CUPE says city is proposing contract cuts that are destructive and unprecedented

With clock ticking to strike or lockout, union representing Toronto outside workers blasts over proposed contract offer.

Thestar.com
Feb. 8, 2016
By Betsy Powell

With only days to go until a possible city staff lockout or strike, the union representing outside workers is blasting the city over its proposed contract offer.

“The city has tabled the worst, most destructive set of cuts we have ever seen,” Matt Alloway, a member of the bargaining committee for Canadian Union of Public Employees’ Local 416, said in a statement.

“We think ... (it’s) a fair and reasonable arrangement in the existing economic environment and the fiscal challenges that we have,” Deputy Mayor Denzil Minnan-Wong responded on Monday.

Over the weekend, the city’s bargaining team tabled its full proposal to Local 416, which represents 5,400 outside workers, including garbage collectors working east of Yonge St. and staff in the city’s water and parks department.

They will be in a legal strike position - or the city can lock them out - as of Feb. 19, though the two sides can continue talking after the deadline.

The city is also bargaining with CUPE 79, which represents 23,100 inside workers. They include child care and shelter workers, nurses, cleaners and planners.

They could be off the job on Feb. 20. The city also presented its full proposal to the CUPE 79 bargaining team Monday.

On its bargaining website, the city said it cannot afford to have collective agreements that “remain stagnant, or worse, return to unaffordable collective agreement provisions that were previously eliminated through collective bargaining.”

It says the city’s offer, which includes wage increases and proposed changes to benefits, provides the city with changes it needs for “flexibility, sustainability and labour mobility.”

The city also says it wants to reduce absenteeism by changing the rules around sick leave. The proposal would reduce the number of paid days off an employee is entitled to when he or she is off the job, sources said.

If the union is not “open to these type of changes,” there’s a very real possibility of a labour disruption, said Minnan-Wong, adding the city would prefer a negotiated settlement.

Linda Thurston-Neeley, CUPE’s regional director in Ontario, said the city is “looking for a way, in my opinion, just to get rid of people easily.”

“There’s a process and protocol in place in all of the collective agreements, and they don’t choose to use those protocols,” she said Monday.

She accused Minnan-Wong of “looking for a fight,” and said the city isn’t interested in reaching a fair settlement.

“They seem to have an agenda; it’s unfortunate that they don’t want to be collaborative.”

On Monday, four CUPE locals launched a TV advertising campaign to remind Toronto residents that the front-line workers are responsible “for the great services we all depend on,” Thurston-Neeley said.