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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Ohio-based International Management Assistance Corporation (IMAC) has achieved HRCI approval for several of the courses offered at its IMAC Online Training Academy. Human resources professionals will now receive HRCI accreditation towards their Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) designation upon successful completion of any of these unique, professionally-relevant courses, available at www.imac-training.com.

The courses pre-approved by the HR Certification Institute (HRCI) have been designed expressly to further the careers of HR professionals, and include pragmatic subject matter developed by some of the industry’s top security professionals. Most popular of the accredited courses include an overview of workplace violence, nonviolent confrontation, high-risk terminations and work stoppage management.

Launched in early 2011, the IMAC Online Training Academy is unique in the practical and applicable nature of the training it provides. The IMAC security education team brings together respected experts who will instruct primarily on the realistic application of field-tested concepts and tactics to ensure students get relevant knowledge and techniques to equip them to succeed in the industry today. In addition to its more than twenty courses geared to HR professionals, the school also provides workplace violence training for security professionals and corporate executives.

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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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Viva buses began rolling on Yonge Street again Friday as officials in York Region try to ease the impact of the 12-week transit strike on riders—a move a local MPP calls “offensive” and claims “does nothing to help commuters.”

Up to 10 articulated 18-metre-long buses are replacing the 12-metre-long York Region Transit (YRT) buses that had been running on Route 99, between Bernard Terminal in Richmond Hill and the Finch GO station. York Region officials believe the bigger buses will help ease congestion.

The bus operators are getting some help from driving instructors on board because they’re not used to operating the larger vehicles.

Newmarket-Aurora MPP Frank Klees said York Region’s attempt to help commuters is “offensive”.

“To put out a media release declaring that the Regional Municipality of York is ‘taking action to restore transit service’ is offensive and only serves to feed the cynicism that people have towards government,” Klees said in a statement.

“The fact is, that replacing a 40-foot YRT bus with a 60-foot bus between Bernard Terminal and the Finch GO Bus Terminal does nothing to help commuters in Newmarket and Aurora and anywhere else in York Region.”

Klees was one of three MPPs that proposed back-to-work legislation at Queen’s Park in November. York Region Council insists it won’t make a similar call and has reiterated its demand that the parties involved return to meaningful negotiations.

Viva buses are run by private contractor Veolia Transportation and its workers are represented by the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 113. Veolia employees, and workers from the two other private companies contracted to provide YRT service—Miller Transit and First Canada—walked off the job on Oct. 24.

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PSAC tabled new language on Terms, Seasonals, Acting Pay, and National Joint Council during this week’s three day meeting with Parks Canada. The team also brought up union proposals on job security: contracting out, students, volunteers and contractors.

Negotiators for the employer once again offered us a speedy collective agreement if we agreed to their terms, namely no language that would increase job security.

But then, the employer opened Tuesday’s session by warning the team that layoffs are coming – they wouldn’t say where when or who – only that they were coming.

We argued that there should be no layoffs while there are students and volunteers in the workplace. Parks Canada said they intend to use volunteers, and that students are part of the workforce.

There is no shortage of work, we argued – it’s just that the employer would rather assign it to volunteers and students.

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Bargaining with the Government of the Northwest Territories began on December 19 with an exchange of proposals and three days of negotiations.

While the union team was disappointed that the government did not respond to many of their substantive proposals, the two sides did agree that all worksite occupational health and safety committees will develop safety and security procedures for employees required to work alone.  The union and the government also signed off many housekeeping issues.

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The City of Toronto’s 6,000 “outside” workers are offering to freeze their wages for three years as, sources say, the Ford administration ponders how to force a strike if they refuse to surrender job security.

“We are ready to sign a wage freeze tomorrow in an agreement that continues the current terms and conditions of our current collective agreement,” Mark Ferguson, president of CUPE Local 416, told reporters at City Hall on Friday.

“If (city negotiators) get back to the table, we could have a deal by the end of the day.”

Ferguson said a wage freeze rather than minor pay hikes would save the city $8.5 million a year that could be used to save city pools and other services now on the budget chopping block.

That last contract was reached in 2009 after a bitter 40-day strike. It gave unionized city workers a 1.75 per cent raise in the first year, 2 per cent in the second and 2.25 per cent in 2011. It expired Jan. 1.

Councillor Doug Holyday, chair of the employee and labour relations committee, welcomed Ferguson’s offer but said he should have made it at the negotiating table before talks broke down this week.

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