contracts, without so much as a scrap.
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The Ford administration has set its course for labour talks, endorsing a bargaining position that the mayor’s supporters call “100 per cent reasonable” and critics quickly labelled an “extreme” tack that steers the city closer to a winter lockout.
The city’s labour relations committee met in private Thursday to discuss the mandate for its negotiators in talks with unions for more than 30,000 workers whose contracts expired Dec. 31.
Details remain private, but committee chair Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday made it clear the city is taking aim at job security provisions and bumping rights.
“I think that the action that the committee has taken is 100 per cent responsible,” he said. “There is a point where job security becomes too strenuous and too expensive a matter.”
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